eculiarly consecrated.

One Saturday afternoon about the middle of November, 1825, Beta said to
Muller, as they were returning from a walk, that he was going that
evening to a meeting at a believer's house, where he was wont to go on
Saturdays, and where a few friends met to sing, to pray, and to read the
word of God and a printed sermon. Such a programme held out nothing
fitted to draw a man of the world who sought his daily gratifications at
the card-table and in the wine-cup, the dance and the drama, and whose
companionships were found in dissipated young fellows; and yet George
Muller felt at once a wish to go to this meeting, though he could not
have told why. There was no doubt a conscious void within him never yet
filled, and some instinctive inner voice whispered that he might there
find food for his soul-hunger--a satisfying something after which he had
all his life been unconsciously and blindly groping. He expressed the
desire to go, which his friend hesitated to encourage lest such a gay
and reckless devotee of vicious pleasures might feel ill at ease in such
an assembly. However, he called for young Muller and took him to the
meeting.

During his wanderings as a backslider, Beta had both joined and aided
George Muller in his evil courses, but, on coming back from the Swiss
tour, his sense of sin had so revived as to constrain him to make a full
confession to his father; and, through a Christian friend, one Dr.
Richter, a former student at Halle, he had been made acquainted with the
Mr. Wagner at whose dwelling the meetings were held. The two young men
therefore went together, and the former backslider was used of God to
"convert a sinner from the error of his way and save a soul from death
and hide a multitude of sins."

That Saturday evening was the turning-point in George Muller's history
and destiny. He found himself in strange company, amid novel
surroundings, and breathing a new atmosphere. His awkwardness made him
feel so uncertain of his welcome that he made some apology for being
there. But he never forgot brother Wagner's gracious answer: "Come as
often as you please! house and heart are open to you." He little knew
then what he afterward learned from blessed experience, what joy fills
and thrills the hearts of praying saints when an evil-doer turns his
feet, however timidly, toward a place of prayer!

All present sat down and sang a hymn. Then a brother--who afterward went
to Africa under the