Chapter Fifteen, Miillers Secret Treasure
Chapter Fifteen, Miillers Secret Treasure
By the time Darby’s circular excommunicating Bethesda was issued, the new orphan house had been entirely roofed in, and part of the interior plastering had been done. Over eleven thousand pounds had been given, and rather more than three thousand were still needed in order to complete the work and fittings. Money was still coming in steadily and by early November (1848) Muller was able to arrange with the clerk of works to buy over thirty grates for the small rooms, two copper furnaces for the wash-house, and two iron furnaces for the scullery. A further fifteen hundred pounds was received in two sizeable gifts that same month.
Early in the new year Muller received ten pounds from Devon with a note which read, ‘A moiety of the first fruits of interest on Bristol Dock Shares from the Town Council of Bristol, towards the New Orphan Building’. He commented that ‘even the fact of Bristol being made a free port, was used by the Lord as a means to supply me with this sum’.
In February Muller spent long hours making final preparations before he could receive the first children; this work made him realise how much money was still required before all would be ready. He gave himself to prayer that the total cost could soon be covered. In the morning of nth February, Muller was told that a visitor had called to see him. After a brief conversation, the gentleman explained that he had intended to leave Muller some money in his will but had now decided to give the money during his lifetime. He was particularly anxious that his name should be concealed and for that reason had not written out a cheque so that even his bank should not know of his donation. He therefore handed Muller the amount in notes: no less than two thousand pounds’ worth. ‘It is impossible to describe the real joy I had in God, when I received this sum. I was calm, not in the least excited, able to go on immediately with other work that came upon me ...; but inexpressible was the delight which I had in God, who had thus given me the full answer to my thousands of prayers, during these eleven hundred and ninety-five days.’ This gift gave Muller the means to meet all the expenses for the new home plus some hundred pounds to spare. Altogether he received nearly sixteen thousand pounds including nearly seventy from the sale of grass and turf from the field on which the home was built, and £750 interest: Muller took the view that ‘as a steward of large sums, which were entrusted to me, I ought to invest the money, till it was actually needed’.
Monday June 18th 1849—great excitement at Wilson Street: the first children were to be moved up to Ashley Down. How the first sight of this large new building took their breath away! How they enjoyed the sound of the birds singing, the sight of cows grazing in the fields, and the view across the valley towards Stapleton! Once inside even the fresh paint and newly polished woodwork smelt good, and the whole place was light and well ventilated. Every day for four days, some more children arrived until on Thursday everyone, including the teachers and staff, had moved in: 140 people under one roof. By Saturday Muller was able to report that ‘there is already such a measure of order established in the house, by the help of God, as that things can be done by the minute hands of the time-pieces’.
As if to assure Muller that He would never fail him as the numbers began now to grow towards three hundred children plus staff, God was ‘exceedingly kind’ during that first week. Muller was showing a gentleman through the new home who said:
‘These children must consume a great deal of provisions.’
As he said this he took from his pocket a roll of bank notes amounting to one hundred pounds. On the same evening a large cask of treacle arrived at the home, with six loaves of sugar. Also a cooper made two large new casks for treacle, free of charge. Next day ten hundredweight of rice arrived. ‘After all the many and long-continued seasons of great trial of faith,’ said Muller, ‘within these thirteen years and two months, during which the orphans were in Wilson Street, the Lord dismisses us from thence in comparative abundance. His holy name be praised for it!’
One day next month, an unexpected visitor arrived at the ‘New Orphan-House’, as it was now known. Soon after noon, Muller was told that none other than John Nelson Darby was waiting to see him in a room in the house. What actually occurred during the encounter which followed has since been hotly disputed: the following is based on Muller’s account. At ten to one Muller entered the room where Darby was and shook him by the hand. Darby said:
‘As you have now judged Newton’s tracts, the reason why we should not be united no longer exists.’ Muller replied:
‘I have only ten minutes now free, having an engagement at one o’clock, and therefore I cannot now enter upon this subject; for you have acted so wickedly in this whole affair, that many things have to be looked into before we could be really united again.’
