THE TWO BRANDS by R. N.

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 1, 1881

THE TWO BRANDS.

By R. N.

If you will allow me I will tell you what happened to me the first morning after we (Fanny and I) were married and began to keep house. We were not blessed with a great deal of this world's goods and had no servants. I rose early to make the fire, and raking open the ashes, found just one brand alive.

"It won't burn alone," thought I, and I broke it in two, laid the parts together to produce a blaze, and soon there was a glowing fire. "Just so it will be with wife and me about religion," thought I. Wife was a whole-hearted Christian, a member of the church, but timid and retiring. I once thought I had a hope, but I never professed Christ, and the hope I once cherished was about dead. I didn't know whether I was a Christian or not. I couldn't eat my breakfast for thinking, and wife said:—

"What ails you Richard? Isn't the breakfast cooked to suit you?"

"The cooking's all right," said I, "but I'll tell you what isn't. We didn't have family prayers last night or this morning. Now, if I never get into the kingdom I don't want to keep you out of the highest seat you can have. I found out this morning, kindling the fire, that one brand would not burn alone. So bring out that Bible, laid away so choice in the parlor, and keep it right here on the shelf. I'll read it aloud, morning and evening, and kneel down and hear you pray for yourself and me."

Wife came and put her arm around me and tried to coax me to do the praying, saying she was afraid she couldn't. I would not and so she did, and we were both in tears before she got through. I could not stand out against those prayers. The Spirit kept knocking, knocking at my heart's door and I had to open it. When we knelt together I began at last to pray for myself, first silently and then aloud. Then I went to the prayer-meeting and asked Christians to pray for me; then I prayed for myself there, and soon after I confessed Christ before men by uniting with the church.

Wife and I have been trying ever since to serve God together. I don't see how I ever could have got on alone, and wife says she is sure she couldn't.

I have thanked God ever since for sending his Spirit to set me thinking about the brands that morning when I made the fire.—R. N., in Christian at Work.