ry. Soon
He may come again but, if He tarry, and I have to fall asleep before His
return, I shall not have been altogether without profit to the
generation to come, were the Lord only to enable me to serve my own
generation. Suppose this objection were a sound one, I ought never to
have commenced the Orphan. Work at all, for fear of what might become of
it after my death, and thus all the hundreds of destitute children
without father and mother, whom the Lord has allowed me to care for,
during the last fifteen years, would not have been taken up by me. The
same argument was again and again used to Franke, my esteemed
countryman, who at Halle, in Prussia, commenced about A.D. 1696, the
largest charitable establishment for poor children that, as far as I
know, exists in the world. He trusted in God alone. He went on trusting
in God alone. And God helped him throughout abundantly. Simply by trust
in the living God the Institutions, resembling a large street rather
than a house, were erected, and about two thousand children instructed
in them. For about thirty years all was going on under his own eye,
until 1727, when it pleased God to take His servant to Himself. At his
death these Institutions were directed by his truly pious son-in-law. It
is true that, at the latter part of the last century, and during the
first part of the present, there was little real vital godliness in
these Institutions; still they were a temporal blessing to many tens of
thousands of young persons even then. So then for several tens of years
they were carried on in a truly Godly way, after Franke's death, and
when afterwards there was but little real, vital godliness found in
these schools, yet tens of thousands of children were benefited at least
for this life. Now these Institutions have existed already 150 years,
and are in existence still: and, if the Lord Jesus tarry, are likely,
humanly speaking, to exist hereafter, as they have existed hitherto.
Suppose then, that dear man of God, A. H. Franke, had listened to the
suggestions of unbelief, and said, I must not undertake this work, for
what will become of it after my death, then all the blessing which
spiritually resulted from it to thousands, and all the temporal benefits
which have resulted from it to hundreds of thousands, would have been
lost. I add, however, this. The New Orphan House has been placed in the
hands of eleven trustees, and has been properly enrolled in Chancery,
and so also,