The cut in Gospel Reader—Moses Viewing the Promised Land—does great injustice to the subject.... What sort of an impression will it make on the readers of the book? It is not in any sense a correct representation of Moses. It looks more like a picture of the great deceiver, Satan, after he had lost Paradise. 8MR 349.1
Page 52, same book, The Ark Standing in the Midst of Jordan. See the cherubim on either end of the ark. What a misrepresentation of the heavenly angels looking with reverence upon the mercy seat, the cover of the ark! A child might take the representation to be a bird hunched up.... 8MR 349.2
If you choose to have a few pictures and good ones, I do not object. Let illustrations be choice rather than numerous.—Letter 28a, 1897, pp. 2, 3. (To “Those in Responsible Positions in Our Publishing Houses,” January 9, 1897.) 8MR 349.3
Pictures [used] to represent Bible scenes must be no cheap designs.... A proper illustration of Bible scenes requires talent of a superior quality. With these cheap, common productions, the sacred lessons of the Bible disdain comparison.—Manuscript 23, 1896, 1. (“Illustrations of Heavenly Things,” June 6, 1896.) 8MR 349.4
Released June 21, 1978.