Nothing is more noticeable, in the entire career of this man of God,
reaching through sixty-five years, than the steadiness of his faith and
the steadfastness it gave to his whole character. To have a word of God
was enough. He built upon it, and, when floods came and beat against
that house, how could it fall! He was never confounded nor obliged to
flee. Even the earthquake may shake earth and heaven, but it leaves the
true believer the inheritor of a kingdom which cannot be moved; for the
object of all such shaking is to remove what can be shaken, that what
cannot be shaken may remain.

If Mr. Muller had any great mission, it was not to found a world-wide
institution of any sort, however useful in scattering Bibles and books
and tracts, or housing and feeding thousands of orphans, or setting up
Christian schools and aiding missionary workers. His main mission was to
teach men that it is _safe to trust God's word,_ to rest implicitly upon
whatever He hath said, and obey explicitly whatever He has bidden; that
prayer offered in faith, trusting His promise and the intercession of
His dear Son, is never offered in vain; and that the life lived by faith
is a walk with God, just outside the very gates of heaven.

_Love,_ the third of that trinity of graces, was the other great secret
and lesson of this life. And what is love? _Not_ merely a complacent
affection for what is lovable, which is often only a half-selfish taking
of pleasure in the society and fellowship of those who love us. Love is
the _principle of unselfishness:_ love 'seeketh not her own'; it is the
preference of another's pleasure and profit over our own, and hence is
exercised toward the unthankful and unlovely, that it may lift them to a
higher level. Such love is benevolence rather than complacence, and so
it is "of God," for He loveth the unthankful and the evil: and he that
loveth is born of God and knoweth God. Such love is obedience to a
principle of unselfishness, and makes self-sacrifice habitual and even
natural. While Satan's motto is 'Spare thyself!' Christ's motto is to
Deny thyself!' The sharpest rebuke ever administered by our Lord was
that to Peter when he became a Satan by counselling his Master to adopt
Satan's maxim.* We are bidden by Paul, _"Remember Jesus Christ,"_** and
by Peter, _"Follow His steps."_*** If we seek the inmost meaning of these
two brief mottoes, we shall find that, about Jesus Christ's character,
nothing was more cons