The majority of his books and many papers were written here. The building was leased after his death. In 1969 the building was badly damaged by the earthquake at Tulbagh. Prof Johan van der Merwe, the rector of Huguenot College at the time, had the building restored and it has served as the rector’s residence for Huguenot College ever since.
House Samuel and Clairvaux represent the spirituality of Dr Andrew Murray, which has been firmly established over the years in the Dutch Reformed Church. This Spirituality can indeed be described as “sober mysticism” (De Villiers 2015) as Murray continually learnt that, from our relationship with God, which he described as “childship of God” (Brummer 2013), we are called and sent to serve in the kingdom of God. This is the source of the motto of Huguenot College: Prayer, Calling, Service. It is significant to see how this form of mysticism has been reconsidered in recent years by South African theologists (Brummer 2013, De Villiers 2015, Hansen 2015).
Aside from the reflections and study on Spirituality by Andrew Murray in his study and on the veranda of Clairvaux, the Mission Institute (Samuel campus) and Huguenot College (Cummings campus) provide a unique testimony of how the believer’s and congregation’s intimate relationship with the triune God has been firmly established in service aimed at the coming of God’s kingdom in South Africa, Africa and the whole world. Andrew Murray sowed the seed of missionary thinking which would be established in the church much later as a missionary calling that viewed our testimony holistically and included the eradication of poverty, the empowerment of women and the restoration of human dignity for all.
