Chapter Ten, ‘Morning by Morning Inspecting Our Stores’
Chapter Ten, ‘Morning by Morning Inspecting Our Stores’
When Muller and Craik had arrived in Bristol in 1832, they found less than seventy regular attenders at Gideon Chapel; they had taken over Bethesda as an empty building. During 1840 they gave up Gideon Chapel, and those in fellowship at Bethesda now numbered 525 souls. Of these, over a hundred were added during 1840 of whom nearly fifty were converted under their preaching. In the next thirty years the numbers would again double so that by the 1870s there were over one thousand in fellowship. On May 10th, 1840, Muller was able to record that five orphans were baptised and received into the fellowship at Bethesda. This brought the number of older children from Wilson Street in fellowship to fourteen.
It was in 1840 that Mrs Anne Evans arrived in Bristol from London where she had attended a fashionable Baptist church. On arrival at Bristol she went to Bethesda with a friend to hear a sermon on the second coming. She has left us a memorable picture of Bethesda at that time and of the atmosphere at Wilson Street in the early 1840s:
His [Henry Craik’s] exposition of Scripture was quite a new feature of worship to me, and it was indeed ‘marrow and fatness’. The meaning of the passage was brought out as I never heard it before, and I found myself truly in green pastures. Dr Maclaren of Manchester is the only man I know to compare with Mr Craik. His knowledge of the original language was beyond that of most men of learning, and his insight into the meaning of Scripture also. It was a great privilege to hear such a man. ‘I shall come again,’ I said, and I did go again and again, and never went anywhere else while in Bristol. To me it was like a new conversion. Now I heard a clear gospel that I could understand. The Bible became a new book to me. The brotherly love shown was such as I had never seen before. The godly and simple lives of even wealthy people, who had moved in the highest society, was such as to carry one back to the days of the Apostles, and I felt this was indeed Christianity of a high type ...
The day after I was 211 took up my abode in No. 6 [Wilson St.] Orphan House. Then followed five years of happy service among the orphans, during which time, I was behind the scenes and saw much of the private life of the Brethren, and can therefore testify to the truly spiritual lives they led; their devotion to service to the Lord, and the unworldliness of their daily private surroundings. Here I saw men and women giving up all and following Jesus in one capacity or another.
Dr A. T. Pierson later described Bethesda as one of two truly apostolic churches he knew.
During March, 1840, Muller received a letter from a brother who had several times given generously to the orphan work and who only two months previously had sent £30. The letter read:
I have received a little money from-----. Have you any present need for the Institution under your care? I know you do not ask, except of Him whose work you are doing; but to answer when asked seems another thing, and a right thing. I have a reason for desiring to know the present state of your means towards the objects you are labouring to serve: viz. should you not have need, other departments of the Lord’s work or other people of the Lord may have need. Kindly then inform me, and to what amount, i.e. what amount you at this present time need, or can profitably lay out.
There was indeed a need when the letter arrived: the orphan-fund amounted to 2s 3½ d; Muller was on the point of establishing an infant-school; and a number of Bibles were needed by the Scriptural Knowledge Institution. However, Muller replied to the letter as follows:
Whilst I thank you for your love, and whilst I agree with you, that, in general, there is a difference between asking for money and answering when asked, nevertheless in our case I feel not at liberty to speak about the state of our funds, as the primary object of the work in my hand is, to lead those who are weak in faith to see that there is reality in dealing with God alone.
But after sending the letter Muller had no qualms about praying as follows:
‘Lord, thou knowest that for Thy sake I did not tell this brother about our need. Now, Lord, show afresh that there is reality in speaking to Thee only about our need, and speak therefore to this brother, so that he may help us.’
On the 26th March Muller received _£ioo from the said brother of which he took £20 for the children and £20 for each of the other objects. This gave him the means to establish his infant-school, and for ordering more Bibles.
In April Muller received a letter from his half brother saying that his father had become seriously ill a few days after he had left him and that he had died on March 30th.
That which I do know [Muller wrote] gives me no proof of his having died in the faith of Christ. As to myself, I am sure of this, that it becomes me to adore that wonderful grace which plucked me as a brand out of the burning, and to say in reference to my dear departed father: ‘Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?’ and in submission to the will of God to be satisfied with His dealings ... During no period did I pray more frequently or more earnestly for the conversion of my dear aged parent, than during the last year of his life; but, at all events, it did not please the Lord to let me see the answer to my prayers.
