Dear Friends,
It’s probably true to say that wherever believing people meet together to speak about the subjects of faith and prayer, it’s not long before somebody or other mentions the name of George Muller of Bristol. Thomas Spurgeon once described the events surrounding the works of the orphan homes at Ashley Down as “Facts stranger than fiction!” and, indeed, that is an apt description.
Year after year, up to almost two-thousand orphan children were fed and cared for there, without one appeal ever being made for money, or without any subscribers’ list or endowment scheme being drawn up. The whole vast work and under-working took place in an age that knew nothing of any kind of Welfare State, and when few took much notice of the want and suffering that abounded. Most of us have probably handled one of those old “Victorian” books with some graphic reproduction on the front cover. I remember owning one entitled “Froggy’s Little Brother;” and a more heart-rending sight it would be hard to imagine than that scene which portrayed “Froggy” pulling his old worn and ragged overcoat around his little brother in an effort to keep out the dank London fog as they lay down to sleep in the shelter of a doorway at night. That picture has never left me, and it was no imaginary picture. It was drawn from life, for that was life for thousands upon thousands of orphan children in those days.
Into such circumstances, then, George Muller came. There were others like him, of course; ;but in the establishing and continuance of what was to become Ashley Down, there was a very real sense in which George Muller showed himself to be “the only one of his mother.” Who ever heard of setting down almost two-thousand children at a breakfast table and telling them to give thanks, with not one scrap of bread on the table, or one morsel of food in the kitchen? Yet, it happened at Ashley Down; and before the echo of the “Amen” had died away, the baker’s carts were arriving at the front door, and the trays of steaming bread were being borne to the tables. “Fresh bread’s bad for the indigestion,” you say; Ah, well, that’s another story, and wouldn’t have much concerned the children at Ashley Down! And how had it all come about?
Well, it appears that a baker in Bristol, had been unable to sleep the night before. As he lay awake, the thought came into his mind that he should go down to his bakehouse and bake some bread for “Mr Muller’s orphans.” He expressed his plan to his wife, but she told him to go to sleep. He tried to do so, but without success, and eventually he went along the road, knocked up a couple of his workers, and together they delivered the loaves in unison with the orphanage’s Amen. The incident is typical of hundreds that Muller simply put into the category of, “Before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.” And it’s such incidents that usually assure George Muller’s name a place in any discussion on the subjects of faith and prayer.
Two things we ought to bear in mind with regards to the lives of such believers as George Muller and his like. The first is that such people had a certain “uniqueness” about them in their calling under the Lord; what you might almost call “a gift” of faith, in that sense. The other is, that their lives were never easy, and they had to be engaged in the daily battles of the Christian life, like each and every one of us.
There is always a tendency within our hearts to believe that unless we can do some “great thing” for the Lord, then it is hardly worth trying to do anything at all. The life of George Muller illustrates the very opposite, for, when all is said and done, George Muller is only one side of the whole George Muller story. He himself tells the story of an old lady who could only muster two pennies for “the work of Mr Muller,” as she put it. “Nevertheless,” she thought to herself, “I must give it.” She set off to the orphanage, and half-apologising presented the two coins; “It is but a trifle,” she said, “but I feel I must give it.” Muller was delighted: the amount needed to meet that particular day’s supply of bread was one penny short, so, in his estimation, God had not only given them what they needed, but twice as much as what they needed!
There is nothing more heart-warming and instructive than to read of Muller’s first steps in his orphanage work. He sat down before the Lord, and with that practicality that marked out his life of faith in this world, he drew up a list of everything that would be required to launch out on the work. First and foremost. “Premises;” then, “one thousand pounds in cash;” finally, “suitable helpers to take care of the children.” He presented his requirements before the Lord, and waited. Two days later the first signs of an answer – one shilling (5p)! It took another two days to see the delivery of an old wardrobe; and then, the first application for service, which really blessed Muller’s heart. “We propose ourselves for the service of the intended orphanage,” a young couple wrote, “if you think us qualified for it. Also to give up all the furniture, etc. which the Lord has given us, for its use; and to do this without receiving any salary whatever, believing that, if it be the will of the Lord to employ us, He will supply all our need.”
Everything was now ready; but what immediately follows helps to strip away from our thoughts that cold unreality that we can enter into with regards to Christian things of the past. The beds were made; the larders had food in them; the staff was on hand – but there was not one orphan! As Muller relates, he had obviously forgotten to ask for the orphans! Oh, there were plenty of them around, but he hadn’t asked for any! He had asked for an orphanage, but not for the orphans. That night, his biography tells us, he bore the whole thing up to the Lord in prayer, and the next day, the first applicant arrived – the first of thousands yet to come.
The works of faith are not always wrought in ways that dazzle our eyes in some blinding flash. So often we look to the general outcome of a thing – George Muller fed thousands of orphans in his day – and not to the bit-by-bit building that goes on, day after day, and year after year. A glance at the Annual Report of the work at Ashley Down bears out the fact that it is normally “By little strokes, Men fell great oaks.”
“From a farmer’s wife, £1, being a penny for every pound of butter sold during the last year … . Received also today, three shillings and a half-penny from a grocer, being one penny in the pound of his takings during the past week … this grocer has continued to send me,” adds Muller. “week by week one penny in the pound on all his takings, being generally from 3s.2d to 3s.6p per week.”
The absolute “down-to-earth” approach of the life of faith is always evident in the life work of George Muller. The popular Christian-novel brand of things tends more to the “romantic;” in real life terms, this was more akin to Paul’s “work of faith and labour of love, and patience of hope in the gospel.”
The tremendous determination of the workers at Ashley Down continuously lifts the work there out of the realms of make-believe. On one occasion, while they were praying for supplies and finding little response, one of the staff expressed the sentiments of the rest; “I feel it scarcely upright for me to pray,” he said, “except I should give what I have.” How often the Lord calls us to “answer our own prayers!” When he told the disciples to pray that the Lord of the harvest field that He would send forth labourers into the harvest, it is the disciples themselves who end up going. Prayer and performance are both of the essence of the life of faith. Muller’s total dependence was on the Lord his God, but that dependence only fired his determination in every good effort, and in that we might ever find example and motivation in our lives.
One incident that took place at Ashley Down virtually epitomises the good man’s life, and served to set up an “Ebenezer” to which he often returned. A young believer had read the Annual Report from the orphanage and had given all that he could towards the work. He then prayed that God would move his sister towards making a contribution. The prayer was answered, and his sister sent some expensive pieces of jewellery that were to be sold in an effort to gather together some funds. When the piece s arrived Muller was absolutely penniless, and the staff had had no wages for weeks. Before he went out to dispose of the various articles, he took a diamond ring that was among that collection, and scratched out on a window pane what became a motto text – “Jehovah Jireh.”
“Henceforth,” says his biographer, “whenever in deep poverty, he cast his eyes upon those two words, imperishably written with the point of the diamond on that pane, and thankfully remembered that “The Lord will provide.”
The Lord grant us all to be faithful, in living the life of faith, where and how He has placed us, to the glory and the honour of Jesus Christ His Son.
