Oor ain folk times

190 BIBLE CHARACTERS
parish and denominational school system, as well as
the Sunday school system, of the bygone days. It
appeared possibly as a part too of the theological
training of which I have spoken, as embodied in
those tedious pulpit utterances which took the
place of the countless modern agencies which are
now employed to train the intellect and fill the
mental horizon of our latter - day young people.
When libraries were few, when the newspaper
press was almost an unknown power, and when
the Bible really formed the great lesson -book for
young and old, scriptural characters became in-
vested with a living reality. They were personified,
so to speak, in the daily thoughts of the people,
and heroes like the Judges and Kings of Israel
took the place in the popular mind of those national
characters, or the creations of literature, which have
now become household words among a people to
whom modern historians have opened the great picture
gallery of the past. Wizards such as Sir Walter
Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, and the glorious company
of our masters of modern fiction, have filled the
chambers of imagination and memory of even the
poorest amongst us with a long array of living
creations, who, alas ! may have jostled aside the old
scriptural characters which were such real and living
entities to our forefathers. Some of the Scottish
stories bearing upon this point are among the highest
in their unconscious humour that can well be imagined.
It is in fact impossible to reproduce exactly some
of the best of them. They would be looked upon
as quite outrageous and altogether too irreverent and