."

The thoughtful reader must see in all this a man of weak faith, feeding
and nourishing his trust in God that his faith may grow strong. He uses
the promise of a prayer-hearing God as a staff to stay his conscious
feebleness, that he may lean hard upon the strong Word which cannot
fail. He records the day when he thus takes this staff in hand, and the
very petitions which are the burdens which he seeks to lay on God, so
that his act of committal may be the more complete and final. Could God
ever dishonour such trust?

It was in this devout reading on his knees that his whole soul was first
deeply moved by that phrase,

"A FATHER OF THE FATHERLESS." (Psalm lxviii. 5.)

He saw this to be one of those "names" of Jehovah which He reveals to
His people to lead them to trust in Him, as it is written in Psalm ix.
10:

"They that know Thy name
Will put their trust in Thee."

These five words from the sixty-eighth psalm became another of his
life-texts, one of the foundation stones of all his work for the
fatherless. These are his own words:

"By the help of God, this shall be my argument before Him, respecting
the orphans, in the hour of need. He is their Father, and therefore has
pledged Himself, as it were, to provide for them; and I have only to
remind Him of the need of these poor children in order to have it
supplied."

This is translating the promises of God's word, not only into praying,
but into living, doing, serving. Blessed was the hour when Mr. Muller
learned that one of God's chosen names is "the Father of the
fatherless"!

To sustain such burdens would have been quite impossible but for faith
in such a God. In reply to oft-repeated remarks of visitors and
observers who could not understand the secret of his peace, or how any
man who had so many children to clothe and feed could carry such
prostrating loads of care, he had one uniform reply: "By the grace of
God, this is no cause of anxiety to me. These children I have years ago
cast upon the Lord. The whole work is His, and it becomes me to be
without carefulness. In whatever points I am lacking, in this point I am
able by the grace of God to roll the burden upon my heavenly Father."*

* Journal 1:285

In tens of thousands of cases this peculiar title of God, chosen by
Himself and by Himself declared, became to Mr. Muller a peculiar
revelation of God, suited to his special need. The natural inferences
drawn from such a t