was one which came not with observation,' the
sceptre of her influence was far wider in its sway than will ever be
appreciated by those who were strangers to her personal and domestic
life. She was a rare woman and her price was above rubies. The heart of
her husband safely trusted, in her, and the great family of orphans who
were to her as children rise up even to this day to call her blessed.

Married life has often its period of estrangement, even when temporary
alienation yields to a deeper love, as the parties become more truly
wedded by the assimilation of their inmost being to one another. But to
Mr. and Mrs. Muller there never came any such experience of even
temporary alienation. From the first, love grew, and with it, mutual
confidence and trust. One of the earliest ties which bound these two in
one was the bond of a _common self-denial._ Yielding literal obedience
to Luke xii. 33, they sold what little they had and gave alms,
henceforth laying up no treasures on earth (Matthew vi. 19-34; xix. 21.)
The step then taken--accepting, for Christ's sake, voluntary
poverty--was never regretted, but rather increasingly rejoiced in; how
faithfully it was followed in the same path of continued self-sacrifice
will sufficiently appear when it is remembered that, nearly sixty-eight
years afterward, George Muller passed suddenly into the life beyond, a
poor man; his will, when admitted to probate, showing his entire
personal property, under oath, to be but one hundred and sixty pounds!
And even that would not have been in his possession had there been no
daily need of requisite comforts for the body and of tools for his work.
Part of this amount was in money, shortly before received and not yet
laid out for his Master, but held at His disposal. Nothing, even to the
clothes he wore, did he treat as his own. He was a consistent steward.

This final farewell to all earthly possessions, in 1830, left this
newly married husband and wife to look only to the Lord. Thenceforth
they were to put to ample daily test both their faith in the Great
Provider and the faithfulness of the Great Promiser. It may not be
improper here to anticipate, what is yet to be more fully recorded,
that, from day to day and hour to hour, during more than threescore
years, George Muller was enabled to set to his seal that God is true. If
few men have ever been permitted so to trace in the smallest matters
God's care over His children, it is partly because