Chapter Seventeen, Indescribable Happiness
Chapter Seventeen, Indescribable Happiness
‘I was going up Ashley Hill the other morning when I met Mr Muller walking towards the city. Had I not known him, I should have said he was a gentleman of leisure and without a care, so quietly did he walk and so peaceful and stately was his demeanour! The twenty-third Psalm seemed written on his face.’ Such was a west-country farmer’s testimony to the man who had the care of so many.
Muller was now (in 1865) in his sixtieth year; and still very much in his prime. His health was, indeed, far better than it had been in his twenties and early thirties. Arthur Tappan Pierson, who knew Muller well, wrote:
His form was tall and slim, always neatly attired, and very erect, and his step firm and strong. His countenance, in repose, might have been thought stem, but for the smile which so habitually lit up his eyes and played over his features that it left its impress on the lines of his face. His manner was one of simple courtesy and unstudied dignity: no one would in his presence, have felt like vain trifling, and there was about him a certain indescribable air of authority and majesty that reminded one of a born prince; and yet there was mingled with all this a simplicity so childlike that even children felt themselves at home with him. In his speech, he never quite lost that peculiar foreign quality known as accent, and he always spoke with slow and measured articulation, as though a double watch were set at the door of his lips...
Those who knew but little of him and saw him only in his serious moods might have thought him lacking in that peculiarly human quality, humour. But neither was he an ascetic nor devoid of that element of innocent appreciation of the ludicrous and that keen enjoyment of a good story which seem essential to a complete man. His habit was sobriety, but he relished a joke that was free of all taint of uncleanness and that had about it no sting for others. To those whom he best knew and loved he showed his true self, in his playful moods—as when at Ilfracombe, climbing with his wife and others the heights that overlook the sea, he walked on a little in advance, seated himself till the rest came up with him, and then, when they were barely seated, rose and quietly said, ‘Well now, we have had a good rest, let us go on’.
Muller was very fond of Ilfracombe: he loved to wander around the harbour, protected from the sea winds by Capstone hill, or to explore the old town built on the cliffs above. Then, if the weather was fair he would take his family with him to climb the wooded heights which form a semi-circle around the town.
In September 1865 he made one of his visits to Ilfracombe ‘for change of air’. On the morning of the 4th he climbed the Capstone hill with Mary and Lydia. While returning from the top, two men approached them.
‘Please excuse me,’ one of them said, ‘are you not Mr Miiller?’
1 am.
‘I have to give to you some money for the orphans.’
Muller asked the stranger to sit with him for a while on a nearby bench, so that they could talk further.
‘I live in the neighbourhood of M. I am a businessman, and, what would be called, a hard-working businessman. Sometime since one of your Reports fell into my hands, but, I honestly confess it, I could not believe that you did obtain your funds simply in answer to prayer; I questioned the truth of it. However, the thing came up into my mind again and again. While I was thus considering whether God was really with you, and whether you really obtained simply by faith and in answer to prayer these large sums of money, I heard of a certain property to be sold, which I thought I should like to buy, if it were disposed of reasonably. I looked it over, and had it valued by a competent business man, who told me it was worth so much. I then said to myself, in a kind of sceptical way, I will now see whether God is with Mr Muller or not. If I get this property for so much (fixing a low price on it), I will give Mr Muller one hundred pounds. I then instructed a person to bid for me at the auction, where this property was sold at a distant place; but so great was my curiosity to see, whether God really would appear for you in this matter, that by the next train I set off to the place where the auction was, that I might obtain as early as possible information, how' the matter would, end; and I found, to my great surprise that I had actually obtained this valuable property, at the exact low price which I had fixed. I was astonished. But I began now to reflect more on the principles on which you act, and I wondered, that, as a Christian, I or any one else could call in question what you say about answers to prayer; and the more I consider the matter, and the more I read your Report, the more I see how right and proper it is, to come to God for all we need, and to trust in Him for everything. The conveyance having been made, and all being now settled about the sale, I felt it right to pursue my promise; so my friend, whom you saw just now with me, and I set out on a tour of Devonshire, and then, on our way home, called the day before yesterday at your house; but found you were from home. We stopped yesterday in Bristol, and having there learnt your address, we came on here to Ilfracombe today, for I wished to know you personally.’
‘Well,’ said Muller, ‘I am not at all surprised at God’s working thus for me, since day by day I seek His help, and thus, in answer to prayer, obtain from the most unlikely persons, and entire strangers, donations for the work. For instance, I had a letter from a lawyer at M. where you come from, not long since, asking me to send him a proper form of a legacy to be left to the orphans, as one of his clients wished to leave a legacy of a £1,000 for the orphans. Now, as far as I know, I am not personally acquainted with a single person at M., nor do I know the name of the individual who purposes to leave this £1,000.’
