Reading the Bible in The Monastery

Not in a monastery, but in Sir Walter Scott's The Monastery.  Given its positively underwhelming critical reputation (beginning from its first publication--it wasn't one of Scott's bestsellers), I'm surprised by how not-bad the novel is.  Granted, that's damning with faint praise (or praising with faint damns?),  but the end result remains perfectly readable. 

I'm always interested in how my didactic Christian historical novelists "handled" Scott's example, because while Scott was considered acceptable reading in even anti-novel evangelical circles, his fictional historiography of religion would not (and sometimes explicitly did not) pass muster with more self-consciously devout writers.  At the same time, this is not to say that Scott's novels avoided popular religious topoi, like the Bible-reading scene:

Ignorant in a great measure of its contents, Mary Avenel had been taught from her infancy to hold this volume in sacred veneration.  It is probable that the deceased Lady of Walter Avenel only postponed initiating her daughter into the mysteries of the Divine Word, until she should be better able to comprehend both the lessons which it taught, and the risk at which, in these times, they were studied.  Death interposed, and removed her before the times became favourable to the reformers, and before her daughter was so far advanced in age as to be fit to receive religious instruction of this deep import.  But the affectionate mother had made preparations for the earthly work which she had most at heart.  There were slips of paper inserted in the work, in which, by an appeal to, and a comparison of various passages in holy writ, the errors and human inventions with which the Church of Rome had defaced the simple edifice of Christianity, as erected by its divine architect, were pointed out.  These controversial topics were treated with a spirit of calmness and christian [sic] charity, which might have been an example to the theologians of the period; but they were clearly, fairly, and plainly argued, and supported by the necessary proofs and references.  Other papers there were which had no reference whatsoever to polemics, but were the simple effusions of a devout mind communing with itself.  Among these was one frequently used, as it seemed from the state of the manuscript, on which the mother of Mary had transcribed and placed together those affecting texts to which the heart has recourse in affliction, and which assure us at once of the sympathy and protection afforded to the children of the promise.  In Mary Avenel's state of mind, these attracted her above all the other lessons, which, coming from a hand so dear, had reached her at a time so critical, and in a manner so touching.  She read the affecting promise, "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee," and the consoling exhortation, "Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee."  She read them, and her heart acquiesced in the conclusion, Surely this is the word of God.  (III.5, 280-81)

Scenes such as this--the lineal descendants of St. Augustine's Tolle, lege--are pivotal in  nineteenth-century evangelical fiction.  (In this instance, the divine Tolle, lege has given way to the verses of the House of Avenel's attendant spirit, the White Lady.)  But Scott's representation of Mary's first encounter with the Bible actually runs counter to how a more explicitly didactic novelist would handle the same moment.  To begin with, whether writing fiction set in the past or the present, didactic novelists rely heavily on the figure of the godly child--the younger the better--who embodies  Matthew 18.2-5.  Such children, once converted themselves (at however young an age), offer the adults around them a preternatural example of absolutely pure faith, no matter the potential danger to themselves.*  Lady Avenel's prudent reserve, which had been intended to delay Scriptural religious instruction until Mary has reached the age of reason (and, unintentionally, until the historical context had altered), contradicts the evangelical position, which insists that when it comes to salvation, there is no time like the present.      

More interesting, though, is that Mary reads the Bible through her mother's annotations, excerpts, and meditations.  While characters in didactic fiction have wildly different responses to their first encounters with the Bible in general and the New Testament in particular, ranging from growing doubts to deep emotional turmoil, they almost always read and respond in isolation, without access to commentaries, Protestant devotional works, or marginal notes.  (Luckier characters may eventually get a real live Protestant to help them along.)  This is not accidental.  These apparently "immediate" readings are supposed to establish that the Bible interprets itself; that the core truths of salvation are accessible to all readers; and that Scriptural truths are so self-evidently correct as to override previous cultural or religious beliefs.  In other words, sola scriptura in action, with a little added oomph.     But Mary is guided through the text by her mother's writings, in a subtly feminized version of proto-Protestant faith and controversial practice.  While Mary's reading solves her emotional difficulties,  Scott makes it clear later that Mary's private study leads her into errors as well as truths (301)..suggesting that even a mediated course of Scripture reading is insufficient without a "professional" (read: clerical) guide.  This conclusion would appeal to a High Church novelist like Charlotte Yonge, but would exasperate most evangelicals.

*--For some random and very different examples, see Judah's Lion, Edwin and Alicia, and The History of Little Henry and His Bearer.