eeks expression. Moreover, His
infinite wisdom sees that a larger blessing may be ours only by the
withholding of the lesser good which we seek; and so all true prayer
trusts Him to give His own answer, not in our way or time, or even to
our own expressed desire, but rather to His own unutterable groaning
within us which He can interpret better than we.

Monica, mother of Augustine, pleaded with God that her dissolute son
might not go to Rome, that sink of iniquity; but he was permitted to go,
and thus came into contact with Ambrose, bishop of Milan, through whom
he was converted. God fulfilled the mother's _desire_ while denying her
_request._

When George Muller, five times within the first eight years after
conversion, had offered himself as a missionary, God had blocked his
way; now, at sixty-five, He was about to permit him, in a sense he had
never dreamed of, to be a missionary to the world. From the beginning of
his ministry he had been more or less an itinerant, spending no little
time in wanderings about in Britain and on the Continent; but now he was
to go to the regions beyond and spend the major part of seventeen years
in witnessing to the prayer-hearing God.

These extensive missionary tours occupied the evening of Mr. Muller's
useful life, from 1875 to 1892. They reached, more or less, over Europe,
America, Asia, Africa, and Australia; and would of themselves have
sufficed for the work of an ordinary life.

They had a singular suggestion. While, in 1874, compelled by Mrs.
Muller's health to seek a change of air, he was preaching in the Isle of
Wight, and a beloved Christian brother for whom he had spoken, himself a
man of much experience in preaching, told him how 'that day had been the
happiest of his whole life'; and this remark, with others like it
previously made, so impressed him that the Lord was about to use him to
help on believers outside of Bristol, that he determined no longer to
confine his labours in the Word and doctrine to any one place, but to go
wherever a door might open for his testimony.

In weighing this question he was impressed with seven reasons or
motives, which led to these tours:

1. To _preach the gospel_ in its simplicity, and especially to show how
salvation is based, not upon feelings or even upon faith, but upon the
finished work of Christ; that justification is ours the moment we
believe, and we are to accept and claim our place as accepted in the
Beloved without reg