ew the need. One of his fellow labourers had put forward his
valuable watch as a security for the return of money laid by for rent,
but drawn upon for the time; yet even this plan was not felt to be
scriptural, as the watch might be reckoned among articles needful and
useful in the Lord's service, and, if such, expedients were quite
abandoned, the deliverance would be more manifest as of the Lord. And
so, one by one, all resorts were laid aside that might imperil full
trust and sole dependence upon the one and only Helper.

When the poverty of their resources seemed most pinching, Mr. Muller
still comforted himself with the daily proof that God had not forgotten,
and would day by day feed them with 'the bread of their convenience.'
Often he said to himself, If it is even a proverb of the world that
"Man's necessity is God's opportunity," how much more may God's own dear
children in their great need look to Him to make their extremity the fit
moment to display His love and power!

In February, 1840, another attack of ill health combined with a mission
to Germany to lead Mr. Muller for five weeks to the Continent. At
Heimersleben, where he found his father weakened by a serious cough, the
two rooms in which he spent most time in prayer and reading of the Word,
and confession of the Lord, were the same in which, nearly twenty years
before, he had passed most time as an unreconciled sinner against God
and man. Later on, at Wolfenbuttel, he saw the inn whence in 1821 he ran
away in debt. In taking leave once more of his father he was pierced by
a keen anguish, fearing it was his last farewell, and an unusual
tenderness and affection were now exhibited by his father, whom he
yearned more and more to know as safe in the Lord Jesus, and depending
no longer on outward and formal religiousness, or substituting the
reading of prayers and of Scripture for an inward conformity to Christ.
This proved the last interview, for the father died on March 30th of the
same year.

The main purpose of this journey to Germany was to send forth more
missionaries to the East. At Sandersleben Mr. Muller met his friend, Mr.
Stahlschmidt, and found a little band of disciples meeting in secret to
evade the police. Those who have always breathed the atmosphere of
religious liberty know little of such intolerance as, in that nominally
Christian land, stifled all freedom of Worship. Eleven years before,
when Mr. Stahlschmidt's servant had come to this