‘About this legacy,’ replied the stranger, ‘I can tell you something. After I had got this property, and saw how wrong I had been in looking in such a sceptical way on your work, as if there were no reality in prayer, I decided on helping you further. I thought to myself, though I am a man in health, and of middle age, yet it might be well to make my will, and to leave you a £1,000 for the orphans.’
Thus Muller discovered that this was the individual on whose behalf the lawyer had written to him. An hour later, this one time sceptic called at Muller’s lodgings with a cheque for £100.
In 1859 Muller’s friend and fellow-worker Henry Craik had been told by his doctor that he had a weakness in his heart. From the summer of 1865 it was clear that Craik, who, like Muller, was also sixty, was desperately ill. By January 1866 it was obvious that the man who had twice refused an honorary doctorate from St Andrews University (they offered him an LL.D or D.D., whichever he preferred) in recognition of his theological writings was going to die. Among letters Craik received that January was an affectionate one from Darby calling him his ‘dear brother’ and regretting their ‘ecclesiastical separation’.
Muller was often at his friend’s bedside and after one visit wrote:
After I had kissed him, when I purposed to go, he, being too weak to converse any more, said, ‘Sit down’, and also asked Mrs Craik to sit down, that he might look on us, though he could not converse. I sat thus silently still awhile, and then left. This was our last interview. The next day I took cold, and was for several days kept at home, during which time my dear friend fell asleep ... Both of us had then known the Lord a little above forty years; and both of us were then a little above sixty years of age. My beloved brother and friend now had finished his course; I was privileged and honoured, further to labour for the Lord, and to do now this without him, with whom I had often taken counsel.
The immense crowds which gathered at Bethesda for Craik’s funeral were a fitting testimony to the loss which was felt by the Christian community.
In May 1866 building work began on the fourth orphan house; and in January 1867, a further seven thousand pounds having been received, work began on No. 5. The contracts for both houses amounted to over £41,000. All the glass for the seven hundred large windows in the two buildings was freely given by a large firm of contractors. On Guy Fawkes’ day 1868 the fourth house was opened: three days earlier over seven hundred children’s knives and forks, twenty-four carvers and forks, thirty-six table knives and forks and thirty-six dessert knives and forks had arrived in the nick of time from Gloucestershire. On January 6th 1870, the last of Muller’s great buildings on Ashley Down, ‘New Orphan House No. 5’ was duly opened. For a few weeks, reception into the new building was hindered by a mild form of measles and scarlet fever which was affecting some of the children; but it would not now be long before Muller was caring for some two thousand children.
Thus Muller’s vast expansion programme on Ashley Down was complete. Twenty-five years had elapsed since he had first announced his plans to build his own orphan house. But there was no sense at all in which Muller could now sit back on his laurels. Every morning he rose at half-past six and at a quarter to eight, after his usual period of Bible study and prayer, he began the task of going through his correspondence. Then, as The Times recorded some years later, ‘at 10 o’clock he was waited on by nine assistants, to whom he gave instructions’. (Until the 1850s he had conducted a correspondence of about three thousand letters a year without a secretary.)
Expenses for the children’s work now amounted to nearly thirty thousand pounds a year. Muller wrote that these two thousand orphans are not only to be fed, but clothed; their clothes are to be washed and repaired. The one single article of shoes and boots alone, think of it, for two thousand, both the supplies of new and repairs: how many hundred pounds it takes! Hundreds of fresh orphans are received year by year, and the new comers are to be fitted out; hundreds of boys and girls go out as apprentices and servants, and they are to be provided with an outfit, at the expense of the Institution. The considerable number of boys who are sent out as apprentices, year by year, have a premium paid for them to their masters, which is about equal to another year’s support.
Then come the heavy expenses connected with keeping in repair these five large houses, in which there are more than seventeen hundred large windows and above five hundred rooms ... It may therefore easily be supposed how much the mere painting, white-washing, colouring, repairs, etc, must cost year by year! Then consider the many thousands of articles of table linen, bed linen, towels, etc; all has to be kept up. The thousands of articles of furniture... have to be kept in repair, or to be replaced by new articles, which continually become more or less needful.
The children are ill, or one or the other even dies; all the extra expenses are to be met. The children leave as servants or apprentices; the travelling expenses are to be paid. Further — the large staff of overseers of one kind or another, such as school inspector, matrons, teachers, medical officers, assistants helping the Directors, etc; all their salaries are to be obtained from the Lord. All the nurses in the infirmaries in each of the five houses, the nurses for little infants, the laundresses and other servants… all this costs much, and for all this we look to the Lord. And there are, over and above, year by year, heavy extra expenses, not here referred to, occasioned by extraordinary circumstances, for all of which we look to the Lord... We are able with as much ease, if not greater ease than very rich noblemen, to accomplish this simply by looking in our poverty to the infinitely rich One for everything.