At this Darby rose and left. The two men never saw each other again. Darby later denied that Muller’s account of the interview was correct but there is apparently no record of Darby’s version of the event. Professor Bruce has commented that ‘a more gracious answer [by Muller] might have redeemed that never-to-be-repeated opportunity. Like Muller, Darby had the qualities of his nationality, and his Irish impulsiveness might well have warmed to a less severe response.’
Every week Muller now took in five to eight new children, and by May 1850, over three hundred people sat down every day to meals at the house. This included a staff of over thirty people. Every Wednesday afternoon parties of visitors were shown round the New Orphan-House, and saw for themselves how healthy these previously sickly children looked, how smartly they were dressed and how well they were fed. Visitors could judge for themselves the validity of Muller’s assertion that the children never had reason to know when times were difficult.
One visitor to the New Orphan-House described his experience like this:
We met at the door, a little after two o’clock, a pretty numerous party of all ranks in life, waiting for admission. When the doors were opened, we found ourselves in a very small hall, from whence a stone staircase leads up into a spacious room in the central buildings, where the visitors wait for their guide. This room is a perfect square, with the four angles taken off by the width of the windows, which we found looked into large pitched play-courts, with covered sheds for the children’s use in wet weather. One court we saw was appropriated to infants of both sexes, a number of whom were toddling about under the charge of two or three older girls; another to girls; the third to boys; while the fourth window overlooks the part of the garden through which the visitors approach.
Our guide entered, and took charge of the forty or fifty who had by this time assembled ... We proceeded into the Infants’ Day Room, where we found a tribe of little things, under the care of a nurse. Ranged round one side of this room are a number of little basket beds, for the use of the youngsters when tired of play.
We found in one room about half a dozen boys, under the care of a female, quietly and busily engaged in the very necessary employment of darning stockings, which attracted the sympathy of the female part of the company most wonderfully. One lady, advanced in life ,was quite carried away by her enthusiasm— ‘One thread up and one thread down, is the very perfection of darning’. Some, perhaps, of these boys may at a future time be in the navy, others may chance to be emigrants; and we can hardly estimate the value of this humble but necessary art in such circumstances. Even in the very common experience of apprentices in this country, it will often prove of very great advantage to them. In any case we admire the practical wisdom that insists, even in mending stockings, on teaching the best way.
In the younger department are pigeon-holed cupboards for putting away their toys, when out of use. They were well-furnished with nearly every description that a general shop could supply.
The washing-places, we observed, are furnished with baths, and on the walls is hung each child’s little bag, numbered, with comb and hair-brush. The most scrupulous care is evidently bestowed to ensure thorough cleanliness of both persons and linen, as well as to guard against the communication of any infectious juvenile complaints from personal contact.
In going through this most interesting establishment we were most forcibly impressed with the entire absence of a pauperised look in the dress and appearance of the children. The hair of the girls is kept beautifully neat, such as we could fancy a mother’s love had attended to; and there was a cheerful looking-up at the visitors, and a heart-smile on the young faces, which prove indisputably that both in Principal and Assistants the spring of action is Love, and that the presiding and pervading spirit which rules the entire establishment is the Law of Kindness. In fact, it is impossible to help being thoroughly convinced that the best of practical management exists in every department, and that everyone engaged in the work is admirably fitted for his duties, and has a hearty unselfish love of the work for its own sake.