‘But how would you do’, people sometimes said to Muller, ‘in case there were a mealtime to come and you had no provisions for the children, or they really wanted clothes, and you had no money to procure them?’
‘Such a thing is impossible,’ Muller would assure them, ‘as long as the Lord gives us grace to trust in Him—for “whosoever believeth on Him shall not be ashamed”—and as long as He shall enable us to carry on the work in uprightness of heart. But should we be ever so left to ourselves as to forsake the Lord and trust in an arm of flesh, or should we “regard iniquity in our heart” (Psalm 66, 18)—that is, wilfully and habitually do anything, either in connexion with the work or otherwise, which is against the will of God—then we may pray and utter many words before Him, but He will not hear us.’
Towards the end of June 1840 Mr and Mrs Muller left Bristol for Liverpool with eight brethren and sisters who proposed to sail for the mission field from Liverpool. On July 2nd Muller accompanied the missionaries to the ship, and before they went on board one of the brethren gave Muller £6 10s for the orphans.
‘The money which we have in the common stock,’ he said, as he handed Muller the money, ‘is enough for us. [They had about ^20 between the eight of them.] For some months, while we are on board, we need no money at all, whilst you may lay it out; and when we need more, the Lord will again supply our need. The other brethren and sisters have no money of their own, and I desire likewise to have none. The Lord has laid the orphans particularly on my heart, and therefore you must not refuse to accept it.’
On July 4th, Muller received the following letter from Bristol:
My dear Brother,—The last account I sent you left us in the greatest poverty. We had sufficient, it is true, for the time then present; but there was no money to take in bread with. In the afternoon there was an old riding habit sent for the orphans, which I sold this morning for 7s. I also sold a few books for 5s, two old silver trinkets and a ring for is 6d; besides this, is 6d was sent for Reports; making in all 15s. This purchased dinner for the three houses. At twelve o’clock we met for prayer. We were indeed in great need. There was no money either for bread or milk. The coals in all three houses were used, and in every other respect the stores were in a low state. We had really wanted nothing, but there was scarcely anything left. Well, while we were in prayer to God, your letter came. One of the sisters opened the door and received it, and after prayer it was given to me. You will be able to conceive the greatness of our joy, on opening it, and finding it to contain £5.1 cannot express how much I felt. During the trial I had been much comforted by the Lord’s sending a little token of His love every day. It just proved that He was mindful of us in our poverty, and that when His time was come, He would send us an abundance. I think we all felt your absence a little, although not cast down on that account. Money is very precious to those who, like us, so evidently see the HAND and HEART of our Heavenly Father in bestowing it. The sisters send their love to you.
Your affectionate brother, R.B.
Muller and Mary left Liverpool on the 10th and then spent a few days in Worcester where they ‘had again much love shown to us by the saints there’.
Back in Bristol on the following Sunday, there was no opportunity for Muller to preach at Bethesda as two visiting brethren were ministering to the saints. Reluctant to let a Sunday pass without preaching the gospel, Muller preached twice that evening in the open air. This was a sphere of service to which Muller attached great importance, but generally did not feel strong enough to undertake. The second time he preached that evening was in a court filled with rather grubby and obviously very poor people. One of the women readily lent him a chair on which he stood and could thus be heard by folk living in the houses which overlooked the courtyard. A century earlier, John Wesley had commented: ‘I often wonder at the people of Bristol. They are so honest, yet so dull; ’tis scarce possible to strike any fire into them.’ That evening as the soft Prussian accent echoed round the court, Muller, rather more charitably, perhaps, detected ‘far more readiness to listen, than decidedly to oppose’. He commented, ‘How well a brother who has some gift, and a measure of strength of lungs, might employ a part of the Lord’s days, or of other days, either by reading the Scriptures from house to house to such persons, and making some remarks on them; or by standing up in a court and reading the Scriptures aloud and speaking on them.’
The following week the Mullers had a Christian friend staying with them who was on his way to see his father, whom he had not seen for over two years, and who was antagonistic towards his son because he had committed his life to Christ. Before his friend left, the promise in Matthew 18:19 occurred to Muller: ‘If two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.’ He therefore went to his guest’s room and together they prayed that his father would receive him kindly and also that both parents would be converted. At the beginning of August the brother left Bristol and Muller heard that, contrary to expectation, he was received kindly by his father.
Some years later the old man was converted and became as attached to his son as he had been opposed to him. He now wanted to have him about as much as possible to read the Bible and pray with him. He died at the age of eighty-six. Sixteen years after Muller and his friend had prayed together, the mother, too, became a Christian, at a great age.
