Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 September 1885 — Bible Characters. [ARTICLE]

Bible Characters.

Written in the East, these characters live forever in the West; written in one province, they pervade the world; penned in rude times, tbey are prized more and more as civilization advances; product of antiquity, they come home to the business and bosoms of men, women and children in modern days. Then is it any exaggeration to say, “The characters of the Scripture are a marvel of the mind?” In our day character painting is’ much attempted by certain writers of fictitious narrative; but their method excludes them from a serious comparison with Homer, -Virgil, and the sacred historians. They do not evolve characters by genuine narration. They clog the story with a hundred little essays on the personality of each character. They keep putting their heads from behind the show and openly analyzing their pale creations and dissecting them and eking them out with comments and microscoping their poodles into lions. These are the easy expediments of feeble art.— Charles Eeade.