Although Muller was now caring for three hundred children, he had a long and quickly growing waiting list of children seeking admission: in December 1850 the list ran to 78 names (by 1856 it had grown to nearly 850 names). He found it distressing to turn even one child away. There was still no other home in the United Kingdom with such a radical admissions policy. Muller was well aware of this. He wrote (in December 1850):
The constitution of most other charitable Institutions for Orphans makes the admission of a really destitute Orphan, i.e. a child bereaved of both parents, and without an influential friend, very difficult, if not hopeless; for admission by means of the votes of donors precludes really poor persons from having, in most instances, the benefit of these Institutions, as they cannot give the time nor expend the money necessary for obtaining such votes. I have myself seen that certain candidates had several thousand votes ... In our case nothing is needed but application to me; and the very poorest person, without influence, without friends, without any expense, no matter where he lives, or of whatever religious denomination, who applies for children born in lawful wedlock, bereaved of both parents, and in destitute circumstances may procure admission.
Neither national nor local government made proper provision for orphans: Muller recorded, also in 1850, that ‘about five years ago, a brother in the Lord told me he had seen in an official Report, that there were at that time' six thousand young Orphans in the prisons of England’. ‘By God’s help,’ he wrote, ‘I will do what I can to keep poor Orphans from prison.’ Muller therefore began to consider the possibility of building another home large enough to accommodate seven hundred children so that he could care for one thousand altogether.
He was particularly depressed by what he heard about the moral state of the workhouses. ‘I have heard it again and again, from good authority, that children, placed in the Unions, are corrupted, on account of the children of vagrants, and other very bad young people who are in such places; so that many poor relatives of Orphans, though unable to provide for them, cannot bear the idea of their going there, lest they should be corrupted.’
At the beginning of the new year (1851) Muller received the biggest donation for his work that had so far been received: three thousand pounds. ‘This donation is . .. like a voice from heaven, speaking to me concerning a most deeply important matter respecting which I am seeking guidance from the Lord, the building of another Orphan-House.’ For five more months, however, Muller continued to think and pray about the matter. He wrote down eight reasons against enlarging the work, plus an answer to each objection and then eight reasons for building a new home for seven hundred children.
In April he received a donation to which a vicar, an archdeacon, and one of the Queen’s chaplains had contributed.
In May 1851 he finally decided to go ahead with his plans for expansion, and began to pray that God would provide him with the necessary means, which would not, he reckoned, be less than about thirty-five thousand pounds. ‘The greatness of the sum required affords me a kind of secret joy; for the greater the difficulty to be overcome, the more will it be seen to the glory of God, how much can be done by prayer and faith.’
At the end of May, Muller announced his intention to expand the work. The children themselves began to give and Muller recorded:
June 3. From one of the Orphans in the New Orphan House 6d, and from another 6d.
June 4. From another Orphan in the New Orphan House, 6d. I received also 8s ½d, which the Orphans in the Girls’ School of the New Orphan House gave between them for the Building Fund. June 5. Through one of the boxes at the New Orphan-House twopence and likewise one half-penny. These two small donations are very sweet to me. I take them as further earnest, out of the hands of my heavenly Father, that He, in His own time, will give the whole sum requisite.
In August Muller received a cheque for £500 but in the early months of the new venture he received few large sums. In October Muller recorded that:
It has now been for several months reported that I have already Thirty Thousand Pounds in hand for the Building fund, though this day it is actually only £1,139 19s 2fd ... But none of these things discourage me. God knows that I have not Thirty Thousand Pounds in hand. God can influence the minds of His dear children towards this intended Orphan-House, whatever their thoughts may have been hitherto on the subject.
He knelt down and prayed:
Lord, thou knowest how small an amount as yet Thy servant has, in comparison with what is needed; but Thou also knowest that Thy servant did not act rashly and trader excitement in this matter, but waited upon Thee for six months in secret, before he spoke about this his intention. Now, Lord, in Thy mercy, sustain Thy servant’s faith and patience, and, if it please Thee, speedily refresh his heart by sending large sums, for which he is looking, and which he confidently expects!
