The Life of Trust, George Müller [e ink epub reader .txt] 📗

and he has supplied our need and not suffered us to be confounded, blessed be his name! My dear wife, as well as myself, from the very first had a strong desire to help you a little in your blessed work of love and labor of faith; but, for a long time, owing to the continued ill-health of my wife, and the growing expenses of our family, we never seemed to have any money to spare; so all we did was to wish, desire, and talk about it, and say how happy we should be if the Lord would enable us to do so. At length, we both felt we were acting wrong, and on the eighth of August last we solemnly decided we would give the Lord back a tenth of the money he was pleased to send us, though at that time we were very poor, I may add in deeper poverty than we had ever been before; yet, under those circumstances, we were enabled in the strength of the Lord to come to the above decision and act up to it that very morning; and the peace and joy we both felt it is in vain for me to attempt to describe. The Lord has kept us firm ever since, and instead of having less for our own use, we have had even more; so, dear sir, this sum is the fruit of six months’ prayers. Pardon me for troubling you with so long an account of so trifling a sum; but I want you to bless our heavenly Father for his goodness to us his unworthy servants, and to remember us in your petitions at a throne of grace.

I am, my dear brother,
Yours very affectionately and respectfully,
*   *   *   *

During the year 1859-60 there have been received for the orphans 3,542 separate sums. Of these there were 1,494 under 5s., 560 above 5s. and not exceeding 10s., 614 above 10s. and not exceeding £1, 288 above £1 and not exceeding £2, 411 above £2 and not exceeding £5, 93 above £5 and not exceeding £10, 49 above £10 and not exceeding £20, 10 above £20 and under £50, 11 of £50, 1 of £59, 19s. 9d., 1 of £62, 17s., 1 of £89, 4s., 1 of £96, 12s. 3d., 5 of £100, 2 of £500, and 1 of £1,500. Among these donations were some from East India, Australia, Cape of Good Hope, Saxony, Holland, South America, United States, from vessels on the ocean, and from missionaries among the heathen.

During the year under consideration twenty-three schools in England were supported or aided by the funds of the Institution. In all of these the teachers are persons of piety, and instruction is given not only in secular knowledge, but in the way of salvation. Without reckoning the orphans, 13,124 souls have been brought under habitual instruction in the things of God in these various schools; besides the many thousands in the schools in the various parts of England, Ireland, Scotland, British Guiana, the West Indies, the East Indies, etc., which have been to a greater or less degree assisted.

The total amount of means which has been expended during the last twenty-six years in connection with the schools, which have been either entirely or in part supported by the funds of this Institution, amounts to £9,275, 0s. 8½d.

The number of Bibles, Testaments, and portions of the Holy Scriptures, which have been circulated since May 26, 1859, is as follows: Bibles sold, 579. Bibles given away, 1,120. Testaments sold, 409. Testaments given away, 725. Copies of the Psalms sold, 63. Other small portions of the Holy Scriptures sold, 248.

There have been circulated since March 5, 1834, through the medium of this Institution, 24,768 Bibles, 15,100 Testaments, 719 copies of the Psalms, and 1,876 other small portions of the Holy Scriptures.

The amount of the funds of the Institution spent during the past year on the circulation of the Holy Scriptures is £398, 3s. 7d. The total amount spent since March 5, 1834, is £5,681, 13s. 3½d.

During the past year has been spent of the funds of the Institution, in aid of missionary efforts at home and abroad, the sum of £5,019, 6s. 1d. By this sum one hundred and one laborers in the word and doctrine, in various parts of the world, have been to a greater or less degree assisted. It is an interesting fact that these laborers are located in England, Scotland, Ireland, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Sardinia, Canada, Nova Scotia, East India, China, and British Guiana.

The laborers aided by the Institution were peculiarly blessed during the year 1859-60. While the preaching of those laboring in foreign lands was very useful, the brethren preaching in Ireland and Scotland were signally favored with success, and were permitted to see in a wonderful measure the fruit of their prayers and toils. A single extract only can be given from the letter of a laborer in Scotland.

