GOD'S WITNESS TO THE WORK
THE eleventh chapter of Hebrews--that "Westminster Abbey" where Old
Testament saints have a memorial before God--gives a hint of a peculiar
reward which faith enjoys, even in this life, as an earnest and
foretaste of its final recompense.
By faith "the elders obtained a good report," that is, _they had witness
borne to them_ by God in return for witness borne to Him. All the marked
examples of faith here recorded show this twofold testimony. Abel
testified to his faith in God's Atoning Lamb, and God testified to his
gifts. Enoch witnessed to the unseen God by his holy walk with Him, and
He testified to Enoch, by his translation, and even before it, that he
pleased God. Noah's faith bore witness to God's word, by building the
ark and preaching righteousness, and God bore witness to him by bringing
a flood upon a world of the ungodly and saving him and his family in the
ark.
George Muller's life was one long witness to the prayer-hearing God;
and, throughout, God bore him witness that his prayers were heard and
his work accepted. The pages of his journal are full of striking
examples of this witness--the earnest or foretaste of the fuller
recompense of reward reserved for the Lord's coming.
Compensations for renunciations, and rewards for service, do not all
wait for the judgment-seat of Christ, but, as some men's sins are open
beforehand, going before to judgment, so the seed sown for God yields a
harvest that is 'open beforehand' to joyful recognition. Divine love
graciously and richly acknowledged these many years of self-forgetful
devotion to Him and His needy ones, by large and unexpected tokens of
blessing. Toils and trials, tears and prayers, were not in vain even
this side of the Hereafter.
For illustrations of this we naturally turn first of all to the orphan
work. Ten thousand motherless and fatherless children had found a home
and tender parental care in the institution founded by George Muller,
and were there fed, clad, and taught, before he was called up higher.
His efforts to improve their state physically, morally, and spiritually
were so manifestly owned of God that he felt his compensation to be both
constant and abundant, and his journal, from time to time, glows with
his fervent thanksgivings.
This orphan work would amply repay all its cost during two thirds of a
century, should only its _temporal benefits_ be reckoned. Experience
proved that, with God's blessing, one half of the lives sacrificed among
the children of poverty would be saved by better conditions of
body--such as regularity and cleanliness of habits, good food, pure air,
proper clothing, and wholesome exercise. At least two thirds, if not
three fourths, of the parents whose offspring have found a shelter on
Ashley Down had died of consumption and kindred diseases; and hence the
children had been largely tainted with a like tendency. And yet, all
through the history of this orphan work, there has been such care of
proper sanitary conditions that there has been singular freedom from all
sorts of ailments, and especially epidemic diseases; and when scarlet
fever, measles, and such diseases have found entrance, the cases of
sickness have been comparatively few and mild, and the usual percentage
of deaths exceedingly small.
This is not the only department of training in which the recompense has
been abundant. Ignorance is everywhere the usual handmaid of poverty,
and there has been very careful effort to secure proper _mental_
culture. With what success the education of these orphans has been
looked after will sufficiently appear from the reports of the school
inspector. From year to year these pupils have been examined in reading,
writing, arithmetic, Scripture, dictation, geography, history, grammar,
composition, and singing; and Mr. Horne reported in 1885 an average per
cent of all marks as high as 91.1, and even this was surpassed the next
year when it was 94, and, two years later, when it was 96.1.
But in the moral and spiritual welfare of these orphans, which has been
primarily sought, the richest recompense has been enjoyed. The one main
aim of Mr. Muller and his whole staff of helpers, from first to last,
has been to save these children--to bring them up in the nurture and
admonition of the Lord. The hindrances were many and formidable. If the
hereditary taint of disease is to be dreaded, what of the awful legacy
of sin and crime! Many of these little ones had no proper bringing up
till they entered the orphan houses; and not a few had been trained
indeed, but only in Satan's schools of drink and lust. And yet,
notwithstanding all these drawbacks, Mr. Muller records, with devout
thankfulness, that _"the Lord had constrained them,_ on the whole, to
behave exceedingly well, so much so as to attract the attention of
observers." Better still, large numbers have, throughout the whole
history of this work, given signs of a really regenerate state, and have
afterwards maintained a consistent character and conduct, and in some
cases have borne singular witness to the grace of God, both by their
complete transformation and by their influence for good.
