sted to my father, and which he had
to make up; till one day, as he had repeatedly missed money, he
detected my theft, by depositing a counted sum in the room where I was,
and leaving me to myself for a while. Being thus left alone, I took some
of the money, and hid it under my foot in my shoe. When my father, after
his return, had counted and missed the money, I was searched and my
theft detected.

[Footnote 11: The opinion is often entertained that persons who
become eminent for power in prayer and nearness of communion with
God, owe their attainments to natural excellence of character, or
to peculiarly favoring circumstances of early education. The
narrative of the youth of Mueller exhibits the fallaciousness of
this view, and shows that the attainments which he made are within
the reach of any one who will "ask of God, that giveth to _all men
liberally_ and upbraideth not."--ED.]

When I was between ten and eleven years of age I was sent to
Halberstadt, there to be prepared for the university; for my father's
desire was that I should become a clergyman; not, indeed, that thus I
might serve God, but that I might have a comfortable living. My time was
now spent in studying, reading novels, and indulging, though so young,
in sinful practices. Thus it continued till I was fourteen years old,
when my mother was suddenly removed. The night she was dying, I, not
knowing of her illness, was playing at cards till two in the morning,
and on the next day, being the Lord's day, I went with some of my
companions in sin to a tavern, and then we went about the streets half
intoxicated.

This bereavement made no lasting impression on my mind. I grew worse and
worse. Three or four days before I was confirmed, and thus admitted to
partake of the Lord's Supper, I was guilty of gross immorality; and the
very day before my confirmation, when I was in the vestry with the
clergyman to confess my sins, after a formal manner, I defrauded him;
for I handed over to him only the twelfth part of the fee which my
father had given me for him. In this state of heart, without prayer,
without true repentance, without faith, without knowledge of the plan of
salvation, I was confirmed, and took the Lord's Supper, on the Sunday
after Easter, 1820. Yet I was not without some feeling about the
solemnity of the thing, and stayed at home in the afternoon and evening,
whilst the other boys and girls, who had been confirmed with me, walked