Chapter Twenty, Safe to Glory
Chapter Twenty, Safe to Glory
Not many days after the opening of No. 5 in January 1870, Mary Muller—now in her seventy-third year—caught a heavy cold which left her with a troublesome cough. Muller persuaded her to see their doctor who insisted that she should now drive (rather than walk) to and from Ashley Down and rest after dinner.
At nights Muller would feel her pulse and found it feeble and irregular; but Mary would not agree that much was the matter with her. Towards the end of January the cough eased and on the 23rd and 30th she was able to travel in a fly to the Sunday morning service at Bethesda. On the evening of the 30th, however, she felt a pain across the lower part of her back and her right arm. On Monday the pain grew worse, but as they were unable to contact the doctor, Mary set off for Ashley Down with Lydia and directed affairs at the homes more or less as usual. At tea-time she drove back to Paul Street with her sister Miss Groves, and Lydia. Muller went off to the prayer meeting at Salem Chapel. When he arrived home he found that their doctor, Josiah Pritchard, had ordered Mary to bed, to remain there, and to have a fire lit in her bedroom. She had rheumatic fever.
Muller expected the worst. But, he said, ‘though my heart was nigh to be broken, on account of the depth of my affection, I said to myself, “The Lord is good, and doeth good; all will be according to His own blessed character. Nothing but that, which is good, like Himself, can proceed from Him. If He pleases to take my wife, it will be good, like Himself. What I have to do, as His child, is to be satisfied with what my Father does that I may glorify Him”.’
Next day, on the Tuesday evening, Muller sat alone in his wife’s room at No. 3. Mary was at home in bed for the first time in nine years. On the wall was a day-to-day calendar called The Silent Comforter; Muller looked at the text for the day; it was from Psalm 119, verse 75, ‘I know, O Lord, that Thy judgments are right, and that Thou in faithfulness has afflicted me’. Muller read the words again and again.
‘Yes, Lord,’ he said to himself, ‘Thy judgments are right, I am satisfied with them. Thou knowest the depth of the affection of Thy poor child for his beloved wife, yet I am satisfied with Thy judgments; and my inmost soul says, that Thou in faithfulness has afflicted me. All this is according to that love, with which Thou hast loved me in Christ Jesus, and whatever the issue, all will be well.’
Underneath this text, The Silent Comforter had the words ‘My times are in Thy hand’ (Psalm 31, 15).
‘Yes, my Father,’ thought Muller, ‘the times of my darling wife are in Thy hands. Thou wilt do the very best thing for her and for me, whether life or death. If it may be, raise yet up again my precious wife, Thou art able to do it, though she is so ill; but however Thou dealest with me, only help me to continue to be perfectly satisfied with Thy holy will.’
During that week, the words of the hymn ‘One there is above all others’, kept coming into Muller’s mind:
Best of blessings He’ll provide us,
Nought but good shall e’er betide us,
Safe to glory He will guide us,
Oh how he loves!
‘My heart,’ he said, ‘continually responded—“Nought but good shall e’er betide us”.’ On the Wednesday, Mary was in rather less pain, and before he left Paul Street for Ashley Down, Muller sat on her bed and read a verse from Psalm 84, ‘The Lord God is a sun and shield: the Lord will give grace and glory: no good thing will be withheld from them that walk uprightly’. Then he said:
‘My darling, we have both received grace, and we shall therefore receive glory; and as, by God’s grace, we walk uprightly, nothing that is good for us will He withhold from us.’
Later in the day, Mary told their daughter Lydia the verse which Muller had read and how it had comforted her. And as Muller went about his work on Ashley Down he said to himself again and again,
‘I walk uprightly, and therefore my Father will withhold nothing from me, that is good for me; if therefore the restoration of my dearest Mary is good for me, it will be surely given; if otherwise, I have to seek to glorify God by most perfect submission to His holy will.’
That evening Dr Pritchard gave Muller instructions that every two hours through the night he was to give his wife a small quantity of beef tea, or a tea-spoon full of wine in a table-spoon of water. Each time he did so, he prayed for about a minute with her.
On the Friday evening, Dr Pritchard told Muller that he would feel easier if his colleague Dr Black could see Mrs Muller as the situation was very grave. Muller replied that he was perfectly satisfied with Pritchard’s treatment but that if he would feel happier then he must make an appointment.
On the Saturday morning, Muller stayed at home with Mary to be with her as long as possible. After lunch he said:
‘My darling, I am sorry to have to leave you, but I shall return as soon as I can.’
‘You leave me with Jesus,’ was the reply.
That night her pains grew worse than ever before. Muller spent nearly the whole night trying to ease her suffering; Mary was now quite unable to move any of her limbs.