In August, 1858, an orphan girl, Martha Pinnell, who had been for over
twelve years under Mr. Muller's care, and for more than five years ill
with consumption, fell asleep in Jesus. Before her death, she had, for
two and a half years, known the Lord, and the change in her character
and conduct had been remarkable. From an exceedingly disobedient and
troublesome child with a pernicious influence, she had become both very
docile and humble and most influential for good. In her unregenerate
days she had declared that, if she should ever be converted, she would
be "a thorough Christian," and so it proved. Her happiness in God, her
study of His word, her deep knowledge of the Lord Jesus, her earnest
passion for souls, seemed almost incredible in one so young and so
recently turned to God. And Mr. Muller has preserved in the pages of his
Journal four of the precious letters written by her to other inmates of
the orphan houses.*
* Narrative, III. 253-257.
At times, and frequently, extensive revivals have been known among them
when scores and hundreds have found the Lord. The year ending May 26,
1858 was especially notable for the unprecedented greatness and rapidity
of the work which the Spirit of God had wrought, in such conversions.
Within a few days and without any special apparent cause except the very
peaceful death of a Christian orphan, Caroline Bailey, more than fifty
of the one hundred and forty girls in Orphan House No. 1 were under
conviction of sin, and the work spread into the other departments, till
about sixty were shortly exercising faith. In July, 1859, again, in a
school of one hundred and twenty girls more than half were brought under
deep spiritual concern; and, after a year had passed, shewed the grace
of continuance in a new life. In January and February, 1860, another
mighty wave of Holy Spirit power swept over the institution. It began
among little girls, from six to nine years old, then extended to the
older girls, and then to the boys, until, inside of ten days, above two
hundred were inquiring and in many instances found immediate peace. The
young converts at once asked to hold prayer meetings among themselves,
and were permitted; and not only so, but many began to labour and pray
for others, and, out of the seven hundred orphans then in charge, some
two hundred and sixty were shortly regarded as either converted or in a
most hopeful state.
Again, in 1872, on the first day of the week of prayer, the Holy Spirit
so moved that, without any unusual occasion for deep seriousness,
hundreds were, during that season, hopefully converted. Constant prayer
for their souls made the orphan homes a hallowed place, and by August
1st, it was believed, after careful investigation, that seven hundred
and twenty-nine might be safely counted as being disciples of Christ,
the number of believing orphans being thus far in excess of any previous
period. A series of such blessings have, down to this date, crowned the
sincere endeavours of all who have charge of these children, to lead
them to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.
By far the majority of orphans sent out for service or apprenticeship,
had for some time before known the Lord; and even of those who left the
Institution unconverted, the after-history of many showed that the
training there received had made impossible continuance in a life of
sin.
Thus, precious harvests of this seed-sowing, gathered in subsequent
years, have shown that God was not unrighteous to forget this work of
faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope.
In April, 1874, a letter from a former inmate of the orphanage enclosed
a thank offering for the excellent Bible-teaching there received which
had borne fruit years after. So carefully had she been instructed in the
way of salvation that, while yet herself unrenewed, she had been God's
instrument of leading to Christ a fellow servant who had long been
seeking peace, and so, became, like a sign-board on the road, the means
of directing another to the true path, by simply telling her what she
had been taught, though not then following the path herself.
Another orphan wrote, in 1876, that often, when tempted to indulge the
sin of unbelief, the thought of that six years' sojourn in Ashley Down
came across the mind like a gleam of sunshine. It was remembered how the
clothes there worn, the food eaten, the bed slept on, and the very walls
around, were the visible answers to believing prayer, and the
recollection of all these things proved a potent prescription and remedy
for the doubts and waverings of the child of God, a shield against the
fiery darts of satanic suggestion.
During the thirty years between 1865 and 1895, two thousand five hundred
and sixty-six orphans were known to have left the institution as
believers, an average of eighty-five every year; and, at the close of
this thirty years, nearly six hundred were yet in the homes on Ashley
Down who had given credible evidence of a regenerate state.
Mr. Muller was permitted to know that not only had these orphans been
blessed in health, educated in mind, converted to God, and made useful
Christian citizens, but many of them had become fathers or mothers of
Christian households. One representative instance may be cited. A man
and a woman who had formerly been among these orphans became husband and
wife, and they have had eight children, all earnest disciples, one of
whom went as a foreign missionary to Africa.
