him": it seemed more like a
translation than like death.

To those who are familiar with his long life-story, and, most of all, to
those who intimately knew him and felt the power of personal contact
with him, he was one of God's ripest saints and himself a living proof
that a life of faith is possible; that God may be known, communed with,
found, and may become a conscious companion in the daily life. George
Muller proved for himself and for all others who will receive his
witness that, to those who are willing to take God at His word and to
yield self to His will, He is "the same yesterday and to-day and
forever": that the days of divine intervention and deliverance are past
only to those with whom the days of faith and obedience are past--in a
word, that believing prayer works still the wonders which our fathers
told of in the days of old.

The life of this man may best be studied, perhaps, by dividing it into
certain marked periods, into which it naturally falls, when we look at
those leading events and experiences which are like punctuation-marks or
paragraph divisions,--as, for example:

1. From his birth to his new birth or conversion: 1805-1825.

2. From his conversion to full entrance on his life-work: 1825-35.

3. From this point to the period of his mission tours: 1835-75.

4. From the beginning to the close of these tours: 1875-92.

5. From the close of his tours to his death: 1892-98.

Thus the first period would cover twenty years; the second, ten; the
third, forty; the fourth, seventeen; and the last, six. However thus
unequal in length, each forms a sort of epoch, marked by certain
conspicuous and characteristic features which serve to distinguish it
and make its lessons peculiarly important and memorable. For example,
the first period is that of the lost days of sin, in which the great
lesson taught is the bitterness and worthlessness of a disobedient life.
In the second period may be traced the remarkable steps of preparation
for the great work of his life. The third period embraces the actual
working out of the divine mission committed to him. Then for seventeen
or eighteen years we find him bearing in all parts of the earth his
world-wide witness to God; and the last six years were used of God in
mellowing and maturing his Christian character. During these years he
was left in peculiar loneliness, yet this only made him lean more on the
divine companionship, and it was noticeable with those w