Unfailing Trust - George Mueller
Unfailing Trust
It was a warm summer’s day, a short time since, that found me slowly walking up the shady groves of Ashley Hill, Bristol, on my way to the far-famed Orphanages, founded by Mr George Müller.
Directly I reached the top, there met my gaze the immense buildings which can shelter over two thousand human beings, mostly orphans, built by a man who has given the world the most striking object-lesson in faith.
The first house I come to is on the right, and here, amongst his own people, in plain and unpretentious apartments, lives the saintly patriarch, whose name has become a household word throughout Christendom.
Passing through the lodge-gate, I pause a moment to look at the great house (No 3) before me. But it is only one out of five, the whole having been erected at a cost of £120,000.
The bell is answered by one of the Orphans who conducts me up a lofty stone staircase, and at the end of a long passage I am ushered into one of the private rooms of the venerable founder. Mr Müller has attained the remarkable age of ninety-one, and as I stand in his presence, an old-world veneration fills my mind. “Thou shalt rise before the hoary head and honour the face of the old man.” (Lev. 19 v 32) He received me with a cordial handshake, and bade me welcome.
It is something to see a man by whom God has accomplished a mighty work; but it is still more to hear the tones of his voice, but far more than either is to be brought into immediate contact with his spirit, and to feel the warm breath of his soul breathed into ones’ own.
The fellowship and communion of that hour will be forever graven upon my memory. This servant of the Most High opened his heart to me, counselled me, prayed with me, and gave me his blessing. Much of what Mr Müller said to me is here recorded, with the earnest prayer that it may be helpful to tens of thousands of my fellow travellers to Zion. At the time it seemed as though he was a messenger from Beulah land, or else that he led me up to the gates of heaven, where I breathed the fragrance of the celestial country.
In that hour was made manifest to me the source of Mr Müller’s great spiritual strength. The aged saint, with all his faculties unimpaired, was eloquent the whole time, eloquent on one theme, the praises of Jehovah, the Great Hearer and Answerer of the prayers of his people.
My own words were but few. “You have always found the Lord faithful to his promise?
“ALWAYS.” He promptly answered, and with great earnestness.“HE HAS NEVER FAILED ME! For nearly seventy years every need in connection with this work has been supplied. The Orphans, from the first until now, have numbered 9,500, but they have never wanted a meal. NEVER! Hundreds of times we have commenced the day without a penny in hand, but our heavenly father has sent supplies by the moment they were actually required. There never was a time when we had no wholesome meal. During all these years I have been enabled to trust in God, the living God, and in him alone. ONE MILLION FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND POUNDS have been sent to me in answer to prayer. We have wanted as much as £50,000 in one year, and it has all come by the time it has been really needed. No man on earth can say that I ever asked him for a penny. We have no committees, no collectors, no voting, and no endowments. All has come in answer to believing prayer. My trust has been in God alone; He has many ways of moving the hearts of men to help us all over the world. While I am praying He speaks to this one and another, on this continent and on that, to send us help. Only the other evening, while I was preaching, a gentleman wrote me a cheque for a large amount for the Orphans, and handed it to me when the service was over.”
“I have read your life, Mr Müller, and have noticed how greatly, at times, your faith has been tried. Is it with you now as formerly?”
“My faith is tried as much as ever, and my difficulties are greater than ever. Besides our financial responsibilities, suitable helpers have constantly to be found, and suitable places have to be provided for scores and hundreds of Orphans who are constantly leaving the Homes. Then often our funds run very low; we had come nearly to the end of our supplies: I called my beloved helpers together and said to them, ‘Pray, brethren’ pray!’ Immediately, £100 was sent us, then £200, and in a few days £1,500 came in. But we have to be always praying and always believing. Oh, it is good to trust in the living God, for He hath said, ‘I will never leave thee, I will never forsake thee.’
EXPECT GREAT THINGS FROM GOD,
AND GREAT THINGS YOU
WILL HAVE
There is no limit to what He is able to do. Praises for ever be to His Glorious Name! Praise Him for all! Praise Him for everything! I have praised Him many times when He has sent me 6d., and I have praised Him when He has sent me £12,000.!
“I suppose you have never contemplated a reserve fund?”
Mr Müller answered with much emphasis: ”That would be the greatest folly. How could I pray if I had reserves? God would say, ‘Bring them out; bring out those reserves, George Müller.’ Oh no, I have never thought of such a thing! Our reserve fund is in Heaven. God, the living God, is our sufficiency. I have trusted in Him for one sovereign; I have trusted Him for thousands, and I have never trusted in vain. ‘Blessed is the man that trusteth in Him.’”
This led me to say: “Then, of course you have never thought of saving for yourself?”
