Who may, in some grim revel raise his hands
And shake the pillars of the Commonweal.
Would that it could be said of the United States as a certain citizen of Copenhagen said of his country when touring America in 1919, “Bolshevism would make no headway in Denmark, as there is not a person in that country who cannot read or write his name, in fact write a letter. Where there is education, there is little chance of Bolshevism gaining a foothold.”
The majority of America’s illiterate millions, though born upon her soil, are as ignorant of the principles and traditions of their own country as they are of those of Italy or Spain. They have never realized or claimed their heritage of citizenship, never felt the thrill of intelligent patriotism that others have known. To teach them would not only enrich them as citizens but in the words of the prophet Isaiah would, “increase the nation and extend all the borders of the land.”
Illiteracy is one of the great handicaps to religion. In its centers churches and Sunday schools cannot thrive. The most literate county in the State of Kentucky has numerous churches while the most illiterate county has but one, and that is in the county seat. The number of Sunday schools in Rowan County doubled after the illiteracy campaign. Men need mental development to put them into intelligent relation with their Creator, to give them an understanding of the Divine Being. “I cannot give an illiterate man even an intelligent conception of God,” said a woman who attempted to teach a Sunday school class of illiterate men in prison.
If the Christian world could realize how illiterates yearn to read the Bible, the followers of the Master would hasten with swift feet to unlock its pages to them. Had it not been the will of our Heavenly Father that all should be taught to read and write, He would not have given His Word to the world in the form of a book.
A woman in Louisa, Kentucky, prayed for ten years for a Bible and the power to read it. She was presented with one by her sons, but it was in the days before the illiteracy crusade and they did not think of teaching her to read it. She learned, however, by having a neighbor’s children teach her the letters on box cars switched off on a railway siding near her milk-gap. She lived to enjoy her Bible for ten years after it had become to her an open book and she marked the passages which comforted her most. These were read at her funeral where this story of her triumph over illiteracy was publicly told.
Abraham Lincoln’s boyhood prayer was not for wealth or fame or the high position of Chief Executive. It was,
God help mother, help father, help sister,
Help everybody. Teach me to read and write.