They also learned to write. Their copybooks were at first rough scraps of broken pottery on which with sharp nails they learned to scratch letters. Probably mischievous boys sometimes drew pictures instead of practicing the words assigned to them. After they could write fairly well they were given wax tablets, or even a bit of papyrus, a quill pen, and an ink horn. Papyrus was expensive and had to be used with care. GOOD AND BAD RESULTS OF THE TEACHING OF THE SCRIBES So much study of these books of law and history was bound to wield a mighty influence. Those thousands of boys studying laws which for their time were the most just and humane in the world, could not but learn something about the meaning of justice and mercy. Better still, the wonderful stories in Genesis and Exodus left their sure impress on the hearts of those who studied. The boys for the most part reverenced their teachers, and many of them came to love their Book, the law. It was a boy, so taught, who when he was older, wrote that Psalm: ="Thy word is a lamp unto my feet And light unto my path.= * * * * * * * * * =Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto, according to thy word."= =The danger of formality.=--The danger in this kind of education is that of blindness to the voice of God to be heard in everyday experience or in our own hearts as well as in the written Scripture. The result of this blindness is that goodness and religion are thought of as merely the keeping of the written law. It was such blind scribes whom Jesus denounced for giving tithes, or a tenth part of the mint and anise and cummin, that is, of even the most insignificant of their garden herbs and forgetting mercy and justice and faith; in other words, keeping the letter of the written law but not living out the spirit of it. It is not enough, Jesus taught, just to obey what is written. To do only that is to be an unprofitable servant. This bad kind of religion grew up in those schools where only books were studied, not the real everyday experience of living people. JESUS WAS A WISE MAN RATHER THAN A SCRIBE When Jesus came he was a teacher more like those more ancient wise men of the city gates. Like them he taught his listeners out of doors by the shores of the lake or on the hillside as well as in the synagogues. He reverenced the Bible, the Law and the Prophets, as God's word, but he listened for that word also in the sights and sounds of the streets and country lanes. He heard his Father's voice as he listened to house wives chatting with their neighbors, or to vineyard keepers hiring harvest hands. "When He walked the fields he drew From the flowers and birds and dew Parables of God. For within his heart of love All the soul of man did move-- God had his abode." STUDY TOPICS 1. Look up in the Bible dictionary under "Scribes" and "Rabbi."