I shall not soon forget the dignified manner with which I was answered by this mighty man of faith. Hitherto, he had been sitting opposite me, with his knees almost close to mine, with clasped hands, and eyes that betokened a calm, quiet, and meditative spirit. Most of the time he leaned forward, his gaze directed to the floor. But now, he sat erect, and looked for several moments into my face with an earnestness that seemed to penetrate through my very soul. There was a grandeur and majesty about those undimmed eyes, so accustomed to spiritual visions, and to looking into the deep things of God. I do not know whether the question seemed to him a sordid one, or whether it touched, shall I say, a lingering remnant of the old self to which he so often alludes in all his discourses. Anyhow, there was no shadow of doubt that it aroused his whole being. After a brief pause, during which his face was a sermon, and the depths of his clear eyes flashed fire, he unbuttoned his coat and drew from his pocket an old-fashioned purse, with rings in the middle separating the character of the coins. He placed it in my hand, saying, “All I am possessed of is in that purse – every penny! Save for myself! Never! When money is sent to me for my own use I pass it on to God. As much as £1,000 has thus been sent at one time, but I do not regard these gifts as belonging to me; they belong to Him, whose I am, and Whom I serve. Save for myself! I dare not save; it would be dishonouring to my loving, gracious, all-bountiful Father.”
I handed the purse back to Mr Müller, and he told me the sum it contained.
It might here be explained that the Scriptural Knowledge Institution embraces several objects, all of which have been worked by Mr Müller for a long series of years in connection with the Orphanage; 150 Missionaries have been assisted, 117 Day and Sunday Schools have been maintained or helped, nearly 2,000,000 bibles and New Testaments have been circulated, and many millions of Tracts have been distributed. For these purposes over £250,000 have been received, and not a penny of this vast sum has been asked for from anyone, but all has been sent in answer to fervent believing prayer.
There was a glow of holy enthusiasm in the face of this aged and faithful man as he related some of his preaching tours in 42 different countries of the earth; and how in travelling from place to place, in some instances thousands of miles apart, his every need had been supplied. Hundreds of thousands of men and woman of almost every nation came to hear him, and his great themes wherever he went were the simple message of Salvation, and the encouragement of believers everywhere to trust in the living God. He told me that he prayed more about his sermons than anything else, and that often the text was not given till he ascended the pulpit, though he had been praying for it all the week.
I asked him if he spent much time on his knees.
“More or less, every day. But I live in the spirit of prayer. I pray as I walk about, when I lie down, and when I rise up. And the answers are always coming. Thousands and tens of thousands of times have my prayers been answered. When once I am persuaded that a thing is right and for the glory of God, I go on praying for it until the answer comes.
GEORGE MÜLLER NEVER GIVES UP!”
The words were spoken in an exulting tone. There was a ring of triumph about them, and his countenance was all aglow with holy joy. He had got up from his seat while uttering them, and had walked round to the side of the table. He went on:
“Thousands of souls have been saved in answer to the prayers of George Müller. He will meet thousands, yea, tens of thousands in Heaven!”
There was another pause, but I made no remark, and he continued:
“The great point is never to give up until the answer comes. I have been praying for fifty-two years, every day, for two men, sons of a friend of my youth. They are not converted yet, but they will be! How can it be otherwise? There is the unchanging promise of Jehovah, and on that I rest. The great fault of the children of God is, they do not continue in prayer; they do not go on praying; they do not persevere. If they desire anything for God’s glory, they should pray until they get it. Oh, how good, and kind, and gracious, and condescending is the One with Whom we have to do! He has given me, unworthy as I am, immeasurably above all I had asked or thought! I am only a poor, frail, sinful man, but He has heard my prayers tens of thousands of times, and He has used me as the means of bringing tens of thousands into the way of truth. I say tens of thousands, in this and other lands. These unworthy lips have proclaimed salvation to great multitudes, and many, very many, have believed unto eternal life.”
I asked Mr Müller whether he had any idea whereunto the work would grow when he first began. After speaking of its commencement in Wilson Street, he said:
“I only knew that God was in it, and that He was leading His child into untried and untrodden paths. The assurance of His presence way my stay.”
“I cannot help noticing the way in which you speak of yourself,” I said, conscious that I was approaching a subject at once tender and sacred, and closely allied with his deepest spiritual moods and personal relationship to God, that I half reproached myself as soon as the words were uttered. He disarmed all my fears, however, by exclaiming, “There is only one thing George Müller deserves, and that is – hell! I tell you, my brother, that is the only thing I deserve. I am, indeed, a hell-deserving sinner. By nature I am a lost man, but I am a sinner saved by the grace of God. Though I am by nature a sinner, I do not live in sin; I hate sin; I hate it more and more; and I love holiness; yea, I love holiness more and more.”
I said to him, “I suppose through all these long years in your work for God, you have met with much to discourage you?”
