New Steps And Stages Of Preparation
Passion for souls is a divine fire,
and in the heart of George Müller that fire now began to burn more brightly,
and demanded vent.
In August, 1827, his mind was more definitely than before turned toward mission
work. Hearing that the Continental Society of Britain sought a minister for
Bucharest, he offered himself through Dr. Tholuck, who, in behalf of the Society,
was on the lookout for a suitable candidate. To his great surprise his father
gave consent, though Bucharest was more than a thousand miles distant and as
truly missionary ground as any other field. After a short visit home he came
back to Halle, his face steadfastly set toward his far-off field, and his heart
seeking prayerful preparation for expected self-sacrifice and hardship. But
God had other plans for His servant, and he never went to Bucharest.
In October following, Hermann Ball, passing through Halle, and being at the
little weekly meeting in Müller's room, told him how failing health forbade
his continuing his work among Polish Jews; and at once there sprang up in George
Müller's mind a strong desire to take his place. Such work doubly attracted
him, because it would bring him into close contact with God's chosen but erring
people, Israel; and because it could afford opportunity to utilize those Hebrew
studies which so engrossed him.
At this very time, calling upon Dr. Tholuck, he was asked, to his surprise,
whether he had ever felt a desire to labour among the Jews-- Dr. Tholuck
then acting as agent for the London Missionary Society for promoting missions
among them. This question naturally fanned the flame of his already kindled
desire; but, shortly after, Bucharest being the seat of the war then raging
between the Russians and Turks, the project of sending a minister there was
for the time abandoned. But a door seemed to open before him just as another
shut behind him.
The committee in London, learning that he was available as a missionary to the
Jews, proposed his coming to that city for six months as a missionary student
to prepare for the work. To enter thus on a sort of probation was trying to
the flesh, but, as it seemed right that there should be opportunity for mutual
acquaintance between committee and candidate, to insure harmonious cooperation,
his mind was disposed to accede to the proposal.
There was, however, a formidable obstacle. Prussian male subjects must commonly
serve three years in the army, and classical students who have passed the university
examinations, at least one year. George Müller, who had not served out even
this shorter term, could not, without royal exemption, even get a passport out
of the country. Application was made for such exemption, but it failed. Meanwhile
he was taken ill, and after ten weeks suffered a relapse. While at Leipsic with
an American professor with whom he went to the opera, he unwisely partook of
some refreshments between the acts, which again brought on illness. He had broken
a blood-vessel in the stomach, and he returned to Halle, never again to enter
a theatre. Subsequently being asked to go to Berlin for a few weeks to teach
German, he went, hoping at the Prussian capital to find access to the court
through persons of rank and secure the desired exemption. But here again he
failed. There now seemed no way of escaping a soldier's term, and he submitted
himself for examination, but was pronounced physically unfit for military duty.
In God's providence he fell into kind hands, and, being a second time examined
and found unfit, he was thenceforth completely exempted for life from all
service in the army.
God's lines of purpose mysteriously converged. The time had come; the Master
spake and it was done: all things moved in one direction-- to set His servant
free from the service of his country, that, under the Captain of his salvation,
he might endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ, without entanglement
in the affairs of this life. Aside from this, his stay at the capital had not
been unprofitable, for he had preached five times a week in the poorhouse and
conversed on the Lord's days with the convicts in the prison.
In February, 1829, he left for London, on the way visiting his father at Heimersleben,
where he had returned after retirement from office; and he reached the English
metropolis March 19th. His liberty was much curtailed as a student in this new
seminary, but, as no rule conflicted with his conscience, he submitted. He studied
about twelve hours daily, giving attention mainly to Hebrew and cognate branches
closely connected with his expected field. Sensible of the risk of that deadness
of soul which often results from undue absorption in mental studies, he committed
to memory much of the Hebrew Old Testament and pursued his tasks in a prayerful
spirit, seeking God's help in matters, however minute, connected with daily
duty.
Tempted to the continual use of his native tongue by living with his German
countrymen, he made little progress in English, which he afterward regretted;
and he was wont, therefore, to counsel those who propose to work among a foreign
people, not only to live among them in order to learn their language, but to
keep aloof as far as may be from their own countrymen, so as to be compelled
to use the tongue which is to give them access to those among whom they labour.
In connection with this removal to Britain a seemingly trivial occurrence left
upon him a lasting impress-- another proof that there are no little things in
life. Upon a very small hinge a huge door may swing and turn. It is, in fact,
often the apparently trifling events that mould our history, work, and destiny.
A student incidentally mentioned a dentist in Exeter-- a Mr. Grove who for the
Lord's sake had resigned his calling with fifteen hundred pounds a year, and
with wife and children offered himself as missionary to Persia, simply trusting
the Lord for all temporal supplies. This act of self-denying trust had a
strange charm for Mr. Müller, and he could not dismiss it from his mind; indeed,
he distinctly entered it in his journal and wrote about it to friends at home.
It was another lesson in faith, and in the very line of that trust of
which for more than sixty years he was to be so conspicuous an example and illustration.
In the middle of May, 1829, he was taken ill and felt himself to be past recovery.