From the first, God set His seal upon this religious training in the
orphan houses. The _first two children_ received into No. 1 both became
true believers and zealous workers: one, a Congregational deacon, who,
in a benighted neighbourhood, acted the part of a lay preacher; and the
other, a laborious and successful clergyman in the Church of England,
and both largely used of God in soul-winning. Could the full history be
written of all who have gone forth from these orphan homes, what a
volume of testimony would be furnished, since these are but a few
scattered examples of the conspicuously useful service to which God has
called those whose after-career can be traced!
In his long and extensive missionary tours, Mr. Muller was permitted to
see, gather, and partake of many widely scattered fruits of his work on
Ashley Down. When preaching in Brooklyn, N. Y., in September, 1877, he
learned that in Philadelphia a legacy of a thousand pounds was waiting
for him, the proceeds of a life-insurance, which the testator had willed
to the work, and in city after city he had the joy of meeting scores of
orphans brought up under his care.
He minutely records the remarkable usefulness of a Mr. Wilkinson, who,
up to the age of fourteen and a half years, had been taught at the
orphanage. Twenty years had elapsed since Mr. Muller had seen him, when,
in 1878, he met him in Calvary Church, San Francisco, six thousand five
hundred miles from Bristol. He found him holding fast his faith in the
Lord Jesus, a happy and consistent Christian. He further heard most
inspiring accounts of this man's singular service during the Civil War
in America. Being on the gunboat Louisiana, he had there been the
leading spirit and recognized head of a little Bethel church among his
fellow seamen, who were by him led so to engage in the service of Christ
as to exhibit a devotion that, without a trace of fanatical enthusiasm,
was full of holy zeal and joy. Their whole conversation was of God. It
further transpired that, months previous, when the cloud of impending
battle overhung the ship's company, he and one of his comrades had met
for prayer in the 'chain-locker'; and thus began a series of most
remarkable meetings which, without one night's interruption, lasted for
some twenty months. Wilkinson alone among the whole company had any
previous knowledge of the word of God, and he became not only the leader
of the movement, but the chief interpreter of the Scriptures as they met
to read the Book of God and exchange views upon it. Nor was he satisfied
to do thus much with his comrades daily, but at another stated hour he,
with some chosen helpers, gathered the coloured sailors of the ship to
teach them reading, writing, etc.
A member of the Christian Commission, Mr. J. E. Hammond, who gave these
facts publicity, and who was intimately acquainted with Mr. Wilkinson
and his work on shipboard, said that he seemed to be a direct "product
of Mr. Muller's faith, his calm confidence in God, the method in his
whole manner of life, the persistence of purpose, and the quiet
spiritual power," which so characterized the founder of the Bristol
orphanage, being eminently reproduced in this young man who had been
trained under his influence. When in a sail-loft ashore, he was
compelled for two weeks to listen to the lewd and profane talk of two
associates detailed with him for a certain work. For the most part he
took refuge in silence; but his manner of conduct, and one sentence
which dropped from his lips, brought both those rough and wicked sailors
to the Saviour he loved, one of whom in three months read the word of
God from Genesis to Revelation.
Mr. Muller went nowhere without meeting converted orphans or hearing of
their work, even in the far-off corners of the earth. Sometimes in great
cities ten or fifteen would be waiting at the close of an address to
shake the hand of their "father," and tell him of their debt of
gratitude and love. He found them in every conceivable sphere of
service, many of them having households in which the principles taught
in the orphan homes were dominant, and engaged in the learned
professions as well as humbler walks of life.
God gave His servant also the sweet compensation of seeing great
blessing attending the day-schools supported by the Scriptural Knowledge
Institution.
The master of the school at Clayhidon, for instance, wrote of a poor
lad, a pupil in the day-school, prostrate with rheumatic fever, in a
wretched home and surrounded by bitter opposers of the truth. Wasted to
a skeleton, and in deep anxiety about his own soul, he was pointed to
Him who says, "Come unto Me,... and I will give you rest." While yet
this conversation was going on, as though suddenly he had entered into a
new world, this emaciated boy began to repeat texts such as "Suffer the
little children to come unto me," and burst out singing:
"Jesus loves me, this I know,
For the Bible tells me so."
He seemed transported with ecstasy, and recited text after text and hymn
after hymn, learned at that school. No marvel is it if that schoolmaster
felt a joy, akin to the angels, in this one proof that his labour in the
Lord was not in vain. Such examples might be indefinitely multiplied,
but this handful of first-fruits of a harvest may indicate the character
of the whole crop.
