y
embraced for widely disseminating the truth. Tracts were liberally used,
given away in large quantities at open-air services, fairs, races and
steeplechases, and among spectators at public executions, or among
passengers on board ships and railway trains, and by the way. Sometimes,
at a single gathering of the multitudes, fifteen thousand were
distributed judiciously and prayerfully, and this branch of the work
has, during all these years, continued with undiminished fruitfulness to
yield its harvest of good.

All this was, from first to last, and of necessity, a work of faith. How
far faith must have been kept in constant and vigorous exercise can be
appreciated only by putting one's self in Mr. Muller's place. In the
year 1874, for instance, about forty-four thousand pounds were needed,
and he was compelled to count the cost and face the situation. Two
thousand and one hundred hungry mouths were daily to be fed, and as many
bodies to be clad and cared for. One hundred and eighty-nine
missionaries were needing assistance; one hundred schools, with about
nine thousand pupils, to be supported; four million pages of tracts and
tens of thousands of copies of the Scriptures to be yearly provided for
distribution; and, beside all these ordinary expenses, inevitable crises
or emergencies, always liable to arise in connection with the conduct of
such extensive enterprises, would from time to time call for
extraordinary outlay. The man who was at the head of the Scriptural
Knowledge Institution had to look at this array of unavoidable expenses,
and at the same time face the human possibility and probability of an
empty treasury whence the last shilling had been drawn. Let him tell us
how he met such a prospect: "God, our infinitely rich Treasurer, remains
to us. It is this which gives me peace.... Invariably, with this
probability before me, I have said to myself: 'God who has raised up
this work through me; God who has led me generally year after year to
enlarge it; God, who has supported this work now for more than forty
years, will still help and will not suffer me to be confounded, because
I rely upon Him. I commit the whole work to Him, and He will provide me
with what I need, in future also, though I know not whence the means are
to come.'"*

* Narrative, IV. 386, 387.

Thus he wrote in his journal, on July 28, 1874. Since then twenty-four
years have passed, and to this day the work goes on, though he who then
had t