George Müller of Bristol, and His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing GodPierson, Arthur T. (Arthur Tappan)
Religion
George Müller of Bristol, and His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God
Pierson, Arthur T. (Arthur Tappan)
Müller, George, 1805-1898; Orphanages -- Great Britain; Prayer
How sovereign are God's ways of working! In such a sinner as Muller,
theologians would have demanded a great 'law work' as the necessary
doorway to a new life. Yet there was at this time as little deep
conviction of guilt and condemnation as there was deep knowledge of God
and of divine things, and perhaps it was because there was so little of
the latter that there was so little of the former.
Our rigid theories of conversion all fail in view of such facts. We have
heard of a little child who so simply trusted Christ for salvation that
she could give no account of any 'law work.' And as one of the old
examiners, who thought there could be no genuine conversion without a
period of deep conviction, asked her, "But, my dear, how about the
Slough of Despond?" she dropped a courtesy and said, "_Please, sir, I
didn't come that way!_"
George Muller's eyes were but half opened, as though he saw men as trees
walking; but Christ had touched those eyes, He knew little of the great
Healer, but somehow he had touched the hem of His garment of grace, and
virtue came out of Him who wears that seamless robe, and who responds
even to the faintest contact of the soul that is groping after
salvation. And so we meet here another proof of the infinite variety of
God's working which, like the fact of that working, is so wonderful.
That Saturday evening in November, 1825, was to this young student of
Halle _the parting of the ways._ He had tasted that the Lord is
gracious, though he himself could not account for the new relish for
divine things which made it seem too long to wait a week for another
meal; so that thrice before the Saturday following he sought the house
of brother Wagner, there, with the help of brethren, to search the
Scriptures.
We should lose one of the main lessons of this life-story by passing too
hastily over such an event as this conversion and the exact manner of
it, for here is to be found the first great step in God's preparation of
the workman for his work.
Nothing is more wonderful in history than the unmistakable signs and
proofs of _preadaptation._ Our life-occurrences are not _disjecta
membra_--scattered, disconnected, and accidental fragments. In God's
book all these events were written beforehand, when as yet there was
nothing in existence but the plan in God's mind--to be fashioned in
continuance in actual history--as is perhaps suggested in Psalm cxxxix.
16 (margin).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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