Letters were constantly received from missionary labourers in various
parts of the world who were helped by the gifts of the Scriptural
Knowledge Institution. The testimony from this source alone would fill a
good-sized volume, and therefore its incorporation into this memoir
would be impracticable. Those who would see what grand encouragement
came to Mr. Muller from fields of labour where he was only represented
by others, whom his gift's aided, should read the annual reports. A few
examples may be given of the blessed results of such wide scattering of
the seed of the kingdom, as specimens of thousands.
Mr. Albert Fenn, who was labouring in Madrid, wrote of a civil guard
who, because of his bold witness for Christ and renunciation of the
Romish confessional, was sent from place to place and most cruelly
treated, and threatened with banishment to a penal settlement. Again he
writes of a convert from Borne who, for trying to establish a small
meeting, was summoned before the governor.
"Who pays you for this?" "No one." "What do you gain by it?" "Nothing."
"How do you live?" "I work with my hands in a mine." "Why do you hold
meetings?" "Because God has blessed my soul, and I wish others to be
blessed." "You? you were made a miserable day-labourer; I prohibit the
meetings." "I yield to force," was the calm reply, "but as long as I
have a mouth to speak I shall speak for Christ." How like those
primitive disciples who boldly faced the rulers at Jerusalem, and, being
forbidden to speak in Jesus' name, firmly answered: "We ought to obey
God rather than men. Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken
unto you more than unto God judge ye: for we cannot but speak the things
which we have seen and heard."
A missionary labourer writes from India, of three Brahman priests and
scores of Santhals and Hindus, sitting down with four Europeans to keep
the supper of the Lord--all fruits of his ministry. Within a twelvemonth,
sixty-two men and women, including head men of villages, and four
Brahman women, wives of priests and of head men, were baptized,
representing twenty-three villages in which the gospel had been
preached. At one time more than one hundred persons were awakened in one
mission in Spain; and such harvests as these were not infrequent in
various fields to which the founder of the orphan work had the joy of
sending aid.
In 1885, a scholar of one of the schools at Carrara, Italy, was
confronted by a priest. "In the Bible," said he, "you do not find the
commandments of the church." "No, sir," said the child, "for it is not
for the church of God to _command,_ but to _obey."_ "Tell me, then,"
said the priest, "these commandments of God." "Yes, sir," replied the
child; "I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have no other God before me.
Neither shalt thou make any graven image." "Stop! stop!" cried the
priest, "I do not understand it so." "But so," quietly replied the
child, "it is written in God's word." This simple incident may
illustrate both the character of the teaching given in the schools, and
the character often developed in those who were taught.
Out of the many pages of Mr. Muller's journal, probably about one-fifth
are occupied wholly with extracts from letters like these from
missionaries, teachers, and helpers, which kept him informed of the
progress of the Lord's work at home and in many lands where the
labourers were by him enabled to continue their service.
Bible-carriages, open-air services, Christian schools, tract
distribution, and various other forms of holy labour for the benighted
souls near and far, formed part of the many-branching tree of life that
was planted on Ashley Down.
Another of the main encouragements and rewards which Mr. Muller enjoyed
in this life was the knowledge that his example had emboldened other
believers to attempt like work for God, on like principles. This he
himself regarded as the greatest blessing resulting from his life-work,
that hundreds of thousands of children of God had been led in various
parts of the world to trust in God in all simplicity; and when such
trust found expression in similar service to orphans, it seemed the
consummation of his hopes, for the work was thus proven to have its seed
in itself after its kind, a self-propagating life, which doubly
demonstrated it to be a tree of the Lord's own planting, that He might
be glorified.
In December, 1876, Mr. Muller learned, for instance, that a Christian
evangelist, simply through reading about the orphan work in Bristol, had
it laid on his heart to care about orphans, and encouraged by Mr.
Muller's example, solely in dependence on the Lord, had begun in 1863
with three orphans at Nimwegen in Holland, and had at that date, only
fourteen years after, over four hundred and fifty in the institution. It
pleased the Lord that he and Mrs. Muller should, with their own eyes,
see this institution, and he says that in "almost numberless instances"
the Lord permitted him to know of similar fruits of his work.
