Scrolls for Private Meditation

Promise, Prayer, Poetry.
London: A. P. S., [ca. 1890]. (BRB1281)

The exact origins of this devotional object have not yet been discovered. It consists of a printed hinged box filled with 147 small rolled slips of paper bearing printed texts for Christian meditation. Other sets that are known have two hundred slips kept in a similarly printed box with a drawer containing tweezers for extracting the rolled slips. Each slip in Promise, Prayer, Poetry provides three quotations. The first is always a Bible verse. The second quotation, printed in italics, is frequently a Psalm. The third text quotes a verse from a nineteenth-century English hymn, the title of which is not provided. For example:

The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. – Psalm 23:1

I will call upon Thee, for Thou will answer. – Psalm 86:7

Jesus is our Shepherd, for the sheep He bled; Every lamb is sprinkled with the blood He shed.