There was no immediate answer to this prayer and for some months it seemed that the persistent rumour (Muller, of course, refused on principle to deny it) that he had thirty thousand pounds in hand was affecting donations. By March 1852 funds were running so low in the day-to-day expenses account that on the 16th there was actually no money in hand except the balance in the Building Fund. Muller was at his home in Paul Street expecting one of his staff to arrive from Ashley Down for more money. He prayed that he would not have to dip into the building fund. Just before the caller arrived he received ‘from a noble lady’ fifteen pounds which he was able to pass on towards immediate urgent needs.
Next day the situation all round was eased when Muller received a donation of £999 13s 5d of which he took £200 for current expenses, £600 for the building fund and the remainder for school, Bible, tract, and missionary purposes.
This was one of the worst periods in the whole history of the homes for sickness. Over a period of nearly four months, more than one hundred children in the new home became seriously ill mainly with scarlet fever and at one time over fifty children were confined to their beds: five children died.
It was not uncommon now for donations to arrive from far away. One donation from Australia came from a shepherd who had read Muller’s Narrative while tending his flock, and one from New Zealand came from sales of eggs laid by a hen which a little girl had ‘set apart for the orphans’. Others came from the East and West Indies, the United States, Nova Scotia, Tahiti, Canada, India, Ceylon, Africa, China, the Cape of Good Hope, Turkey, France, Switzerland, Germany and Italy. The following letter from India is typical of many received:
Madras,
9th July 1852
Dear Brother,
Some time in the year 1842 or 1843 I met with ‘The Lord’s dealings with George Muller’, and, after reading it, was moved to send you something; but at that time I had no means. In fact, I had lent, what little money I had, to a person who was unable to repay me, and I was nearly destitute. The good hand of God has been on me since that time, and I have often wondered whether George Muller was still in the flesh; but never had the resolution to inquire. Last December I met in a friend’s house the Twelfth Report, and, after reading it, resolved to cast a mite into the Lord’s treasury towards building the Orphan-House for Seven Hundred children; and may the God of Jacob, that has fed me all my life long, unto this day, accept of it, as acknowledgement of the thousandth part of the mercies I have received at His hands. I therefore enclose a bill of exchange to the value of seventy pounds sterling. I have often mentioned you by name in my appeals to the throne of grace; and if I meet you not on earth, I hope I shall in those regions where we shall see the Lamb on His throne and in His Father’s Kingdom, and where there is no more sin or sorrow.
My dear Brother,
Ever Yours,
Towards the end of 1852 Muller prayed especially hard that God would send him some larger sums for the work. At last, on January 4th 1853, he received a promise that as the joint donation of several Christians, he was to receive eight thousand one hundred pounds. ‘Day by day, for nineteen months,’ he wrote, 1 had been looking out for more abundant help than I had had. I was fully assured that God would help with larger stuns; yet the delay was long. See how precious it is to wait on God! See how those who do so are not confounded!... Have I then been boasting in God in vain? Is it not manifest that it is most precious, in every way, to depend upon God?’ The money was paid in four instalments from January to April.
By Monday June 13th the current account was reduced to about twelve pounds. Various provisions were needed including: flour— at that time about ten sacks were bought a week, three hundred stones of oatmeal, four hundredweight of soap; and there were a number of fairly minor repairs going on in the house employing a number of workmen, besides the regular current expenses of about seventy pounds a week. On top of this, the previous Saturday Muller had discovered a fault in the heating system which would cost about twenty-five pounds to repair. Thus about one hundred pounds extra was needed plus means for the current expenses.
That morning as Muller climbed the hill from Paul Street to Ashley Down he prayed as he walked. He pointed out to the Lord that although it was a Monday when generally little came in, He could send much if it was His will. On arrival in his room at the New Orphan-House he found a cheque for £301.
The joy which I had cannot be described. I walked up and down in my room for a long time, tears of joy and gratitude to the Lord running plentifully over my cheeks, praising and magnifying the Lord for His goodness, and surrendering myself afresh, with all my heart, to Him for His blessed service. I scarcely ever felt more the kindness of the Lord in helping me.
