Dear Friends,
In the last edition of the Wicket Gate, we began with an article on George Muller and the work of his orphanages at Ashley Down.
It was our intention on writing that article to carry it on in this edition with a short account of Muller’s young life prior to his conversion, and the work of grace that then took place in his life under the hand of God. An incident in our own Church’s life over recent days has a measure of coincidence with both intentions. It involves the passing of one of the church’s members Mrs Edyth Sargent, and it was a privilege, under the Lord, to conduct the funeral service for our sister, and to rest in that blessed hope that it is well with her soul for ever and ever. Mrs Sargent was one of the early members of the Church and at the time of her death was the oldest member as far as “length of days” is concerned. She was heading towards her ninety-ninth year, and up until some years ago was always “in her place” at the means of grace.
Amongst Mrs Sargent’s favourite recollections was the remembrance of the visits that “Mr Muller” used to pay to her father, who was the proprietor of a newspaper in South Wales, where she was born and reared. That Mr Muller, of course, was none other than George Muller himself, because by the time George Muller died, in 1898, our dear old friend Mrs Sargent was already a young lady of thirteen years of age, having been born in 1885! She remembered “the tall, gaunt, figure in the black frock coat, something like the pictures of Abraham Lincoln,” that she had seen in her childhood. Another recollection was the day that the news arrived in her home that “the great Mr Spurgeon had gone home to be with the Lord.” That was in 1892, of course, when our aged sister was then seven years old, with many, many years lying before her in the will and purposed of God.
Now such events help to establish that blessed continuity that we can enjoy with “those whose rest is won.” History in and off itself, can be a fairly arid thing, but for the people of God, it is always a blessed thing to trace the links of grace that stretch back through the redeemed in all generations. You find the psalmists doing that kind of thing; you find it in the prophets, as well, especially when they want to remind the people, or themselves, that they are in the same hand of God that enveloped those of former times in the cause of His truth. Habakkuk does it when he begins to call upon the Lord to “revive” his work in the midst of the years. He goes away back over a period of something like six or seven-hundred years, but with a few deft strokes of his pen, he traces out a set of landmarks to show to himself and the people that their God can still deliver, can still act, can still revive – as He did, time and time again in those days gone-by.
And so, it is always good to trace the Ladder of God’s redeemed; or the family tree of God’s redeemed, perhaps. And when we do so, it can be an amazing thing to discover how we can so often place our hand in the hand of another, that was placed in another hand of those days that have gone before. It’s not such a long journey after all from ourselves to Mr Spurgeon – or from Spurgeon to the men and women of the Awakening – and from them to the Puritans – and from the Puritans to the Reformation. And when we’ve gone back that far, then we may as well take the whole trip and link up with Paul, and Peter and the rest – right back to Abraham himself, and beyond. In that way, of course, we will also come to a better appreciation of the “actuality” of those people’s lives. They are not just names on the pages of the Word of God, but they are our brethren and sisters in the faith; fellow-workers and fellow-labourers, who really did those things and spoke of those things before us. It is a precious exercise, and one worth following in our Christian experience.
Can I just say one other thing with regards to the account of George Muller’s early life which is covered by another article in this magazine “George Muller – From Birth to New Birth.” What a vivid reminder it ought to be to us that God is a sovereign God in all His acts of salvation and providence; that the human heart, indeed, never changes; that “juvenile delinquency” is not something that is confined to this age; but that God is over all, and to Him we must look in all things to the praise of His name.
The Lord make us diligent, so that when it comes our time to leave this world, we might be able to do it with the testimony that we have endeavoured to serve our day and generation.