Saturday August 15th 1840 there was again the possibility of a crisis in Wilson Street. All the stores were low, and the income during the past week had been small. On Saturday, too, needs were nearly double those of other days in order to buy in sufficient for the Sunday. At least £3 was needed to see the homes through the day; but there was nothing in hand.
At about half-past twelve two sisters called on Muller with ^2 7s 6d. Muller took this to the Boys’ Orphan-House at one o’clock and found the children sitting down to lunch. Brother B handed Muller a note which he was just about to send:
Dear Brother,—With potatoes from the children’s garden, and with apples from the tree in the play-ground (which apples were used for apple dumplings), and 4s 6d the price of some articles given by one of the labourers, we have a dinner. There is much needed. But the Lord has provided and will provide.
Also that day there came in from the sale of Reports, is; from the box in No. 6, is; from children’s needlework, 6s 6d; from a donation of one of the sisters in the Orphan-Houses, 6s.
In September there were a number of things which needed doing in connection with the Day School work, including a new stove in one of the school rooms and a fresh supply of several kinds of Bibles and New Testaments. For some while the funds for this side of the work had been rather low, and Muller decided, as he had done some two years earlier with his helpers at Wilson Street, to begin telling the school teachers the state of the funds. He began to hold prayer meetings daily with the staff at seven in the morning. ‘I doubt not,’ said Muller, ‘the brethren and sisters who are teachers in the Day Schools will be greatly blessed by being thus partakers of our precious secret respecting the state of the funds.’
On October 7th five weeks after the prayer meetings had begun, £100 arrived from the East Indies which Muller devoted entirely to the school work and other objects of the Scriptural Knowledge Institution.
Monday October 19th twelve pounds arrived from Wolverhampton and ‘D.C.’ gave Muller £2 in the evening. The following morning, Muller was thinking to himself that they needed some more potatoes and that they had no money to lay in a stock, when a brother arrived at his house with the news that he had just given orders for twenty sacks of good potatoes to be sent to Wilson Street.
That week very little money came in for the Mullers’ personal needs and things were getting a little tight. On the Sunday morning Muller prayed that God would send some means for themselves as well as for the orphans. He rose from his knees, took his hat from the rail and found a note in one of his gloves containing five pounds. The note read: ‘£2 for the orphans, the rest for dear brother and sister Muller.’
Friday, November 20th: after lunch it became clear that none of the three houses had any milk for tea, one had no bread and none had any coal left. There was no money in hand to buy any of these things. Some time after two, a cart load of logs was delivered at Wilson Street, thus solving for a while the fuel problem. Just before three, Brother B called at Muller’s home to see whether anything had come in, but he had received nothing. Muller was just leaving for a short while with a friend from Devon but he returned at a quarter-past three. Several people were waiting at his home to see him, including a sister from Bethesda whom Muller urgently wanted to speak to about a church matter. This he did, and at the end of the conversation she handed him ^10 for the children. Muller recorded in his journal:
More sweet, and more needed, were none of the previous deliverances. Language cannot express the real joy in God which I had. I was free from excitement. The circumstance did not unfit me even for a single moment to attend to my other engagements. I was not in the least surprised, because, by grace, my soul had been waiting on God for deliverance. Never had help been so long delayed.
Brother B immediately hurried to Wilson Street with the money arriving a few minutes before the milkman.
In December the usual public meetings were again held to review God’s dealing with the work during 1840. Muller felt that the first meeting went well; he was particularly glad that he felt happy that evening, so that no one present could have detected from the expression on his face that he had nothing at all in hand towards the supply of the following day’s needs. After the meeting 2½ d was left at his house.
Next morning, although the funds totalled precisely 2jd, Muller looked to the living God. At no time had there ever been less bread in the Orphan-House than that morning, and after breakfast all the bread in the Boys’ and Infant-House had been cut up for use. Mercifully, at about eleven in the morning, Muller received from Barnstaple a five-pound note and half a sovereign; the second public meeting was held that evening.
Muller reflected at this time on the first five years of the homes’ existence.
The chief end for which the Institution was established [he recalled] is that the Church of Christ at large might be benefited by seeing manifestly the hand of God stretched out on our behalf in the hour of need, in answer to prayer. Our desire, therefore, is not that we may be without trials of faith, but that the Lord graciously would be pleased to support us in the trial, that we may not dishonour Him by distrust.