Muller still received a variety of gifts in kind as well as in money. Among the more unusual were three autographs of King William IV, one of Sir Robert Peel and two of Lord Melbourne which were sold to aid the work of the Scriptural Knowledge Institution in December.
Early in January (1854) Muller received the promise of a further large donation, this time of £5,207 of which £3,000 was eventually put towards the building fund. It was a year before another large sum was received, but in January 1855 Muller again received from a number of Christian friends the promise of £5,700 of which £3,400 was put to the building fund. This brought the time much nearer when work on the second building could commence. At the beginning of February Muller applied to purchase two fields immediately adjoining the land on which the first home was built; he discovered however that according to the will of the late owner of the land the fields could not be sold at that time. He said to himself: ‘The Lord has something better to give me, instead of these two fields.’
For some time Muller had been thinking that instead of putting up one enormous building for seven hundred children it might be better to build two houses for 400 in one and 300 in the other. He therefore measured out the ground on each side of ‘No. 1’ and judged that the idea seemed feasible. He called in architects to survey the ground and make a rough plan for two houses and this confirmed that the project was possible.
Thus Muller decided to make an immediate start on building a second house to the south of No. 1 to accommodate 400 girls. On May 29th (1855) four wells were sunk on the site and work commenced. With an application list now numbering over 600 names Muller was most anxious to expand his work.
There was now ample evidence of the spiritual as well as social value of Muller’s work. The following is typical of many letters Muller received from children formerly under his care:
March 28, 1855
Dear Sir,
Will you graciously accept this mite [10s] from one who thinks of you and yours with gratitude. It is indeed a very small sum. I regret that I have no more to bestow on such a noble work. It will perhaps put a cornerstone in the wall of the intended Orphan House. I think I should like to labour for the Lord in that blessed house, if it is His own will, and be the means in the Lord’s hand of bringing many of the dear Orphans to know the truth as it is in Jesus. It was in the Orphan House in Wilson Street, 1846, that first the light of life dawned upon my benighted soul. It was there, that I first learned to call God my Father. I have need therefore to love the Orphan House, not only as concerning temporal things, but especially as its being my spiritual birth-place. May the Lord reward you, dear Sir, for all you have done for me. I am sure He will.
I am, dear Sir, yours most respectfully,
It is not difficult to imagine what a thrill it must have been to Muller to receive this and so many similar letters.
In February 1856, Muller received another large donation of three thousand pounds of which he put £1,700 into the building fund. In March a further four thousand pounds arrived of which £2,000 went towards the building work.
All sorts of ingenious explanations were offered to account for the remarkable success which Muller achieved in raising these very substantial sums of money without ever appealing for funds. Some said it was because he was a foreigner; others put it down to the novelty of the whole thing. Yet others decided that Muller must have access to some secret treasure; but the most popular explanation was that it was all the result of the Annual Reports which were produced. Muller replied to these objections with admirable brevity and wit:
My being a foreigner, looked at naturally, would be much more likely to hinder my being entrusted with such large sums, than to induce donors to give. As to novelty procuring the money, the time is long gone by for novelty procuring the money, for this is June 1856, and the work commenced in March 1834. As to the secret treasure to which I have access, there is more in the supposition than the objectors are aware of; for surely God’s treasury is inexhaustible, and I have that (though that alone) to go to, and have indeed drawn out of it, simply by prayer and faith, more than £113,000 since the beginning of the work.
As to the objection that the Reports were the means by which all the money was raised, Muller replied as follows:
There is nothing unusual in writing Reports. This is done by public Institutions generally, but the constant complaint is, that Reports are not read. Our Reports are not extraordinary as to the power of language, or as to striking appeals to feelings. They are simple statements of facts. These Reports are not accompanied by personal application for means; but they are simply sent to the donors, or to any individuals who wish to have or purchase them. If they produce results, which Reports generally do not, I can only ascribe it to the Lord.
