1897

A warm summer day found me slowly walking up the shady groves of Ashley Hill, Bristol. At the top there met my gaze the immense buildings which shelter over two thousand orphans, built by a man who has given to the world the most striking object lesson in faith it has ever seen.

The first house was on the right, and there among his own people, in plain, unpretentious apartments, lived the saintly patriarch, George Mueller. Passing through the lodge gate, I paused a moment to look at House No. 3, one of the five erected at a cost of $600,000 (four and a half million today).

The bell was answered by an orphan who conducted me up a lofty stone staircase and into one of the private rooms of the venerable founder of that great institution. Mr. Mueller had attained the remarkable age of ninety-one. As I stood in his presence, veneration filled my mind. “Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man” (Leviticus 19:32).