This way of living brings the Lord remarkably near. He is, as it were, morning by morning inspecting our stores, that accordingly He may send help. Greater and more manifest nearness of the Lord’s presence I have never had, than when after breakfast there were no means for dinner, and then the Lord provided the dinner for more than one hundred persons; or when after dinner, there were no means for the tea, and yet the Lord provided the tea; all this without one single human being having been informed about our need ...
It has been more than once observed, that such a way of living must lead the mind continually to think whence food, clothes, etc, are to come, and so unfit for spiritual exercises. Now, in the first place, I answer that our minds are very little tried about the necessaries of life, just because the care respecting them is laid upon our Father, who, because we are His children, not only allows us to do so, but will have us to do so. Secondly, it must be remembered, that, even if our minds were much tried about the supplies for the children, and the means for the other work, yet, because we look to the Lord alone for these things, we should only be brought by our sense of need, into the presence of our Father, for the supply of it; and that is a blessing and no injury to the soul. Thirdly, our souls realise that for the glory of God and for the benefit of the church at large, it is that we have these trials of faith, and that leads again to God, to ask Him for fresh supplies of grace, to be enabled to be faithful in this service.
During 1840, apart from the children’s work, Muller’s Scriptural Knowledge Institution entirely supported six Day Schools catering for over three hundred poor children. Also the rent for the school room of a seventh school run by a sister known to Muller was paid by the SKI; and two other such schools, not in Bristol, were assisted with Bibles and Testaments.
Muller decided, at this time, to establish an evening class for adults who could neither read nor write. The class was held twice a week and concluded with a short session when the Bible was read and commented upon.
Since the establishment of the Scriptural Knowledge Institution in 1834 over six thousand Bibles had been circulated. From 1840 it was decided to circulate gospel tracts and books and also publications for Christians in addition to the distribution of Bibles. Within two years over twenty-two thousand of such publications were circulated, of which well over nineteen thousand were actually given away. This aspect of the work of the Institution still flourishes to-day, although most publications are sold not given.
During 1840, too, over £120 was sent abroad to missionaries by the SKI.
By the spring of 1841, although not seriously ill, Muller was again in need of a change of air. When on the 19th March he was sent £15, of which £5 was for himself, he took this as a sign that he should leave Bristol for a while. He therefore travelled to Nailsworth in Gloucestershire the following day, and stayed with friends until May 7th.
It was at Nailsworth that spring that he began a practice that he never abandoned during the remainder of his life. Up until this time he had made a habit, after having dressed in the morning, of getting straight down to prayer. But while at Nailsworth it came to him that the most important thing was to concentrate first on reading the Bible, meditating on the chosen portion that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed; and that thus, by means of the word of God, whilst meditating upon it, my heart might be brought into experimental communion with the Lord ... The first thing I did (early in the morning), after having asked in a few words the Lord’s blessing upon His precious word, was, to begin to meditate on the word of God, searching, as it were, into every verse, to get blessing out of it; not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated upon; but for the sake of obtaining food for my soul. The result I have found to be almost invariably this, that after a very few minutes my soul has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to intercession, or to supplication; so that, though I did not, as it were, give myself to prayer, but to meditation, yet it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer ... With this mode I have likewise combined the being out in the open air for an hour, an hour and a half, or two hours before breakfast, walking about in the fields, and in the summer sitting for a little on the stiles, if I find it too much to walk all the time. I find it very beneficial to my health to walk thus for meditation before breakfast, and am now so in the habit of using up the time for that purpose, that when I get in the open air, I generally take out a New Testament of good-sized type, which I carry with me for that purpose, besides my Bible: and I find that I can profitably spend my time in the open air, which formerly was not the case for want of habit ... The difference, then, between my former practice and my present one is this. Formerly, when I rose, I began to pray as soon as possible, and generally spent all my time till breakfast in prayer, or almost all the time ... But what was the result? I often spent a quarter of an hour, or half an hour, or even an hour on my knees, before being conscious to myself of having derived comfort, encouragement, humbling of soul, etc; and often, after having suffered much from wandering of mind for the first ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour, or even half an hour, I only then began really to pray. I scarcely ever suffer now in this way. For my heart being nourished by the truth, being brought into experimental fellowship with God, I speak to my Father, and to my Friend (vile though I am, and unworthy of it!) about the things that He has brought before me in His precious Word. It often now astonishes me that I did not sooner see this point... In addition to this [Muller wrote some years later] I generally read after family prayer large portions of the word of God, when I still pursue my practice of reading onward in the Holy Scriptures, sometimes in the New Testament and sometimes in the Old, and for more than thirty-nine years I have proved the blessedness of it. I take also either then or at other parts of the day, time more especially for prayer.
