The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George MüllerMüller, George
Religion
The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Müller
Müller, George
Orphanages -- Great Britain; Prayer
6. Suppose, now, you were even to succeed in getting this large Orphan
House built, how will you be able to provide for seven hundred other
orphans? Answer: There is much weight in this objection, looking at it
_naturally_. I am too much a man of business, and too much a person of
calm, quiet, cool calculation, not to feel its force. And indeed, were I
only to look at the thing _naturally_, I should at once be ready to own
that I am going too far; for the increase of expenditure for the support
of these seven hundred other orphans could not be less than eight
thousand pounds a year more, so that the current expenses of the
Scriptural Knowledge Institution, reckoning its present state, and
including those eight thousand pounds, would be about fifteen thousand
pounds a year. Now I am free to own that I have no human prospect of
obtaining such a sum year by year. But while matters stand thus, looking
at them _naturally_, I see no difficulty at all in them _spiritually_.
If according to the will of God I am enabled to go about this intended
second Orphan House; and if, under his help, I shall be enabled to
finish it; he will surely provide for those who are gathered together in
it as long as he shall be pleased to enable me to trust in him for
supplies. And here I look back upon the way in which the Lord has led me
and dealt with me. When, about seventeen years ago, I took up, in
dependence upon the living God for means, two charity schools, with
which the Scriptural Knowledge Institution commenced (and this involved
an expense of less than one hundred pounds a year), I had no certain
prospect of being able to meet even that small sum; but God so helped me
that I had shortly _six_ charity schools. He helped me then, also, and
enabled me to meet all their expenses. When, fifteen years ago, I began
the orphan work, which was connected with far heavier expenses, I had
still less prospect, according to natural reason, of being able to meet
_them_; but I trusted in God, and he helped me, and he not only enabled
me to meet the current expenses of thirty orphans in the first house
rented for them, but enabled me also soon to open another for thirty-six
more, and I was also enabled to meet all those expenses; for as I had
begun in faith in the living God, and not in putting my trust in my
brethren in Christ, so I was not confounded. After I had gone on some
time with these orphans in the two rented houses, about thirteen years
ago the Lord was pleased greatly to encourage me and to increase my
faith by a donation of five hundred pounds for the orphans; for up to
that period I had never received more than one hundred pounds at once.
But this kind donor, a stranger to me up to that time, suggested to me
the propriety of investing this sum and using only the interest of it,
as I could not expect to have the orphans supported for a continuance in
the way they had been till then; for that such institutions must depend
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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