What is the importance of the Bible and the Psalms in the novel, Whittington?

In both the main narrative and the story of Dick Whittington, the Bible and the Psalms are the means by which characters learn to read, Ben in the main narrative and Dick in the story told by Whittington. The Psalms is a book in the Old Testament of the Bible that essentially amounts to a collection of poems written in praise of God. They are particularly important in Ben's story, in that the word is one of the first that he memorizes and which, as previously discussed (see Section 5, Analysis), provides a potential link between the book and a certain Christian sensibility.