A devoted servant of Christ has been laboring in a manufacturing town in Scotland, where, by means of schools, Bible classes, visiting from house to house, and preaching the gospel among thousands of the most wretched, most debased, and most ignorant, he seeks to win souls for the Lord. In this service he has been going on year after year. In a measure his labors had been blessed up to the period of the last Report, but far more abundantly since, as the following account, given by himself to me in a letter dated Oct. 28, 1859, will show:—

“This month, through which we have passed, has brought me to a point in my history which for years I have contemplated and looked forward to with deeper and more intense desire than to any anticipated event in my whole life. More than thirty years ago there sprang up in my soul a longing and craving for the effusion of the Holy Ghost on the church and on the world, such as would extend throughout the whole of Scotland. For this I have labored, and spoken, and prayed increasingly. As I grew older, the craving for this blessing grew stronger. To see it became the ruling passion of my soul, and, as years rolled away, my hope of seeing it realized strengthened apace. On this season of expected blessing we seem at length to have entered. The religious movement is creeping steadily along the whole of the west of Scotland. It has not acquired a sudden or very powerful momentum. We are, so far as I can judge, in the initiatory stage in all the points where the work has found a settlement. A sound has gone out as from the Lord; the rumor travels on, and in its course awakens the careless, opens the ear, quickens the attention, and everywhere is making preparation for something coming. This note of preparation is calling the people together. Their ear is open to listen. In every place this hearing is bringing faith in its train; men are turning to God; intensity is given to those silent cases of conviction where for months or years there has been concern ebbing and flowing with circumstances. Not a few of these have come to light through their concern all at once ripening into deep distress. Forced out of the old ruts in which they have moved, they are forced to venture their all into the hands of Jesus, and are set at liberty. Such has been the process at work here. I am continually falling in with solitary cases, and a number of these have found peace. It would take far more time than I can spare to record their history, and how they obtained deliverance.”

The total amount of the funds of the Institution which has been spent on missionary operations since March 5, 1834, is £34,495, 3s. 4d.

There has been laid out for tracts and books, from May 26, 1859, to May 26, 1860, the sum of £1,650, 11s. 4¾d.; and there have been circulated within the last year 2,562,001 tracts and books. The sum total which has been expended on this object, since Nov. 19, 1840, amounts to £8,064, 12s. 6½d. The total number of all the tracts and books which have been circulated since Nov. 19, 1840, is 11,493,174.

During the past year there were again circulated 676,600 tracts and books more than during the year before. The great number of laborers for God who have been raised up for service within the last two years in various parts of the world, and the mighty working of the Spirit of God, which has created in multitudes a desire gladly to receive tracts and books, account for this. Nor is there in these two particulars a decrease, but a continual increase. So great has been the call for tracts that of late we have sent out repeatedly 100,000 in one week, for gratuitous circulation, and sometimes even more than this. When the mighty working of the Spirit of God commenced in Ireland, I sought from the beginning to send very large supplies of tracts to Belfast and elsewhere, in order that thus the holy flame might be fanned, as it were, and that in the very outset the simplicity of the gospel might be set before the young converts. About two millions of the tracts and books circulated during the past year were given away gratuitously. Hundreds of believers have been engaged in spreading them abroad, not merely in many parts of England, Scotland, and Ireland, but in various other parts of the world.

At the commencement of the last period, there were 672 orphans in the new Orphan Houses No. 1 and No. 2. During the past year were admitted into the two houses 70 orphans. On May 26, 1860, there were just 700 orphans under our care, our full number in the two houses, i. e. in No. 1, 300, in No. 2, 400. The total number of orphans who have been under our care since April 11, 1836, is 1,153.

Without any one having been personally applied to for anything by me, the sum of £133,528, 14s. has been given to me for the orphans, as the result of prayer to God, since the commencement of the work, which sum includes the amount received for the building fund for the houses already built and the one to be built. It may also be interesting to the reader to know that the total amount which has been given for the other objects since the commencement of the work amounts to £51,777, 14s. 11d.; and that which has come in by the sale of Bibles, since the commencement, amounts to £2,530, 4s. 5½d.; by sale of tracts, £3,546, 19s. 1¼d.; and by the payments of the children in the day schools, from the commencement, £2,304, 18s. 9d. Besides this, also, a great variety and number of articles of clothing, furniture, provisions, etc., have been given for the use of the orphans.

Day after day, and year after year, by the help of God, we labor in prayer for the spiritual benefit of the orphans under our care. These our supplications, which have been for twenty-four years brought before the Lord concerning them, have been abundantly answered in former years in the conversion of hundreds from among them. We have also had repeated seasons in which, within a short time, or even all at once, many of the orphans were converted. Such a season we had about three years since, when within a few days about sixty were brought to believe in the Lord Jesus; and such seasons we have had again twice during the past year. The first was in July, 1859, when the Spirit of God wrought so mightily in one school of 120 girls, as that very many, yea, more than one half, were brought under deep concern about the salvation of their souls. This