... we doubt not that the Lord has again and again used the Reports as instruments in leading persons to help us with their means. For as we continually stand in need of considerable sums; and as even hundreds of pounds go but a very little way, I entreat the Lord day by day, and generally several times every day, to supply me with means, to speak to the hearts of His dear children, and to constrain them by the love of Christ to help me out of the means, with which he has entrusted them; and so it comes to pass, I doubt not, that the Lord again and again works by His Spirit in the hearts of those who have read or heard the Reports. But whether we are supplied with means through the Reports or irrespective of them; in either case it is God, who is working for us ...
In October, Muller received the following letter:
October 11, 1856
Dear Sir,
In admiration of the services which you have rendered to poor orphans and mankind in general, I think it right that some provision should be made for yourself. I think it right to send you £100 as a beginning, (which I hope many good Christians will add to), to form a fund for the maintenance of you and your family, and I hope you will lay out this as a beginning accordingly. May God bless you and your labours, as He has hitherto done everything connected with your institutions.
I am, dear Sir,
Muller saw this letter as a temptation, permitted by God, to put his trust in something other than God Himself, and without a moment’s hesitation replied as follows:
21 Paul Street
Kingsdown
Bristol
October 12, 1856
My dear Sir,
I hasten to thank you for your kind communication, and to inform you that your cheque for £100 has safely come to hand.
I have no property whatever, nor has my dear wife; nor have I had one single shilling regular salary as Minister of the Gospel for the last 26 years, nor as the Director of the Orphan House and the other objects of the Scriptural Knowledge Institution for Home and Abroad. When I am in need of anything, I fall on my knees, and ask God that He would be pleased to give me what I need; and He puts it in the heart of someone or other to help me. Thus all my wants have been amply supplied during the last 26 years, and I can say, to the praise of God, I have lacked nothing. My dear wife and my only child, a daughter 24 years old, are of the same mind. Of this blessed way of living none of us is tired, but we become day by day more convinced of its blessedness.
I have never thought it right to make provision for myself, or my dear wife and daughter, except in this way, that when I have seen a case of need, such as an aged widow, a sick person, or a helpless infant, I have used the means freely which God has given me, fully believing, that if either myself, or my dear wife or daughter, at some time or other, should be in need of anything, that God would richly repay what was given to the poor, considering it as lent to Himself.
Under these circumstances, I am unable to accept your kind gift of £100 towards making a provision for myself and family; for so I understand your letter. Anything given to me, unasked for, by those who have it in their heart to help to supply my personal and family expenses, I thankfully accept; or any donation for the work of God in which I am engaged, I also thankfully accept, as a steward for the Orphans, etc; but your kind gift seems to me especially given to make a provision for myself; which I think would be displeasing to my Heavenly Father, who has so bountifully given me my daily bread hitherto. But should I have misunderstood the meaning of your letter, be pleased to let me know it. I hold the cheque till I hear again from you.
In the meantime, my dear Sir, whatever your letter meant, I am deeply sensible of your kindness, and daily pray that God would be pleased richly to recompense you, both temporally and spiritually.
I am, dear Sir,
Yours very gratefully,
George Muller
Two days later Muller received a reply, in which the donor asked him to me the £100 for the support of the orphans, and a few days later received a further £200 for the orphans from the same donor all of which was gratefully received.
By November 1857 Muller was able to open home ‘Number 2’ (as it became known) on Ashley Down: it lay immediately south of No. 1 and at right angles to it. It had room for 400 girls—200 infants and 200 girls from eight upwards, and the first excited children arrived from the 12th November onwards.
There were not a few sceptics who doubted whether Muller would be able to provide for seven hundred children, and the large staff which was now needed to look after them. These doubts were confounded: and in the years which lay ahead Muller would startle the world by trebling the size of his work.