among the Jews, and read the Scriptures
regularly with about fifty Jewish boys.

After a serious illness Brother Müller was
obliged to go into the country for recovery of
his health. He went to Teignmouth, there
preached at the opening of Ebenezer Chapel,
and became linked in friendship with the
Brother Henry Craik, who afterwards was
the associate of all his labours. Doubt was
arising in George Müller's mind as to the
Scriptural nature of his connection with the
Society for the Conversion of the Jews. In
serving the society he should serve men;
whereas, was he not bound to do only the
bidding of the Lord? Again, he would
need to be ordained, and he could not
conscientiously submit to be ordained by
unconverted men, professing to communicate what
they have not themselves. Also, he was not
satisfied with the position of a religious
society so constituted that it sought for its
heads, not the best men, but the most
wealthy, or those highest in worldly rank.
There was no instance of a poor good man
presiding over any of its meetings. After
much prayer and consideration, he expressed
his doubts, and his connexion with the
society thenceforward ceased. He was at
that time preaching in Devonshire, and
designing to preach as a wandering missionary
in divers parts of the country; but he was
eventually persuaded to accept, on condition
that he was not to be held bound to the post,
the fixed office of minister to Ebenezer
Chapel, Teignmouth, with fifty-five pounds as
subscription from his flock. Thirty pounds
of that he soon afterwards perilled by a
change of view on the subject of baptism.
Nearly at the same time, being twenty-five
years old, he married the lady before-mentioned,
and about three weeks after marriage
upon conscientious scruples, gave up
altogether the receipt of a fixed salary; after a
few more days, he established the box in his
chapel, and not long afterwards, after a much
harder struggle of faith, he and his wife
determined thenceforth to ask no man for help,
also to lay up no treasure upon earth, but, giving
all in alms, to have no care about the morrow,
and trust wholly in prayer for the supply of
every want. Thus, for a day of sickness, or
for expected births of children, nothing ever
was laid by. Excess as it came was distributed
to those who needed. For some years
even the rent-day at the Orphan-house was
left uncared-for till it came, when means of
paying the rent could be prayed for. But in
one year prayer failed; the rent was not
provided until three days after the time
when it lawfully fell due, and that being
accepted as a Divine admonition to lay by
every week the portion due on such account,
it afterwards was cared for from week to
week as conscientiously as it had formerlv
been left out of account.

In the year eighteen hundred and thirty-two,
Brother Craik having already left
Devonshire for Bristol, Brother Müller felt
that the call on him to go also to Bristol was
from Heaven. He was then travelling and
preaching in various parts of Devonshire. A
few days before his first journeying to Bristol
he went one day to preach at Dartmouth,
when, he says in his journal:—"I have five
answers to prayer to-day: 1. I awoke at
five, for which I had asked the Lord last
night. 2. The Lord removed from my dear
wife an indisposition under which she had
been suffering, and it would have been trying
to me to have had to leave her in that state.
3. The Lord sent us money. 4. There was
a place vacant on the Dartmouth coach. 5.
This evening I was assisted in preaching,
and my own soul refreshed."

At Bristol, Brother Müller shortly afterwards
joined Brother Craik in ministry at
Gideon chapel, establishing there (and
afterwards at another chapel in the town
provided for them, called Bethesda), their peculiar
system of dependence for the supply of
temporal wants wholly on free-will offerings.
In the beginning of next year, Brother
Müller was reading the life of Franké, and
longing to live as he lived, that so "we might
draw much more than we have as yet done out
of our Heavenly Father's bank, for our poor
brethren and sisters." At the close of the
year he writes:—"It is just now four years
since I first began to cast myself upon the
Lord, trusting in him for the supply of my
temporal wants. My little all I then had, at
most worth one hundred pounds a-year, I
gave up for the Lord, having then nothing
left but five pounds. The Lord greatly
honoured this little sacrifice, and he gave me
in return, not only as much as I had given
up, but much more. For during the first
year he sent me already, in one way or
other (including what came to me through
family connection), about one hundred and
thirty pounds. During the second year, one
hundred and fifty-one pounds, eighteen
shillings and eight pence. During the third
year, one hundred and ninety-five pounds,
three shillings. During this year, two
hundred and sixty-seven pounds, fifteen shillings
and eightpence farthing. This income of
donations from the brethren, apart from the
large contribution now sustaining missionary
undertakings and the Orphan-house, now
exceeds six hundred pounds a-year. But
from first to last, at the end of each year all
is gone, excess having been always given to
the poor."

It was in the year eighteen hundred and
thirty-four that Brother Müller founded, at
Bristol, the "Scriptural Knowledge Institution
for Home and Abroad." He thought believers
bound to help in the extension of the faith,
although the world was not to be converted
until after the ingathering of the elect at the
second coming. He could not work with
any established society, because such societies
bow before unconverted persons for the sake