ent in the singular unity of
prayer and song, scripture reading and remarks, as well as in the
harmonious fellowship apparent. After more than half a century these
Monday-night prayer services are still a hallowed centre of attraction,
a rallying-point for supplication, and a radiating-point for service,
and remain unchanged in the method of their conduct.

The original congregation has proved a tree whose seed is in itself
after its kind. At the time of Mr. Muller's decease it was nearly
sixty-six years since that memorable evening in 1832 when those seven
believers met to form a church; and the original body of disciples
meeting in Bethesda had increased to ten, six of which are now
independent of the mother church, and four of which still remain in
close affiliation and really constitute one church, though meeting in
Bethesda, Alma Road, Stokes Croft, and Totterdown chapels. The names of
the other churches which have been in a sense offshoots from Bethesda
are as follows: Unity, Bishopston, Cumberland Hall, Charleton Hall,
Nicholas Road, and Bedminster.

At the date of Mr. Muller's decease the total membership of the four
affiliated congregations was upwards of twelve hundred.

In this brief compass no complete outline could be given of the church
life and work so dear to him, and over which he so long watched and
prayed. This church has been and is a missionary church. When on March
1, 1836, Mr. and Mrs. Groves, with ten helpers, left Bristol to carry on
mission work in the East Indies, Mr. Muller felt deeply moved to pray
that the body of disciples to whom he ministered might send out from
their own members labourers for the wide world-field. That prayer was
not forgotten before God, and has already been answered exceeding
abundantly above all he then asked or thought. Since that time some
sixty have gone forth to lands afar to labour in the gospel, and at the
period of Mr. Muller's death there were at work, in various parts of the
world, at least twenty, who are aided by the free-will offerings of
their Bristol brethren.

When, in 1874, Mr. Muller closed the third volume of his Narrative, he
recorded the interesting fact that, of the many nonconformist ministers
of the gospel resident in Bristol when he took up work there more than
forty-two years before, _not one remained,_ all having been removed
elsewhere or having died; and that, of all the Evangelical clergy of the
establishment, only _one_ survived. Yet