The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

William Jamesmore difficult to trust in God, till at last we give way entirely to ournatural fallen reason and unbelief prevails. How different if one isenabled to wait God’s own time, and to look alone to him for helpand deliverance! When at last help comes, after many seasons ofprayer it may be, how sweet it is, and what a present recompense!Dear Christian reader, if you have never walked in this path of obediencebefore, do so now, and you will then know experimentallythe sweetness of the joy which results from it.”310When the supplies came in but slowly, Muller always consideredthat this was for the trial of his faith and patience When his faithand patience had been sufficiently tried, the Lord would send moremeans. “And thus it has proved,”—I quote from his diary—”for todaywas given me the sum of 2050 pounds, of which 2000 are forthe building fund [of a certain house], and 50 for present necessities.It is impossible to describe my joy in God when I received thisdonation. I was neither excited nor surprised; for I look out for answersto my prayers. I believe that God hears me. Yet my heart was sofull of joy that I could only SIT before God, and admire him, likeDavid in 2 Samuel vii. At last I cast myself flat down upon my faceand burst forth in thanksgiving to God and in surrendering myheart afresh to him for his blessed service.”311George Muller’s is a case extreme in every respect, and in no respectmore so than in the extraordinary narrowness of the man’sintellectual horizon. His God was, as he often said, his businesspartner. He seems to have been for Muller little more than a sort ofsupernatural clergyman interested in the congregation of tradesmenand others in Bristol who were his saints, and in the orphanages andother enterprises, but unpossessed of any of those vaster and wilderand more ideal attributes with which the human imagination elsewherehas invested him. Muller, in short, was absolutelyunphilosophical. His intensely private and practical conception ofhis relations with the Deity continued the traditions of the mostprimitive human thought.312 When we compare a mind like his310 Op. cit., p. 383, abridged.311 Ibid., p. 323.312 I cannot resist the temptation of quoting an expression of an even417