stitution, Mr Muller, with meekness of spirit, at once relinquished
all claim upon the premises, being mindful of the maxim of Scripture:
"As much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men." (Rom. xiii. 18.)
He felt sure that the Lord would provide, and his faith was rewarded in
the speedy supply of a building in the same street where the other two
houses were.

Infirmity of the flesh again tried the faith and patience of Mr. Muller.
For eight weeks he was kept out of the pulpit. The strange weakness in
the head, from which he had suffered before and which at times seemed to
threaten his reason, forced him to rest; and in November he went to Bath
and Weston-super-Mare, leaving to higher Hands the work to which he was
unequal.

One thing he noticed and recorded: that, even during this head trouble,
prayer and Bible-reading could be borne better than anything else. He
concluded that whenever undue carefulness is expended on the body, it is
very hard to avoid undue carelessness as to the soul; and that it is
therefore much safer comparatively to disregard the body, that one may
give himself wholly to the culture of his spiritual health and the care
of the Lord's work. Though some may think that in this he ran to a
fanatical extreme, there is no doubt that such became more and more a
law of his life. He sought to dismiss all anxiety, as a duty; and, among
other anxious cares, that most subtle and seductive form of solicitude
which watches every change of symptoms and rushes after some new medical
man or medical remedy for all ailments real or fancied.

Mr. Muller was never actually reckless of his bodily health. His habits
were temperate and wholesome, but no man could be so completely wrapped
up in his Master's will and work without being correspondingly forgetful
of his physical frame. There are not a few, even among God's saints,
whose bodily weaknesses and distresses so engross them that their sole
business seems to be to nurse the body, keep it alive and promote its
comfort. As Dr. Watts would have said, this is living "at a poor dying
rate."

When the year 1838 opened, the weakness and distress in the head still
afflicted Mr. Muller. The symptoms were as bad as ever, and it
particularly tried him that they were attended by a tendency to
irritability of temper, and even by a sort of satanic feeling wholly
foreign to him at other times. He was often reminded that he was by
nature a child of wrath even as others,