At ten in the morning Dr Pritchard called, followed an hour later by Dr Black, who told Muller that all hope of recovery had gone. After the doctors had left, Muller ‘felt it now my duty to tell my precious wife, that the Lord Jesus was coming for her’. Her reply was:
‘He will come soon!’
Muller took this to indicate that she believed that He would soon return and that they would then be re-united.
At half-past one, Muller gave her her medicine, and a little later a spoonful of wine in water. Mary had difficulty in swallowing, and a few minutes later her speech became indistinct. She tried to make George understand, but he could not. He sat quietly beside her and noticed ‘that her dear bright eyes were set’. He called Lydia and Miss Groves and told them that Mary was dying. At once they came into the room and were joined by Mrs Mannering, another of Mary’s sisters. For two and a half hours, the four of them sat and watched the last moments of their loved one, until at twenty-past four,
Sunday February 6th 1870 Mary Muller passed away. Muller fell to his knees and thanked God for her release, and for having taken her to Himself, and asked the Lord to help and support them. She had died in the fortieth year of their marriage.
On February nth 1870 Muller himself‘sustained by the Lord to the utmost’ conducted the funeral service at Bethesda and at the cemetery. About 1,200 children, who were able to walk, followed in the procession; they were joined by the staff from Ashley Down who could be spared, and hundreds of believers from Bethesda. Before he preached his funeral sermon it is said that Muller sat in the vestry repeating again and again, ‘Oh Mary, my Mary!’. He took as his text, ‘Thou art good, and doest good’, from Psalm 119:68. He recalled that his wife had become the first member of Bethesda church when it w?s formed in August 1832; that she had lived to see 2,700 believers received into communion; and that when she died there were 920 in communion about 1,500 having either died, left Bristol or joined other churches.
After a detailed outline of her life he said: ‘Perhaps all Christians who have heard me, will have no difficulty in giving their hearty assent that “the Lord was good, and doing good” in leaving her to me so long; but I ask these dear Christian friends to go further with me, and to say from their hearts, “The Lord was good, and doing good” in the removal of that useful, lovely, excellent wife from her husband, and that at the very time when, humanly speaking, he needed her more than ever. While I am saying this, I feel the void in my heart. That lovely one is no more with me, to share my joys and sorrows. Every day I miss her more and more. Every day I see more and more how great her loss to the orphans. Yet, -without an effort, my inmost soul habitually joys in the joy of that loved departed one. Her happiness gives joy to me. My dear daughter and self would not have her back, were it possible to produce it by the turn of the hand. God himself has done it, we are satisfied with Him...’
Muller proceeded to give five reasons in support of this somewhat startling revelation that he would not wish his wife back with him even if this were possible. First, he said, because his wife ‘had worked long, very long and very much on earth, and He was now pleased to appoint her to other service’; second, Mary had been released ‘from her pain and suffering, which she had endured to so great a degree during the last week of her life’; third, she would now be kept ‘from a state of protracted suffering, to which, humanly speaking, she would have been subject, even if life should have been continued to her’; fourth, God ‘ “was good, and doing good” in taking her, the weaker vessel, first, instead of removing me and leaving her. I adore the Lord’s kindness in this, in sparing her this heavy trial, as I think it would have been to her, and I gladly bear it for her’. Finally, ‘He was, most of all, “good, and doing good” in giving to my dearest wife what had been long the desire of her heart, even to be with Jesus.’
Muller concluded his address with these words: ‘As a husband, I feel more and more every day, that I am without this pleasant, useful, loving companion. As the director of the five Orphan Houses, I miss her in numberless ways, and shall miss her yet more and more. But as a child of God, and as a servant of the Lord Jesus, I bow, I am satisfied with the will of my Heavenly Father, I seek by perfect submission to His holy will to glorify Him, I kiss continually the hand that has thus afflicted me; but I also say, I shall meet her again, to spend a happy eternity with her. Will all who hear me now, meet my precious wife? Only those will who have passed sentence upon themselves as guilty sinners, and who have put their trust alone in the Lord Jesus for the salvation of their souls. He came into the world to save sinners, and all who believe in Him, shall be saved; but without faith in the Lord Jesus we cannot be saved. Let all those, who are as yet not reconciled to God, by faith in the Lord Jesus, be in earnestness about their souls, lest suddenly a fever should lay them low and find them unprepared, or lest suddenly the Lord Jesus should return again, before they are prepared to meet Him. May the Lord in mercy grant, that this may not be the case. Amen.’
