We taught four Baptist preachers to read and write. While this may seem inconceivable to some, nevertheless it is a fact that there are men in the mountains and an occasional one in the valleys of the South, who, when they have felt the call to the ministry, have not even permitted the fearful handicap of illiteracy to deter them from doing that which they conceived to be their duty. Naturally these illiterate ministers are much handicapped. “If the blind leads the blind both shall fall into the ditch,” is a maxim very applicable here. Illiterate ministers must depend entirely on others to read the Bible to them, and, unfortunately some turned out by the day school are as poor readers as those who attempted to read for the king, according to the story told in one of McGuffey’s school books. A reader of this type, attempting to read to an illiterate minister one day, read the sentence, “Paul was an austere man,” like this, “Paul was an oyster man.” The preacher declared to his congregation the next Sabbath that Peter was a fisherman and Paul was an oyster man, thus giving his congregation an unusual conception of Paul. Another heard the sentence, “Jacob made booths for his cattle,” read, “Jacob made boots for his cattle,” and discoursed from the pulpit on “Jacob, that humane man, would not even permit his cattle to go barefooted, but made boots for them to protect their tender feet as they walked over the stones.” These men realized their disadvantages, and they knew the value of the education offered them. They knew it by the best standard by which the value of a thing may be measured--the need of it--a need that in their case had been many times made painfully manifest. So, they accepted the opportunity and used their influence, which was more powerful in the community than might be supposed, among their followers to get them to enroll in the schools. They did more; they gave a new support to the day schools, working for them with zeal, visiting them, speaking in their behalf, and sounding louder than any others the cry, “Everybody, young and old--to the books!” Nothing better was ever given to any crusader than the privilege which was mine one Sabbath day, that of hearing a minister recently redeemed from illiteracy read from the Bible for the first time and preach from this text, which I thought strangely appropriate, “Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?”