At his first visit to Tokyo, Japan, he gave an account of it, and as the
result, Mr. Ishii, a native Christian Japanese, started an orphanage
upon a similar basis of prayer, faith, and dependence upon the Living
God, and at Mr. Muller's second visit to the Island Empire he found this
orphan work prosperously in progress.
How generally fruitful the example thus furnished on Ashley Down has
been in good to the church and the world will never be known on earth. A
man living at Horfield, in sight of the orphan buildings, has said that,
whenever he felt doubts of the Living God creeping into his mind, he
used to get up and look through the night at the many windows lit up on
Ashley Down, and they gleamed out through the darkness as stars in the
sky.
It was the witness of Mr. Muller to a prayer-hearing God which
encouraged Rev. J. Hudson Taylor, in 1863, thirty years after Mr.
Muller's great step was taken, to venture wholly on the Lord, in
founding the China Inland Mission. It has been said that to the example
of A. H. Francke in Halle, or George Muller in Bristol, may be more or
less directly traced every form of 'faith work,' prevalent since.
The Scriptural Knowledge Institution was made in all its departments a
means of blessing. Already in the year ending May 26, 1860, a hundred
servants of Christ had been more or less aided, and far more souls had
been hopefully brought to God through their labours than during any year
previous. About six hundred letters, received from them, had cheered Mr.
Muller's heart during the twelvemonth, and this source of joy overflowed
during all his life. In countless cases children of God were lifted to a
higher level of faith and life, and unconverted souls were turned to God
through the witness borne to God by the institutions on Ashley Down. Mr.
Muller has summed up this long history of blessing by two statements
which are worth pondering.
First, that the Lord was pleased to give him far beyond all he at first
expected to accomplish or receive.
And secondly, that he was fully persuaded that all he had seen and known
would not equal the thousandth part of what he should see and know when
the Lord should come, His reward with Him, to give every man according
as his work shall be.
The _circulation of Mr. Muller's Narrative_ was a most conspicuous means
of untold good.
In November, 1856, Mr. James McQuilkin, a young Irishman, was converted,
and early in the next year, read the first two volumes of that Narrative
He said to himself: "Mr. Muller obtains all this simply by prayer; so
may I be blessed by the same means," and he began to pray. First of all
he received from the Lord, in answer, a spiritual companion, and then
two more of like mind; and they four began stated seasons of prayer in a
small schoolhouse near Kells, Antrim, Ireland, every Friday evening. On
the first day of the new year, 1858, a farm-servant was remarkably
brought to the Lord in answer to their prayers, and these _five_ gave
themselves anew to united supplication. Shortly a sixth young man was
added to their number by conversion, and so the little company of
praying souls slowly grew, only believers being admitted to these simple
meetings for fellowship in reading of the Scriptures, prayer, and mutual
exhortation.
About Christmas, that year, Mr. McQuilkin, with the two brethren who had
first joined him--one of whom was Mr. Jeremiah Meneely, who is still at
work for God--held a meeting by request at Ahoghill. Some believed and
some mocked, while others thought these three converts presumptuous; but
two weeks later another meeting was held, at which God's Spirit began to
work most mightily and conversions now rapidly multiplied. Some converts
bore the sacred coals and kindled the fire elsewhere, and so in many
places revival flames began to burn; and in Ballymena, Belfast, and at
other points the Spirit's gracious work was manifest.
Such was the starting-point, in fact, of one of the most widespread and
memorable revivals ever known in our century, and which spread the next
year in England, Wales, and Scotland. Thousands found Christ, and walked
in newness of life; and the results are still manifest after more than
forty years.
As early as 1868 it was found that one who had thankfully read this
Narrative had issued a compendium of it in Swedish. We have seen how
widely useful it has been in Germany; and in many other languages its
substance at least has been made available to native readers.
Knowledge came to Mr. Muller of a boy of ten years who got hold of one
of these Reports, and, although belonging to a family of unbelievers,
began to pray: "God, teach me to pray like George Muller, and hear me as
Thou dost hear George Muller." He further declared his wish to be a
preacher, which his widowed mother very strongly opposed, objecting that
the boy did not know enough to get into the grammar-school, which is the
first step toward such a high calling. The lad, however, rejoined: "I
will learn and pray, and God will help me through as He has done George
Muller." And soon, to the surprise of everybody, the boy had
successfully passed his examination and was received at the school.