But, despite these brave words at the funeral, in the months that followed Mary’s death, Muller felt the loss deeply. He recorded that ‘my earthly joy was all but gone’; and about ten days after the bereavement he became, for a while, very unwell. As he recovered from this illness he found that when ‘now between eight and nine o’clock in the evenings, I went home from the Orphan Houses, instead of in company with my beloved Mary, as for so many years past (for she was always with me), I said to myself: “I shall not meet my beloved wife at home, but I shall meet the Lord Jesus, my precious Friend; He will comfort me; and I thanked God, that he had left my beloved daughter to me, who always watched for my arrival, to greet me, and did all she could, to soothe my bereaved heart. But the loss was great, the wound was deep, and, as weeks and months passed on, while continuing habitually not only to be satisfied with God, but also to praise Him, for what He had done in thus bereaving me, the wound seemed to deepen instead of being healed, and the bereavement to be felt more and more: ..
The loss was deeply felt too by the children and old boys and girls who had passed through the homes; Muller received hundreds of letters of sympathy, even months after the event. One such, from one of the first Wilson Street children, arrived on March 19th:
Dear Mr Muller, Not from ingratitude is it, I have not written before, but because I knew you had so many letters; but not a particle do I love dear Mrs Muller less, than those who have written. I think I loved her with you as my parents. True I never knew my parents, to know what it was to love them; but I do know what it is to love you and her, and from my heart I mourn her loss. I know you miss her daily. I miss her going by the house; for I always watched you go by; but now you are alone. I trust it may please God to spare you, for years to come, to us all, as well as to your own dear child and family; for oh! it would be a blank, indeed, were you removed from us. I remain yours very respectfully, ...
The writer of this letter was not alone in her anxiety as to what would happen if Muller were taken.
‘What, Mr Muller, will become of the Orphan-Houses, when you are removed?’ people sometimes asked.
‘The Orphan-Houses,’ Muller would reply, ‘and the land belonging to them, are vested in the hands of eleven trustees, and therefore the Institution stands on the same footing, in this particular, as other charitable Institutions.’
‘But where will you find the man, who will carry on the work in the same spirit in which you do, trusting only in God for everything that in any way is needed in connection with the work?’
‘When the Lord shall have been pleased to remove me from my post, He will prove, that He was not dependent on me, and that He can easily raise up another servant of His, to act on the same principles, on which I have sought to carry on this work.’
People then told Muller that he ought to pray that God would raise up a successor to carry on the work after him, to which he always replied that he did so regularly.
It was during the period of his illness shortly after Mary’s death that Muller sent for James Wright. Since Wright’s boyhood, Muller had watched his ‘consistent godly deportment’, and for nearly twelve years he had been one of Muller’s most valuable helpers in all aspects of the work of the Scriptural Knowledge Institution, including, of course, the children’s work. For some years, George and Mary had prayed specifically that God would fit him to become the successor.
Now in his illness, Muller opened his heart to James Wright and announced to him that he considered it God’s will that he should succeed him. Wright produced a number of reasons why he considered himself unfit for the job, none of which Muller would accept as being valid. Wright’s wife felt that her husband would find the task a great burden and tried to persuade him not to accept; after some weeks, however, she changed her mind. After much hesitation Wright decided that it would not be his duty to refuse any longer. If Muller were taken, James Wright would be his successor. Very shortly after this, Wright’s wife died, and thus within a few months of each other Muller and Wright sustained a similar bereavement.
It was said of Wright that his ‘beautiful face and radiant smile showed, better than any words possibly could, that peace and joy ruled his heart. His dignified yet gracious demeanour at once won the respect of all. Of his faith and love his works bear witness, but it may be added that his humility was equally apparent to an observing mind.’ He was widely known and appreciated as a Bible teacher: ‘his good memory, originality, versatility, wonderful command of language, and profound knowledge of Scripture impressed and riveted his hearers. Many sinners have been wooed to Christ by his loving appeals, and thousands of Christians have had their faith strengthened, and their love for the Lord and His Word greatly deepened, by listening to his helpful exposition of the truth.’
Wright was very fond of music and for many years his beautiful bass voice led the singing at Bethesda. He loved to join a group gathered around a piano or organ and sing hymns from the Bristol Tune Book.
Eighteen months later, on August 4th 1871, Muller recorded in his journal that James Wright ‘asked for the hand of my beloved daughter. This request was as unlooked for on my part as anything could have been, while, at the same time, I knew no one, to whom I could so willingly entrust this my choicest earthly treasure.’ A little later he recorded:
My beloved daughter had the greatest conflict in her mind for about two weeks, before she accepted this offer, her only and great difficulty being because of having to leave me. It was only on beseeching her, not to let this stand in the way, and pointing out to her, how great my comfort and joy would be in seeing her united to such a husband, that she at last decided to accept the offer.
They were married at Bethesda on November 16th 1871: Wright was forty-five and Lydia thirty-nine. Wright later described their life together as a time of ‘unbroken felicity’.
Bethesda was soon to see another wedding.