OTHER CHARACTERISTICS
361
the vigor of that indrawal is perpetually changing, much as the vigor of
our absorption of material nutriment changes from hour to hour.
“I call these ‘facts’ because I think that some scheme of this kind is
the only one consistent with our actual evidence; too complex to sum-
marize here. How, then, should we act on these facts? Plainly we must
endeavor to draw in as much spiritual life as possible, and we must place
our minds in any attitude which experience shows to be favorable to
such indrawal. Prayer is the general name for that attitude of open and
earnest expectancy. If we then ask to whom to pray, the answer (strangely
enough) must be that that does not much matter. The prayer is not
indeed a purely subjective thing; — it means a real increase in intensity of
absorption of spiritual power or grace; — but we do not know enough
of what takes place in the spiritual world to know how the prayer operates;
— who is cognizant of it, or through what channel the grace is given.
Better let children pray to Christ, who is at any rate the highest indi-
vidual spirit of whom we have any knowledge. But it would be rash to say
that Christ himself hears us; while to say that God hears us is merely to
restate the first principle, — that grace flows in from the infinite spiritual
world.”
Let us reserve the question of the truth or falsehood of the belief
that power is absorbed until the next lecture, when our dogmatic
conclusions, if we have any, must be reached. Let this lecture still
confine itself to the description of phenomena; and as a concrete
example of an extreme sort, of the way in which the prayerful life
may still be led, let me take a case with which most of you must
be acquainted, that of George Müller of Bristol, who died in 1898.
Müller’s prayers were of the crassest petitional order. Early in life
he resolved on taking certain Bible promises in literal sincerity,
and on letting himself be fed, not by his own worldly foresight, but
by the Lord’s hand. He had an extraordinarily active and success-
ful career, among the fruits of which were the distribution of over
two million copies of the Scripture text, in different languages; the
equipment of several hundred missionaries; the circulation of more
than a hundred and eleven million of scriptural books, pamphlets,
and tracts; the building of five large orphanages, and the keeping
and educating of thousands of orphans; finally, the establishment
of schools in which over a hundred and twenty-one thousand
youthful and adult pupils were taught. In the course of this work
Mr. Müller received and administered nearly a million and a half
of pounds sterling, and traveled over two hundred thousand miles
362
THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
of sea and land.
1
During the sixty-eight years of his ministry, he
never owned any property except his clothes and furniture, and
cash in hand; and he left, at the age of eighty-six, an estate worth
only a hundred and sixty pounds.
His method was to let his general wants be publicly known, but not to
acquaint other people with the details of his temporary necessities. For the
relief of the latter, he prayed directly to the Lord, believing that sooner or
later prayers are always answered if one have trust enough. “When I lose
such a thing as a key,” he writes, “I ask the Lord to direct me to it, and
I look for an answer to my prayer; when a person with whom I have made
an appointment does not come, according to the fixed time, and I begin
to be inconvenienced by it, I ask the Lord to be pleased to hasten him
to me, and I look for an answer; when I do not understand a passage of the
word of God, I lift up my heart to the Lord that he would be pleased by
his Holy Spirit to instruct me, and I expect to be taught, though I do not
fix the time when, and the manner how it should be; when I am going
to minister in the Word, I seek help from the Lord, and . . . am not cast
down, but of good cheer because I look for his assistance.”
Müller’s custom was to never run up bills, not even for a week. “As the
Lord deals out to us by the day, . . . the week’s payment might become
due and we have no money to meet it; and thus those with whom we deal
might be inconvenienced by us, and we be found acting against the com-
mandment of the Lord: ‘Owe no man anything.’ From this day and hence-
forward whilst the Lord gives to us our supplies by the day, we purpose to
pay at once for every article as it is purchased, and never to buy anything
except we can pay for it at once, however much it may seem to be needed,
and however much those with whom we deal may wish to be paid only
by the week.”
The articles needed of which Müller speaks were the food, fuel, etc., of
his orphanages. Somehow, near as they often come to going without a
meal, they hardly ever seem actually to have done so. “Greater and more
manifest nearness of the Lord’s presence I have never had than when after
breakfast there were no means for dinner for more than a hundred persons;
or when after dinner there were no means for the tea, and yet the Lord
provided the tea; and all this without one single human being having
been informed about our need. . . . Through Grace my mind is so fully
assured of the faithfulness of the Lord, that in the midst of the greatest
need, I am enabled in peace to go about my other work. Indeed, did not
1
My authority for these statistics is the little work on Müller, by F
REDERIC
G. W
ARNE
,
New York, 1898.