Sickness is often attended with strange self-disclosure. His conviction of sin
and guilt at his conversion was too superficial and shallow to leave any after-remembrance.
But, as is often true in the history of God's saints, the sense of guilt, which
at first seemed to have no roots in conscience and scarce an existence, struck
deeper into his being and grew stronger as he knew more of God and grew more
like Him. This common experience of saved souls is susceptible of easy explanation.
Our conceptions of things depend mainly upon two conditions: first, the clearness
of our vision of truth and duty; and secondly, the standard of measurement and
comparison. The more we live in God and unto God, the more do our eyes become
enlightened to see the enormity and deformity of sin, so that we recognize the
hatefulness of evil more distinctly: and the more clearly do we recognize the
perfection of God's holiness and make it the pattern and model of our own holy
living.
The amateur musician or artist has a false complacency in his own very imperfect
work only so far as his ear or eye or taste is not yet trained to accurate discrimination;
but, as he becomes more accomplished in a fine art, and more appreciative of
it, he recognizes every defect or blemish of his previous work, until the musical
performance seems a wretched failure and the painting a mere daub. The change,
however, is wholly in the workman and not in the work, both the music and the
painting are in themselves just what they were, but the man is capable of something
so much better, that his standard of comparison is raised to a higher level,
and his capacity for a true judgment is correspondingly enlarged.
Even so a child of God who, like Elijah, stands before Him as a waiting, willing,
obedient servant, and has both likeness to God and power with God, may get under
the juniper-tree of despondency, cast down with the sense of unworthiness and
ill desert. As godliness increases the sense of ungodliness becomes more acute,
and so feelings never accurately gauge real assimilation to God. We shall seem
worst in our own eyes when in His we are best, and conversely.
A Mohammedan servant ventured publicly to challenge a preacher who, in an Indian
bazaar, was asserting the universal depravity of the race, by affirming that
he knew at least one woman who was immaculate, absolutely without fault, and
that woman, his own Christian mistress. The preacher bethought himself to ask
in reply whether he had any means of knowing whether that was her opinion of
herself, which caused the Mohammedan to confess that there lay the mystery:
she had been often overheard in prayer confessing herself the most unworthy
of sinners.
To return from this digression, Mr. Müller, not only during this illness, but
down to life's sudden close, had a growing sense of sin and guilt which would
at times have been overwhelming, had he not known upon the testimony of the
Word that "whoso covereth his sins shall not prosper, but he that confesseth
and forsaketh them shall find mercy." From his own guilt he turned his
eyes to the cross where it was atoned for, and to the mercy-seat where forgiveness
meets the penitent sinner; and so sorrow for sin was turned into the joy of
the justified.
This confidence of acceptance in the Beloved so stripped death of its terrors
that during this illness he longed rather to depart and to be with Christ; but
after a fortnight he was pronounced better, and, though still longing for the
heavenly rest, he submitted to the will of God for a longer sojourn in the land
of his pilgrimage, little foreseeing what joy he was to find in living for God,
or how much he was to know of the days of heaven upon earth.
During this illness, also, he showed the growing tendency to bring before the
Lord in prayer even the minutest matters which his later life so signally exhibited.
He constantly besought God to guide his physician, and every new dose of medicine
was accompanied by a new petition that God would use it for his good and enable
him with patience to await His will. As he advanced toward recovery he sought
rest at Teignmouth, where, shortly after his arrival, "Ebenezer" chapel
was reopened. It was here also that Mr. Müller became acquainted with Mr. Henry
Craik, who was for so many years not only his friend, but fellow labourer.
It was also about this time that, as he records, certain great truths began
to be made clear to him and to stand out in much prominence. This period of
personal preparation is so important in its bearing on his whole after-career
that the reader should have access to his own witness.*
On returning to London, prospered
in soul-health as also in bodily vigor, he proposed to fellow students a daily
morning meeting, from 6 to 8, for prayer and Bible study, when each should give
to the others such views of any passage read as the Lord might give him. These
spiritual exercises proved so helpful and so nourished the appetite for divine
things that, after continuing in prayer late into the evening hours, he sometimes
at midnight sought the fellowship of some like-minded brother, and thus prolonged
the prayer season until one or two o'clock in the morning; and even then sleep
was often further postponed by his overflowing joy in God. Thus, under his great
Teacher, did this pupil, early in his spiritual history, learn that supreme
lesson that to every child of God the word of God is the bread of life, and
the prayer of faith the breath of life.
Mr. Müller had been back in London scarcely ten days before health again declined,
and the conviction took strong hold upon him that he should not spend his little
strength in confining study, but at once get about his work; and this conviction
was confirmed by the remembrance of the added light which God had given him
and the deeper passion he now felt to serve Him more freely and fully. Under
the pressure of this persuasion that both his physical and spiritual welfare
would be promoted by actual labours for souls, he sought of the Society a prompt
appointment to his field of service; and that they might with the more confidence
commission him, he asked that some experienced man might be sent out with him
as a fellow counsellor and labourer.
