become and continue as little children, not losing,
but rather gaining, childlikeness of spirit. The disciple's maturest
manhood is only the perfection of his childhood. George Muller was never
so really, truly, fully a little child in all his relations to his
Father, as when in the ninety-third year of his age.

Being thus providentially kept from the Indies, he began definite work
at home, though yet having little real knowledge of the divine art of
coworking with God. He spoke to others of their soul's welfare, and
wrote to former companions in sin, and circulated tracts and missionary
papers. Nor were his labours without encouragement, though sometimes his
methods were awkward or even grotesque, as when, speaking to a beggar in
the fields about his need of salvation, he tried to overcome apathetic
indifference by speaking louder and louder, as though, mere bawling in
his ears would subdue the hardness of his heart!

In 1826 he first attempted to _preach._ An unconverted schoolmaster some
six miles from Halle he was the means of turning to the Lord; and this
schoolmaster asked him to come and help an aged, infirm clergyman in the
parish. Being a student of divinity he was at liberty to preach, but
conscious ignorance had hitherto restrained him. He thought, however,
that by committing some other man's sermon to memory he might profit the
hearers, and so he undertook it. It was slavish work to prepare, for it
took most of a week to memorize the sermon, and it was joyless work to
deliver it, for there was none of the living power that attends a man's
God-given message and witness. His conscience was not yet enlightened
enough to see that he was acting a false part in preaching another's
sermon as his own; nor had he the spiritual insight to perceive that it
is not God's way to set up a man to preach who knows not enough of
either His word or the life of the Spirit within him, to prepare his own
discourse. How few even among preachers feel preaching to be _a divine
vocation and not a mere human profession;_ that a ministry of the truth
implies the witness of experience, and that to preach another man's
sermon is, at the best, unnatural walking on stilts!

George Muller 'got through' his painful effort of August 27, 1826,
reciting this memoriter sermon at eight A.M. in the chapel of ease, and
three hours later in the parish church. Being asked to preach again in
the afternoon, but having no second sermon committed to me