Introduction

Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire? ZECHARIAH 3:2

Julia Foote left the world one small book. It tells the story of a Black girl born in upstate New York in 1823 to parents who had been enslaved; of her conversion at fifteen; of her hunger for a clean heart and her finding of it; of a call to preach that she fought for weeks and could not escape; of the minister who had her put out of his church for obeying it; and of the long years afterwards, when she travelled the northern states and beyond as an evangelist with no salary, no denomination behind her, and very often no welcome at the door. She called the book A Brand Plucked from the Fire, after the prophet’s picture of a stick snatched out of the flames just before it was consumed. She meant herself. She never stopped being astonished that God had bothered to reach in.

Why so short a companion

Other volumes in this series set out a teacher’s thought across eighteen chapters, because their subjects left whole shelves of sermons and treatises behind them. Julia Foote did not. She preached for half a century, but almost none of it was written down. What remains is her memoir and a few fragments of her words recorded by others. So this companion is shorter than the others, with ten short teaching chapters instead of eighteen. It will not invent sermons she did not leave. What she did leave is enough.

One thread

Her teaching is easy to summarise, because she said one thing and said it everywhere. She called it full salvation. By it she meant that Jesus Christ does not only forgive the guilty but cleanses the believer, not only at death but now, and not only in theory but in the heart. She had been told that a Christian must fight her inward sins until she died. She called that a delusion.

Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. EZEKIEL 36:25

Everything else she taught grows out of that root. If Christ really cleanses, then holiness is not the preserve of the old and dying but the birthright of the young believer. If the Spirit really fills a cleansed heart, He may send that heart wherever He likes, and the rules of men cannot bind Him. If the blood really makes one family, a church that seats its Black members in a corner of the gallery has denied its gospel. And if God is really keeping His servant, then sickness, loneliness and contempt are not proofs of His absence but the fire in which He walks with her.

That is the thread through these ten chapters, and it is the question to carry as you read: do I believe that Christ can do anything more for me than He has done? Or have I, like the people who counselled the young Julia, settled for a lifelong defeat and called it humility?

How this book is arranged

After a chapter on her life, the book follows the order of her own story. It begins with her conversion and the troubles that followed it, and then with the full salvation she found and what she meant, and did not mean, by Christian perfection. It turns to her call to preach, her defence of women in the gospel, and the opposition of her own church. Then it follows her outward, as she was driven outward, to her witness against slavery and prejudice and against drink and worldliness. The last teaching chapter takes up the long years of illness and trial, and how she learned to trust God in the fire rather than out of it.

Each chapter ends with application points and a prayer. She would have insisted on it. Her book keeps stopping to ask the reader, point-blank, whether you have this salvation yourself. Read one chapter a day, or one a week. Stop at the application points. Pray the prayer, or better, pray your own.

Where she must be read with care

This is not a book of hero-worship, and it is better to say at the outset where Julia Foote must be read with care.

First, holiness. She taught, with the Methodist holiness tradition of her day, that entire sanctification is a second, distinct work of grace received by faith in a moment, in which the root of sin is destroyed. She went so far as to write that if you are sanctified, sin does not exist in you. Many godly Christians find in the same Scriptures a lifelong growth in grace, with sin fought but not uprooted until glory. This book sets out her teaching as she gave it, honours the hunger behind it, and notes where the disagreement lies.

Second, her reading of Scripture. She read her Bible hungrily and quoted it constantly, but not always carefully. A verse in Isaiah becomes a promise that Satan cannot swim. Her arguments for women preaching are generally strong and sometimes loose. It is no discredit to a woman who had very little schooling in her life, but it means the reader should check her texts rather than borrow them.

Third, dreams, visions and impressions. Her call came through an angel with a scroll and a night-long vision of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit beneath a great tree. But Scripture tells believers to try the spirits, and the chapter on her call asks what is safe to learn from her experience and what is not. Fourth, her strictness about dancing, dress and even, for a time, doctors, and a sharpness towards her opponents that she did not always restrain.

Why read her, then? Because on the central matter she was right: Christ came to save His people from their sins, and not merely from the consequences of them. Because she lived it at a cost few readers will ever pay, and answered wrong with love. So the counsel of this book is the counsel of Scripture: Prove all things; hold fast that which is good (1 Thessalonians 5:21). Where she is faithful, receive it. Where she presses beyond what is written, mark it and set it aside.

Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it. 1 THESSALONIANS 5:24

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Write down one sin that you have quietly decided you will carry to the grave. Do not argue yet about doctrine. Simply bring it to Christ and ask whether He has more for you than you have been expecting.

2. Think of a Christian you have been slow to hear because of who they are rather than what they say. Resolve to listen to them this month.

3. Decide how you will read this short book: one chapter at a time, with the application points actually attempted before you go on.

4. Where you already suspect you will disagree with her, note it, and resolve to test her against Scripture rather than against your habits.

5. Read the opening chapters of her own memoir alongside this one. It is short enough to finish within the week.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You reached into the fire for a poor girl in Schenectady, and You have reached in for me.

Forgive me for settling for less than You have promised. I have called my defeats humility and my low expectations wisdom.

As I read of Your servant, show me what You still mean to do in me. Where she was faithful, make me willing to follow. Where she went beyond Your Word, give me wisdom, and keep me from despising her.

Save me to the uttermost, for Your name’s sake. Amen.