The Tunkers are found widely scattered throughout the northern and middle parts of the United States, but are nowhere numerous. They were recently estimated to have over five hundred churches and some fifty thousand members. The name which they take for themselves is simply that of Brethren, and they profess that their association is founded on the principle of brotherly love. The name Tunkers is of German origin, signifying Dippers, and is due to their dipping in baptism. They anoint their sick with oil, depending upon this unction and prayer for their recovery, and rejecting the use of medicine. They do not insist upon celibacy as an absolute rule; but they commend it as a virtue, and discourage marriage. Chiefly engaged in agriculture, they are industrious and honest, and universally held in good repute among their neighbors.
Sole dependence upon prayer is the characteristic also of a small religious sect of which a few members are to be found in England, calling themselves the Peculiar People.
In Switzerland, the name of Dorothea Trudel, who died in 1862, was long famous for the cure of ailments by prayers.
104. What noted sage advocated the doctrine that virtue was intellectual, a necessary consequence of knowledge; while vice was ignorance, and akin to madness?
This was the fundamental doctrine of the philosophy of Socrates, the Athenian philosopher (469–399 B. C.). Knowledge, virtue, and happiness he held to be inseparable. His religious doctrines culminated in the conception of the Deity as the author of the harmony of nature and the laws of morals, revealed only in his works, and of the soul as a divine and immortal being, resembling the Deity in respect to reason and invisible energy.
105. What palace in an ancient city contains five hundred rooms?
The Palazzo Imperiale, at Mantua, Italy, contains five hundred rooms, whose choicest embellishment consists in the glorious paintings and exquisite designs of the great Mantuan artist, Giulio Romano.
106. What was the “most useful conquest ever made by man”?
Baron Cuvier, the most eminent naturalist, says of the dog: “It is the completest, the most singular, and the most useful conquest ever made by man.” This conquest was made long before the dawn of history. Cuvier has also asserted that the dog was, perhaps, necessary for the establishment of human society. Though this may not be apparent in the most highly civilized communities, a moment’s reflection will convince us that barbarous nations owe much of their elevation above the brute to the possession of the dog.
107. When was the first blood shed in the Revolution?