London Missionary Society--fell on his knees and
prayed for God's blessing on the meeting. That _kneeling before God in
prayer_ made upon Muller an impression never lost. He was in his
twenty-first year, and yet he had _never before seen any one on his
knees praying,_ and of course had never himself knelt before God,--the
Prussian habit being to stand in public prayer.

A chapter was read from the word of God, and--all meetings where the
Scriptures were expounded, unless by an ordained clergyman, being under
the ban as irregular--a printed sermon was read. When, after another
hymn, the master of the house prayed, George Muller was inwardly saying:
"I am much more learned than this illiterate man, but I could not pray
as well as he." Strange to say, a new joy was already springing up in
his soul for which he could have given as little explanation as for his
unaccountable desire to go to that meeting. But so it was; and on the
way home he could not forbear saying to Beta: "All we saw on our journey
to Switzerland, and all our former pleasures, are as nothing compared to
this evening."

Whether or not, on reaching his own room, he himself knelt to pray he
could not recall, but he never forgot that a new and strange peace and
rest somehow found him as he lay in bed that night. Was it God's wings
that folded over him, after all his vain flight away from the true nest
where the divine Eagle flutters over His young?

How sovereign are God's ways of working! In such a sinner as Muller,
theologians would have demanded a great 'law work' as the necessary
doorway to a new life. Yet there was at this time as little deep
conviction of guilt and condemnation as there was deep knowledge of God
and of divine things, and perhaps it was because there was so little of
the latter that there was so little of the former.

Our rigid theories of conversion all fail in view of such facts. We have
heard of a little child who so simply trusted Christ for salvation that
she could give no account of any 'law work.' And as one of the old
examiners, who thought there could be no genuine conversion without a
period of deep conviction, asked her, "But, my dear, how about the
Slough of Despond?" she dropped a courtesy and said, "_Please, sir, I
didn't come that way!_"

George Muller's eyes were but half opened, as though he saw men as trees
walking; but Christ had touched those eyes, He knew little of the great
Healer, but somehow he had touched th