“I have met with many discouragements,” he answered, “but at all times my hope and confidence has been in God.
ON THE WORD OF JEHOVAH’S PROMISE HATH MY SOUL RESTED
O, it is good to trust in Him; His Word never returns void. He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might He increaseth strength. This applies also to my public ministrations. Sixty-two years ago I preached a poor, dry, barren sermon, with no comfort to myself, and, as I imagined, with no comfort to others. But a long time afterwards I heard of nineteen distinct cases of blessing that had come through that sermon.”
I told him briefly a few of the things that had again and again discouraged me, and at the end expressed a hope to be used of God more than ever.
“And you shall be used of God!” he exclaimed. “Yea, my brother, God Himself shall bless you! Toil on! Toil on!”
“May I venture to ask you to give me some special counsel in regard to my own work for God, so that I may pass it on to other Christian toilers in the great harvest-field of souls?”
He answered, “Seek entirely to depend on God for everything. Put yourself and your work into his hands. When thinking of any new undertaking, ask, ‘Is this agreeable to the mind of God? Is it for His glory?’ If it is not for His glory, it is not for your good, and you must have nothing to do with it. Mind that! Having settled that a certain course is for the glory of God, begin it in His name, and continue it to the end. Undertake it in prayer and faith, and never give up! Pray, pray, pray. Do not regard iniquity in your heart; if you do, the Lord will not hear you. Keep that before you always. Then trust in God. Depend only on God. Wait on Him. Believe on Him. Expect great things from Him. Faint not if the blessing tarries. Pray, pray, pray! And, above all, rely only and alone upon the merits of our ever adorable Lord and Saviour, that according to His infinite merits, and not your own, the prayers you offer, and the work you do, will be accepted.”
I had no word to answer. Indeed, what was there to say? My eyes were filled with tears, and my heart was overflowing, and besides, “There was the speechless awe that dares not move, and all the silent heaven of love.”
Mr Müller fetched from another room a copy of his life, in which he inscribed my name. His absence afforded me an opportunity of looking around the apartment. I observed that the furniture was of the simplest and plainest description, and such as was useful. All seemed in harmony with the man of God who had been talking to me. It is a great principle with Mr Müller that it does not become the children of God to be ostentatious in their style, or appointments, or dress, or manner of living. Expensiveness and luxury are not seemly in those who are the professed disciples of the meek and lowly One, Who had not where to lay His Head. On the desk there lay an open Bible, of clear type, without notes, or references.
This, then, I thought, is the abode of the mightiest man, spiritually, of modern times – a man specially raised up to show to a cold, calculating age the realities of the things of God, and to teach the Church how much she might gain, if only she were wise enough to take hold of the arm of Omnipotence.
I had been with this Prince of Prayer one whole hour, and only once there came a iHmknock at his door. It was opened by Mr Müller, and there stood one of his Orphans, one of the largest family on earth, a fair-haired maiden. “My dear!” said he, “I cannot attend to you just now. Wait awhile, and I will see you.” Thus was I privileged to remain uninterrupted with this father in Israel, this prevailer with God, this latter-day hero in the fight, this traveller of ninety-one years in life’s rough pilgrimage – a man who, like Moses, speaks to God as a man speaketh to his friend. To me it was as one of the hours of heaven come down to earth.
His prayer was very short and simple. Bending lowly upon his knees, he said:
“Oh Lord, bless Thy dear servant before Thee more and more, more and more, MORE AND MORE! And do Thou graciously guide his pen in all that may write in regard to this Thy work and our conversation today. I ask it through the merits of Thy dear son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.”
Mr Müller was born at Kroppenstedt, Prussia, in the year 1805. When five years of age, his father was appointed collector of the excise, and his family removed to Heimersleben. In his youth he was intended for the ministry of the Lutheran Church, and was sent to a classical school in Halberstadt. There he spent most of his time in reading novels, and for a considerable period of his youth his life was exceedingly light and frivolous. He spent his money freely, and in 1821 he was imprisoned for attempting to leave an hotel without paying his bill. After this he was more careful, and became a diligent student, studying seventeen hours a day. He soon possessed a large library; but amongst all his books there was not one Bible. In 1825, he entered the University of Halle, and whilst there he was invited to a simple Gospel meeting, where his heart was profoundly impressed by the Holy Spirit, and from that hour the whole course of his life was completely changed. The following year he preached his first sermon. In 1828, he left the University, and in 1829 came to London in connection with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Jews. Eventually, after a short stay in Devonshire, he came to Bristol in 1832, where he lived and laboured till the present time (1897).
(Mr Müller died 10th March 1898)
Re-printed July 1927
JOHN WRIGHT AND SONS LTD., PRINTERS, BRISTOL
George Mueller