in reading Mr. Muller's journal that he was a
man of like frailties as others. On Christmas morning of this year,
after a season of peculiar joy, he awoke to find himself in the Slough
of Despond, without any sense of enjoyment, prayer seeming as fruitless
as the vain struggles of a man in the mire. At the usual morning meeting
he was urged by a brother to continue in prayer, notwithstanding, until
he was again melted before the Lord--a wise counsel for all disciples
when the Lord's presence seems strangely withdrawn. Steadfast
continuance in prayer must never be hindered by the want of sensible
enjoyment; in fact, it is a safe maxim that the less joy, the more need.
Cessation of communion with God, for whatever cause, only makes the more
difficult its resumption and the recovery of the prayer habit and prayer
spirit; whereas the persistent outpouring of supplication, together with
continued activity in the service of God, soon brings back the lost joy.
Whenever, therefore, one yields to spiritual depression so as to
abandon, or even to suspend, closet communion or Christian work, the
devil triumphs.

So rapid was Mr. Muller's recovery out of this Satanic snare, through
continuance in prayer, that, on the evening of that same Christmas day
whose dawn had been so overcast, he expounded the Word at family worship
in the house where he dined by invitation, and with such help from God
that two servants who were present were deeply convicted of sin and
sought his counsel.

Here we reach another mile-stone in this life-journey. George Muller had
now come to the end of the year 1829, and he had been led of the Lord in
a truly remarkable path. It was but about four years since he first
found the narrow way and began to walk in it, and he was as yet a young
man, in his twenty-fifth year. Yet already he had been taught some of
the grand secrets of a holy, happy, and useful life, which became the
basis of the whole structure of his after-service.

Indeed, as we look back over these four years, they seem crowded with
significant and eventful experiences, all of which forecast his future
work, though he as yet saw not in them the Lord's sign. His conversion
in a primitive assembly of believers where worship and the word of God
were the only attractions, was the starting-point in a career every step
of which seems a stride forward. Think of a young convert, with such an
ensnaring past to reproach and retard him, within these few y