Note: Guest appearance from Timothy Young, by coercion. He is doing a series of book reports on books he is reading, also by coercion, but I think he's enjoying them too.
My Dear Reader,
This is a report on a book recently
read titled George Müller of Bristol. It is a 462 pages long, counting
everything from preface to the last appendix. It has 24 chapters of good length
(good is around ten pages each my opinion). It has 13 appendixes labeled from
"a" to "n". The author of this doorstopper is Arthur T. Pierson who met Mr.
Müller in the latter's later life.
It was written very shortly after the
subject's death in 1896 on March 10th. (coincidently this report is being
written on the 119th anniversary of this date) The edition I got a hold of might
very well be from the first patch printed in the USA, however in perfect
discordance to the usual habit, it has no date of printing and thus this a
guess.
In the first chapter the author covers
briefly the childhood, teenage, and early twenties of George Müller. George
Müller was born as any one who reads Wikipedia can ascertain on the 27th of
September in 1805 in Prussia. His father was a tax collector and they were
comparatively well to do.
His father showed favoritism towards
him over his brother which was detrimental to the early family. He
was undisciplined and quickly became a proficient liar. His father gave both
boys amounts of money which they wasted, and when questioned simply lied about.
When caught and punished they did not reform, but only evolved more elaborate
methods of cheating or robbing their father. He not only stole his father's
money, but even went after government money under his father's
care.
Despite this, for some strange reason
his father sent him to a cathedral
school for training to enter university so that he could be a pastor in the
Lutheran Church. Now this sheds considerable light on the state of the German
church in the 1800s if a boy who was well known to be a thief, cheat, and able
liar should be selected for a pastor.
His habits did not dissipate because of
the this separation, but seemed to grow only the faster, so that when his mother
lay dying it was discovered that their fourteen year old son was drunk in the
streets. Her death did not even rouse his conscience which seems at this point
to have been well near dead. He entered training for confirmation and was not
changed at all by this. Indeed when his father gave him money that was
customarily given for the confirmation he stole eleven twelfths of it. This is
not usually counted to be a sign of true repentance. As to the rest of his
school life, university, and pre-conversation life he carried on in the same
general path.
He and a group of others similar to him
by a dint of exceptional lying got a hold of a number of passports and visited
Switzerland in attempts of indulging their sinful passions more fully. When
this was done the group returned to Germany. One of their number felt guilty
and determined to reform and invited George to the meeting. George was there
saved.
He was there it seems, truly
converted. In 1826 he began to think of mission work after reading missionary
journals (a good way of starting) and was beginning to go that way when he was
somewhat distracted by a girl. To say somewhat is actually a little of an
understatement, for he almost seemed to shut down all his prayer and any other
sign of being a Christian during this period. At the end of six weeks however
this changed with his younger brother going to Poland to be a missionary amongst
the Polish Jews. This shocked George into the right way, for his brother had
been comparatively wealthy, and had all the more reason to stay in Germany then
he.
After that he determined to go to
England (After much prayer as was the course from this point of his whole
life). He was there challenged on the subject of baptism, and after
an private study of the Bible he determined that it was, "of all revealed
truths, not one is more clearly revealed in the Scriptures-- not even the
doctrine of justification by faith-- and that subject has only become obscured
by men not having been willing to take the Scriptures alone to decide the
point."
Shortly after this he also determined
to cease taking a fixed salary from that point onward. On October 7th 1830 he
married a Miss Mary Grover (Spoiler: the author does not spend much longer on
the subject then I just did.)
In 1835 he opened an orphanage which is
considered by many to be his main life work. His main difference fromn others
of the time though was this, he asked of no man (or woman) anything, except
orphans at first. He was extremely careful that he did not let himself or
anyone that worked with him ask money of anyone. George Müller was one of the
two men who gave much of the impetus to what is called faith missions. Hudson
Taylor was inspired by him to go to China with the same mindset that he would
not ask of any man for money, but solely rely on what God gave him in answer to
prayer.
From 1875 he took less of the lead in
the work in the orphan houses, and instead went on missionary journeys on every
inhabited continent except South America, and for the next seventeen years of
his life he continued speaking in them. Recall this, he started at the age of
seventy, and continued into his late eighties. From his tours alone he would
have been remembered as a great man, but this after a full life's work! For the
last six years of his life he returned to his home in England, and continued
preaching to the Sunday of that week and giving out the hymns on the Wednesday
night prayer meeting of the week that he died.
If a man is to be judged by his
funeral, George Müller did very well for a man who had not one hundred English
pounds to his name. Tens of thousands of people lined the route of the
procession. They then stopped at Orphan House number three (of five) and had a
service. After this the procession made for Bethesda where there was a second
service, where there was standing space only. Nearly eighty carriages
followed the procession to the cemetery where he was laid to rest. This is
very impressive when one considers that this was only four days after his
death.
Though he died then at a goodly age,
his works have continued to this day. His work amongst the orphans is what he
is best remembered for, but this is not his only work. He served from 1836
roughly in connection with the church as the senior pastor/elder. His
missionary efforts are at least as great as many others of that century, and
much greater then many of this century. His yearly Reports are one of the
strongest proofs of the effectiveness of prayer that has existed. His secret--
it does him injustice to call it that, for he proclaimed it broadly-- was his
prayer. If the saying, "a man is only what he is when on his knees" is true he
was a giant rarely matched throughout all church history.
