“She drowned her babies regularly in the creek.”
“He was said to be the father of his own daughter’s first child.”
“This woman was subnormal and has three illegitimate children.”
“This other woman is a menace to every man in the community.”
“He committed suicide.”
“She poured kerosene on the cat and set fire to it.”
“Boil nails in water to find out if person for which water is named committed a crime. If nails crackle and knock against the pan, then person named is guilty.”
“A person dies hard on feathers. We took mother’s bed out from under her three times when we thought she was dying.”
“Our children don’t need to go to school to learn to read. The Spirit teaches them to read.”
The people of these families looked, in the face, like people you meet in any fair group of folks; but their minds, their deeds, their hopes, their fears! There’s the rub. Is this group of twenty-five families typical of country communities where the Bible is fought over by blind leaders of the blind? I am afraid it is. I admit it with shame, but I admit it. The Bible,—as if it were a plow found by persons who knew not its use, but who scrapped hard for its possession as an ornament of their dooryards,—the life-giving Bible in these hands is still a closed book and a locked-up treasure.