pon him and in him, we are now to see.

CHAPTER II

THE NEW BIRTH AND THE NEW LIFE

THE lost days of sin, now forever past, the days of heaven upon earth
began to dawn, to grow brighter till the perfect day.

We enter the second period of this life we are reviewing. After a score
of years of evil-doing George Muller was converted to God, and the
radical nature of the change strikingly proves and displays the
sovereignty of Almighty Grace. He had been kept amid scenes of
outrageous and flagrant sin, and brought through many perils, as well as
two serious illnesses, because divine purposes of mercy were to be
fulfilled in him. No other explanation can adequately account for the
facts.

Let those who would explain such a conversion without taking God into
account remember that it was at a time when this young sinner was as
careless as ever; when he had not for years read the Bible or had a copy
of it in his possession; when he had seldom gone to a service of
worship, and had never yet even heard one gospel sermon; when he had
never been told by any believer what it is to believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ and to live by God's help and according to His Word; when, in
fact, he had no conception of the first principles of the doctrine of
Christ, and knew not the real nature of a holy life, but thought all
others to be as himself, except in the degree of depravity and iniquity.
This young man had thus grown to manhood without having learned that
rudimental truth that sinners and saints differ not in degree but in
kind; that if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation; yet the hard
heart of such a man, at such a time and in such conditions, was so
wrought upon by the Holy Spirit that he suddenly found entrance into a
new sphere of life, with new adaptations to its new atmosphere.

The divine Hand in this history is doubly plain when, as we now look
back, we see that this was also the period of preparation for his
life-work--a preparation the more mysterious because he had as yet no
conception or forecast of that work. During the next ten years we shall
watch the divine Potter, to Whom George Muller was a chosen vessel for
service, moulding and fitting the vessel for His use. Every step is one
of preparation, but can be understood only in the light which that
future casts backward over the unique ministry to the church and the
world, to which this new convert was all unconsciously separated by God
and was to become so p