Dividing a Bible | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 26, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 33.

Dividing a Bible.

An extract from a letter from Miss La Paz, a colporter of the Ladies’ Bible Society of Philadelphia, in Havana, gives the following interesting incident: “I went to the suburbs of Havana, and called at a very poor house. I did not know any one there, but was invited to go in. I found an old man and woman. After talking to them for fifteen minutes, I asked if they would allow me to read the New Testament to them, and whether they had a Bible in the house. The man, who was eighty-nine years old, went to his room and brought half of a Bible, commencing at the 51st Psalm. I asked them why they broke such a book as the Bible in such a manner, and he answered me as follows:

‘When I was twenty-five years old my mother died suddenly, and all her property was divided between my brother and myself. We got along very well in the division until we came to this Bible, which my mother brought from New York a hundred years ago. My brother and I both wanted it, and neither of us would give up, so there was nothing else to do but to divide it, and we broke it into two equal parts, and each took a part, and each of us read it every day. My brother went to Africa, and stayed there thirty years, and when he came back, we changed, he read my part and I read his, and both of us believed.’

Miss La Paz adds that these old Cubans had never heard about “Protestants,” and were not Roman Catholic, but upon questioning them closely she found that they were truly Christian people, and had got all they knew from this Bible, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.—Sel.