Besides being able to meet the expenses for the orphans and the other objects, amounting altogether to £7,832, 7s. 0½d., during this year I was able to add to the building fund £5,242, 18s. 3d. The total income during the year was £13,054, 14s. 4d.
Dec. 31, 1854. During this year there have been received into fellowship 61.
The Lord has been pleased to give me during this year £697, 11s. 5d.
One or the other of my readers may be ready to exclaim, six hundred and ninety-seven pounds eleven shillings fivepence! What a large sum! Not one out of a hundred ministers has such a large salary, nor one out of twenty clergymen such a good living! Should you, esteemed reader, say so, my reply is: Indeed, mine is a happy way for the obtaining of my temporal supplies; but if any one desires to go this way, he must,—
1. Not merely say that he trusts in God, but must really do so. Often individuals profess to trust in God, but they embrace every opportunity where they may directly or indirectly be able to expose their need, and thus seek to induce persons to help them. I do not say it is wrong to make known our wants; but I do say it ill agrees with trust in God to expose our wants for the sake of inducing persons to help us. God will take us at our word. If we say we trust in him, he will try whether we really do so, or only profess to do so; and if indeed we trust in him, we are satisfied to stand with him alone.
2. The individual who desires to go this way must be willing to be rich or poor, as the Lord pleases. He must be willing to know what it is to have an abundance or scarcely anything. He must be willing to leave this world without any possessions.
3. He must be willing to take the money in God’s way, not merely in large sums, but in small. Again and again have I had a single shilling given or sent to me. To have refused such tokens of Christian love would have been ungracious.
4. He must be willing to live as the Lord’s steward. If any one were to begin this way of living, and did not communicate out of that which the Lord gives to him, but hoard it up, or if he would live up to his income, as it is called, then the Lord, who influences the hearts of his children to help him with means, would soon cause those channels to be dried up. How it came that my already good income still more increased so as to come to what it is, I have stated in the early part of this volume; it was when I determined that, by God’s help, his poor and his work should more than ever partake of my means. From that time the Lord was pleased more and more to intrust me with means for my own purse.
Various reasons might have kept me from publishing these accounts; but I have for my object in writing the glory of God, and therefore I delight in thus showing what a loving Master I serve, and how bountifully he supplies my necessities; and I write for the comfort and encouragement of my fellow-believers, that they may be led to trust in God more and more, and therefore I feel it due to them to state how, even with regard to this life, I am amply provided for, though that is not what I seek after.
Up to May 26, 1856, the total income for the building fund was £29,297, 18s. 11½d., so that only about £5,700 more will be required, as far as I am able to see, in order to accomplish to the full my purpose respecting the accommodation for 700 more orphans.