Mary Muller was the ideal wife for the Director of five large orphan homes.
‘My darling,’ Muller would say to her, ‘God himself singled you out for me, as the most suitable wife I could possibly wish to have had.’
During the years of trial from 1838 to 1846, when, as Muller recalled, ‘hundreds of times the necessities of the orphans could only be met by our means, and when all our own money had to be expended,’ Mary ‘never found fault with me, but heartily joined me in prayer for help from God, and with me looked out for help, and help came; and then we rejoiced together, and often wept for joy together.’
Also, in addition to an excellent general education, she possessed a thorough knowledge of every kind of needlework and of the quality of material for clothes, linen etc. so useful on Ashley Down where it was her duty to order hundreds of thousands of yards of all kinds of material. She would approve or reject the material which was delivered; Muller said ‘it was to get good blanketing or good blankets, that she was busied, thus to serve the Lord Jesus, in caring for these dear bereaved children, who had not a mother or father to care for them! She regularly examined all the account books every month and checked hundreds of bills for the matrons of the various houses. It was said that ‘should any tradesmen or one of the matrons at any time have made the least mistake, it would be surely found out by her’. Every day, except on Sundays, she would be seen on Ashley Down and would pay particular attention to the sick children.
Muller said of their marriage that every year our happiness increased more and more. I never saw my beloved wife at any time, when I met her unexpectedly anywhere in Bristol, without being delighted so to do. I never met her even in the Orphan Houses, without my heart being delighted so to do. Day by day, as we met in our dressing room, at the Orphan Houses, to wash our hands before dinner and tea, I was delighted to meet her, and she was equally pleased to see me. Thousands of times I told her. ‘My darling, I never saw you at any time, since you became my wife, without my being delighted to see you.’ Further, [Muller continued] day after day, if anyhow it could be done, I spent after dinner twenty minutes or half an hour with her in her room at the Orphan Houses, seated on her couch, which the love of a Christian brother, together with an easy chair, had sent her in the year i860, when she was, for about nine months, so ill in rheumatism. I knew that it was good for her, that her dear active mind and hands should have rest, and I knew well that this would not be, except her husband was by her side; moreover, I also needed a little rest after dinner, on account of my weak digestive powers; and therefore I spent these precious moments with my darling wife. There we sat, side by side, her hand in mine, as an habitual thing, having a few words of loving intercourse, or being silent, but most happy in the Lord, and in each other, whether we spoke or were silent. And thus it was many times ... in the fortieth year of our conjugal life. Our happiness in God, and in each other, was indescribable. We had not some happy days every year, not a month of happiness every year; but we had twelve months of happiness in the year, and thus year after year. Often and often did I say ... ‘My darling, do you think there is a couple in Bristol, or in the world, happier than we are?’
Muller believed that one of the greatest secrets of their marital bliss was that besides their times of private prayer, and family prayer, he and Mary frequendy prayed together.
For many years my precious wife and I, had, immediately after family prayer, in the morning, a short time for prayer together, when the most important points for prayer, with regard to the day, were brought before God. Should very heavy trials press on us, or should our need of any kind be particularly great, we prayed again after dinner, when I visited her room ... and this, at times of extraordinary difficulties or necessities, might be repeated once or twice more in the afternoon'... Then in the evening, during the last hour of our stay at the Orphan-Houses, though her or my work was never so much, it was an habitually understood thing, that this hour was for prayer. My beloved wife came then to my room, and now our prayer, and supplication, and intercessions mingled with thanksgiving, lasted generally 40 minutes, 50 minutes, and sometimes the whole hour. At these seasons we brought perhaps 50 or more different points, or persons, or circumstances before God.
Mary Muller was now (in 1870) seventy-two. For a year or two it had been obvious to Muller that her health was failing: she was growing thinner and tiring quickly. Muller begged her to work less and eat more, but, he said, ‘I could neither prevail as to the one nor the other’. Sometimes she would lie awake at night for two hours or more and Muller would express his concern.
‘My dear,’ she would say, ‘I am getting old, and old persons need not so much sleep.’
Two years earlier she had said to him, ‘My darling, I think the Lord will allow me to see the New Orphan-Houses No. 4 and No. 5 furnished and opened, and then I may go home; but most of all I wish, that the Lord Jesus would come, and that we might all go together.’
And indeed the Lord had allowed her to see both No. 4 and No. 5 opened; and throughout 1869 she had spent nearly every day at work at the five buildings.
Sadly she had worked too hard.