It would be wrong to assume that during the years of trial (from 1838 to 1846) Muller found time to pray only for the financial needs of the homes. In May 1841, for instance, one of the boys needed to be apprenticed. Unable to think of a suitable Christian who would take an in-door apprentice, Muller marked the matter in his journal among the subjects for which he would pray daily. Not until September did he find a suitable home. It would also be quite wrong to assume that Muller’s prayers were confined to problems amongst the children. His journal for that summer records a number of prayers for friends including those whose problems might today be categorised as psychological. A woman was freed from ‘spiritual depression’ after Muller had prayed for three days. A brother whose ‘great spiritual nervousness’ hindered his ‘service towards the world and the church’ waited while Muller and others prayed for two years before he was delivered. One ‘sister in the Lord’ was kept by prayer from insanity; and Muller prayed with another Christian woman whose unconverted husband ill-treated her until he too became a Christian.
The receipt of £100 from the East Indies at the end of May 1841 brought the funds up to between two and three hundred pounds. For this reason, a letter which Muller received on June 4th was remarkable. It read:
My dear Brother,
I have delayed writing to you under the expectation of seeing you at Bristol; but I am not yet suffered to leave—. I have, by this post, written to-----of London, desiring them to pay Messrs Robarts, Curtis & Co, in favour of Messrs Stuckey & Co of Bristol, to the credit of George Muller, the sum of fifty pounds. This apply, dear brother, as the Lord gives you wisdom. I am not concerned at my having been prevented for so many days from sending the money: I am confident it has not been needed.
Muller commented that this was the only period within the previous three years when it could have been said that £50 was not needed.
June 1841 was the month when the dream of the ‘Bristol Railway’, which it had seemed to so many would never come true, became a splendid reality. Some months earlier, the mastermind behind it all—Isambard Kingdom Brunei— had been present in the tunnel working under Box Hill, near Bath, when the two gangs which had commenced cutting from opposite ends finally met. When it was found that the cutting had remained perfectly true, Brunei, in his delight, had taken a ring from his finger and given it to the foreman in charge of the gang.
And so it was that on June 30th 1841 a decorated train pulled out of Paddington and arrived in Bristol four hours later. Brunei rode on the locomotive platform, driven by his assistant Daniel Gooch; and it is said that one of the company directors, Thomas Guppy, danced on the roof of a carriage in his excitement. If Muller was among the exuberant crowd which gathered at Temple Meads that day, it is unlikely that he would have permitted himself such an uninhibited display of emotion; but he may well have reflected that Bristol would never be quite the same again.
When Craik and Muller arrived in Bristol in 1832 they had declined a regular salary for a number of reasons including a scriptural objection to the pew-rates which would have been levied to support them (James 2:1-6). Instead, boxes were put up in Bethesda, over which their names were fixed, together with an explanation of the object of the boxes, so that the saints could now act according to Galatians 6:6: ‘Let him that is taught in the word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things.’
More recently they had become concerned that the names above the boxes made it look as if they were exalting themselves above the other brethren, and assuming office to themselves. Rather, they sought simply to fill the place which they believed the Holy Spirit had given to them. There was also the increasing possibility that God might call and qualify other brethren for the work of ruling and teaching in the church, and they felt that their names above the boxes may have put unnecessary difficulties in the way of others being fully recognised by the church as occupying equal positions with themselves.
The facts were that there were others who worked with Muller and Craik at Bethesda, but that they were the only two who were supported by the church. They had no wish to be regarded as exclusive ‘ministers’. Thus it was that in July 1841 the boxes were removed. At first, this step appears to have resulted in a very slight drop in Muller’s personal income; his detailed annual accounts show that he received for himself in 1841, £239 as against £242 in 1840. However, this trend did not last, for in 1842 he received a healthy £329.
Those summer months in 1841 were for the homes a period of continuous prosperity, or as Muller described it: ‘one continual even running of the river of God’s bounty’. At no period for more than three years had there been so much wealth at Wilson Street. But it did not last. For six months from September 1841, Muller reported, ‘it pleased the Lord... to try our faith more severely than during any time since the work first commenced’. A long, hard winter lay ahead.