"He used often to say to me, when he opened a letter in which the writer poured out a tale of sore pecuniary need, and besought his help to an extent twice or three or ten times exceeding the sum total of his (Mr. Muller's) earthly possessions at the moment, 'Ah! these dear people entirely miss the lesson I am _trying_ to teach them, for they come to _me,_ instead of going to _God.'_ And if he could come back to us for an hour, and listen to an account of what his sincerely admiring, but mistaken, friends are proposing to do to _perpetuate_ his memory, I can hear him, with a sigh, exclaiming, 'Ah! these _dear_ friends are entirely missing the lesson that I tried for seventy years to teach them,' viz., 'That a _man_ can receive nothing except it be _given_ him _from above,'_ and that, therefore, it is the Blessed _Giver,_ and not the poor receiver, that is to be glorified. "Yours faithfully, "JAMES WRIGHT." CHAPTER XX THE SUMMARY OF THE LIFE-WORK DEATH shuts the door upon earthly service, whatever door it may open to other forms and spheres of activity. There are many intimations that service beyond the grave is both unceasing and untiring: the blessed dead "rest indeed from their _labours"_--toilsome and painful tasks--"but their works"--activities for God--"do follow them," where exertion is without exhaustion. This is therefore a fit point for summing up the results of the work over which, from its beginning, one man had specially had charge. One sentence from Mr. Muller's pen marks the purpose which was the very pivot of his whole being: "I have joyfully dedicated my whole life to the object of exemplifying how much may be accomplished by prayer and faith." This prepared both for the development of the character of him who had such singleness of aim, and for the development of the work in which that aim found action. Mr. Muller's oldest friend, Robert C. Chapman of Barnstaple, beautifully says that "when a man's chief business is to serve and please the Lord, all his circumstances become his servants"; and we shall find this maxim true in Mr. Muller's life-work. The Fifty-ninth Report, issued May 26, 1898, was the last up to the date of the publication of this volume, and the first after Mr. Muller's death. In this, Mr. Wright gives the brief but valuable summary not only of the whole work of the year preceding, but of the whole work from its beginning, and thus helps us to a comprehensive survey.