A donor writes, September 20, 1879, that the reading of the Narrative
totally changed his inner life to one of perfect trust and confidence in
God. It led to the devoting of at least a tenth of his earnings to the
Lord's purposes, and showed him how much more blessed it is to give than
to receive; and it led him also to place a copy of that Narrative on the
shelves of a Town Institute library where three thousand members and
subscribers might have access to it.
Another donor suggests that it might be well if Prof. Huxley and his
sympathisers, who had been proposing some new arbitrary "prayer-gauge"
would, instead of treating prayer as so much waste of breath, try how
long they could keep five orphan houses running, with over two thousand
orphans, and without asking any one for help,--either "GOD or MAN."
In September, 1882, another donor describes himself as "simply astounded
at the blessed results of prayer and faith," and many others have found
this brief narrative "the most wonderful and complete refutation of
skepticism it had ever been their lot to meet with"--an array of facts
constituting the most undeniable "evidences of Christianity." There are
abundant instances of the power exerted by Mr. Muller's testimony, as
when a woman who had been an infidel, writes him that he was "the first
person by whose example she learned that there are some men who live by
faith," and that for this reason she had willed to him all that she
possessed.
Another reader found these Reports "more faith-strengthening and
soul-refreshing than many a sermon," particularly so after just wading
through the mire of a speech of a French infidel who boldly affirmed
that of all of the millions of prayers uttered every day, not one is
answered. We should like to have any candid skeptic confronted with Mr.
Muller's unvarnished story of a life of faith, and see how he would on
any principle of' compound probability' and 'accidental coincidences,'
account for the tens of thousand's of answers to believing prayer! The
fact is that one half of the infidelity in the world is dishonest, and
the other half is ignorant of the daily proofs that God is, and is a
Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.
From almost the first publication of his Narrative, Mr. Muller had felt
a conviction that it was thus to be greatly owned of God as a witness to
His faithfulness; and, as early as 1842, it was laid on his heart to
send a copy of his Annual Report gratuitously to every Christian
minister of the land, which the Lord helped him to do, his aim being not
to get money or even awaken interest in the work, but rather to
stimulate faith and quicken prayer.*
* The author of this memoir purposes to give a copy of it to every
foreign missionary, and to workers in the home fields, so far as means
are supplied in answer to prayer. His hope is that the witness of this
life may thus have still wider influence in stimulating prayer and
faith. The devout reader is asked to unite his supplications with those
of many others who are asking that the Lord may be pleased to furnish
the means whereby this purpose may be carried out. Already about one
hundred pounds sterling have been given for this end, and part of it,
small in amount but rich in self-denial, from the staff of helpers and
the orphans on Ashley Down. A. T. P.
Twenty-two years later, in 1868, it was already so apparent that the
published accounts of the Lord's dealings was used so largely to
sanctify and edify saints and even to convert sinners and convince
infidels, that he records this as _the greatest of all the spiritual
blessings_ hitherto resulting from his work for God. Since then thirty
years more have fled, and, during this whole period, letters from a
thousand sources have borne increasing witness that the example he set
has led others to fuller faith and firmer confidence in God's word,
power, and love; to a deeper persuasion that, though Elijah has been
taken up, God, the God of Elijah, is still working His wonders.
And so, in all departments of his work for God, the Lord to whom he
witnessed bore witness to him in return, and anticipated his final
reward in a recompense of present and overflowing joy. This was
especially true in the long tours undertaken, when past threescore and
ten, to sow in lands afar the seeds of the Kingdom! As the sower went
forth to sow he found not fallow fields only, but harvest fields also,
from which his arms were filled with sheaves. Thus, in a new sense the
reaper overtook the ploughman, and the harvester, him that scattered the
seed. In every city of the United Kingdom and in the "sixty-eight
cities" where, up to 1877, he had preached on the continents of Europe
and America, he had found converted orphans, and believers to whom
abundant blessing had come through reading his reports. After this date,
twenty-one years more yet remained crowded with experiences of good.
Thus, before the Lord called George Muller higher, He had given him a
foretaste of his reward, in the physical, intellectual and spiritual
profit of the orphans; in the fruits of his wide seed-sowing in other
lands as well as Britain; in the scattering of God's word and Christian
literature; in the Christian education of thousands of children in the
schools he aided; in the assistance afforded to hundreds of devoted
missionaries; in the large blessing imparted by his published narrative,
and in his personal privilege of bearing witness throughout the world to
the gospel of grace.