Editorial note — Chapter V · ENGLISH LITERATURE

[Footnote 46: It is almost amusing to be told that knowledge of the Scriptures was kept from the people at this time, before the Reformation, when these popular plays to which all the countryside flocked, and in which so many took part, were making them thoroughly familiar with all the details of Christ's life. There was much more than this, however, for connected with many of the Passion Plays were cycles of tableaux or presentations of special scenes in which, beginning with the Creation, the whole story of the Bible, and particularly those portions which are related to the coming of Christ, were set clearly before them. No better way of impressing upon the people the great truths of Christianity or the life of Christ as the central fact of the world's history could possibly have been imagined. The people were not encouraged to read difficult passages, which even the profoundest theologians find it hard to understand, to take their own meaning out of them and to argue about them, convicting everyone of heresy who did not agree with their interpretations of them, but they were taught the deep moral and religious significance of all the Old and New Testament. They learned the value of the Scriptures as literature as well as their quality as the underlying document of religion, but above all they were taught their relation to life. All this was so put before them that it came as an amusement and not a task, and from their earliest years they became familiar with the great thoughts underlying religion so as to secure its influence over them.]