A REMINISCENCE

Seeing the name of Mr Pellatt in a recently issued magazine, brought back to my mind an incident that has been of interest and help to many.

We were having a meeting at M— at the time of Mr Pellatt’s visit to Scotland [in 1912]. During the tea interval I was saying of a brother we both knew that he was learning that a brother was a greater thought than a servant. ‘Oh!’ said Mr Pellatt, ‘I am so glad you said that, for that is my subject for to-night – the brother’. When the time came, he started his address thus:

There was once a man named Napoleon, and the British took him and put him on an island called St Helena, and there he was—alone—and he died there ... Many years before this another great empire took a man called John, and they placed him on an island called Patmos, and they thought he would be alone, but they did not know that he was a brother. “I, John, who also am your brother”.

The impressive way in which this was said touched all our hearts. If we have the sense of being brothers and sisters in the Lord, we cannot feel alone. Although shut up in the dreary island John had the joy in his soul of that blessed spiritual link which prison walls cannot break nor distance destroy. All spiritual links are maintained by the Holy Spirit’s power, and we may well remember that the nearest way to every heart is round by heaven.

Personally, I shall never forget that night—the address on “the brother”.

In my early days I had often prayed that I might be a preacher, but in the Lord’s goodness I think I see now how much greater to be in reality and function a brother. My belief is that no title gave the apostle Paul so much joy as when Peter referred to him, not as an apostle, a servant, or a preacher, but as our beloved brother Paul. How we would all covet to be worthy of such a name!

A J H Brown

BEXHILL

From Words of Truth, vol 1 (1933)

There are two addresses in this book in which Mr Pellatt speaks on this theme, but neither can be this one—as neither refers to Napoleon!