After waiting in vain for six weeks for an answer to this application, he felt
another strong conviction: that to wait on his fellow men to be sent out
to his field and work was unscriptural and therefore wrong. Barnabas and
Saul were called by name and sent forth by the Holy Spirit, before the church
at Antioch had taken any action; and he felt himself so called of the Spirit
to his work that he was prompted to begin at once, without waiting for human
authority,-- and why not among the Jews in London? Accustomed to act promptly
upon conviction, he undertook to distribute among them tracts bearing his name
and address, so that any who wished personal guidance could find him. He sought
them at their gathering-places, read the Scriptures at stated times with some
fifty Jewish lads, and taught in a Sunday-school. Thus, instead of lying like
a vessel in dry-dock for repairs, he was launched into Christian work, though,
like other labourers among the despised Jews, he found himself exposed to petty
trials and persecutions, called to suffer reproach for the name of Christ.
Before the autumn of 1829 had passed, a further misgiving laid hold of him as
to whether he could in good conscience remain longer connected in the usual
way with this London Society, and on December fifth he concluded to dissolve
all such ties except upon certain conditions. To do full justice both to Mr.
Müller and the Society, his own words will again be found in the Appendix.*
Early in the following year it was
made clear that he could labour in connection with such a society only as they
would consent to his serving without salary and labouring when and where the
Lord might seem to direct. He so wrote, eliciting a firm but kind response to
the effect that they felt it "inexpedient to employ those who were unwilling
to submit to their guidance with respect to missionary operations," etc.
Thus this link with the Society was broken. He felt that he was acting up to
the light God gave, and, while imputing to the Society no blame, he never afterward
repented this step nor reversed this judgment. To those who review this long
life, so full of the fruits of unusual service to God and man, it will be quite
apparent that the Lord was gently but persistently thrusting George Müller
out of the common path into one where he was to walk very closely with Himself;
and the decisions which, even in lesser matters furthered God's purpose were
wiser and weightier than could at the time be seen.
One is constantly reminded in reading Mr. Müller's journal that he was a man
of like frailties as others. On Christmas morning of this year, after a season
of peculiar joy, he awoke to find himself in the Slough of Despond, without
any sense of enjoyment, prayer seeming as fruitless as the vain struggles of
a man in the mire. At the usual morning meeting he was urged by a brother to
continue in prayer, notwithstanding, until he was again melted before the Lord--
a wise counsel for all disciples when the Lord's presence seems strangely withdrawn.
Steadfast continuance in prayer must never be hindered by the want of sensible
enjoyment; in fact, it is a safe maxim that the less joy, the more need. Cessation
of communion with God, for whatever cause, only makes the more difficult its
resumption and the recovery of the prayer habit and prayer spirit; whereas the
persistent outpouring of supplication, together with continued activity in the
service of God, soon brings back the lost joy. Whenever, therefore, one yields
to spiritual depression so as to abandon, or even to suspend, closet communion
or Christian work, the devil triumphs.
So rapid was Mr. Müller's recovery out of this Satanic snare, through continuance
in prayer, that, on the evening of that same Christmas day whose dawn had been
so overcast, he expounded the Word at family worship in the house where he dined
by invitation, and with such help from God that two servants who were present
were deeply convicted of sin and sought his counsel.
Here we reach another mile-stone in this life-journey. George Müller had now
come to the end of the year 1829, and he had been led of the Lord in a truly
remarkable path. It was but about four years since he first found the narrow
way and began to walk in it, and he was as yet a young man, in his twenty-fifth
year. Yet already he had been taught some of the grand secrets of a holy, happy,
and useful life, which became the basis of the whole structure of his after-service.
Indeed, as we look back over these four years, they seem crowded with significant
and eventful experiences, all of which forecast his future work, though he as
yet saw not in them the Lord's sign. His conversion in a primitive assembly
of believers where worship and the word of God were the only attractions, was
the starting-point in a career every step of which seems a stride forward. Think
of a young convert, with such an ensnaring past to reproach and retard him,
within these few years learning such advanced lessons in renunciation:
burning his manuscript novel, giving up the girl he loved, turning his back
on the seductive prospect of ease and wealth, to accept self-denial for God,
cutting loose from dependence on his father and then refusing all stated salary
lest his liberty of witness be curtailed, and choosing a simple expository mode
of preaching, instead of catering to popular taste! Then mark how he fed on
the word of God; how he cultivated the habits of searching the Scriptures and
praying in secret; how he threw himself on God, not only for temporal supplies,
but for support in bearing all burdens, however great or small; and how thus
early he offered himself for the mission field and was impatiently eager to
enter it. Then look at the sovereign love of God, imparting to him in so eminent
a degree the childlike spirit, teaching him to trust not his own variable moods
of feeling, but the changeless word of His promise; teaching him to wait patiently
on Him for orders, and not to look to human authority or direction; and so singularly
releasing him from military service for life, and mysteriously withholding him
from the far-off mission field, that He might train him for his unique mission
to the race and the ages to come!
These are a few of the salient points of this narrative, thus far, which must,
to any candid mind, demonstrate that a higher Hand was moulding this chosen
vessel on His potter's wheel, and shaping it unmistakably for the singular service
to which it was destined!