Perhaps it is well here to put on record, even at risk of repetition, the principles which Mr. Muller and his colleague were wont to enforce as guards or landmarks which should be set up and kept up, in order to exclude those innovations which always bring spiritual declension. 1. Believers should meet, simply as such, without reference to denominational lines, names, or distinctions, as a corrective and preventive of sectarianism. 2. They should steadfastly maintain the Holy Scriptures as the divine rule and standard of doctrine, deportment, and discipline. 3. They should encourage freedom for the exercise of whatever spiritual gifts the Lord might be pleased by His Spirit to bestow for general edification. 4. Assemblies on the Lord's day should be primarily for believers, for the breaking of bread, and for worship; unbelievers sitting promiscuously among saints would either hinder the appearance of meeting for such purposes, or compel a pause between other parts of the service and the Lord's Supper. 5. The pew-rent system should be abolished, as promoting the caste spirit, or at least the outward appearance of a false distinction between the poorer and richer classes, especially as pew-holders commonly look on their sittings as private property. 6. All money contributed for pastoral support, church work, and missionary enterprises at home and abroad should be by free-will offerings. It was because some of these and other like scriptural principles were thought to be endangered or compromised by practices prevailing at Gideon Chapel before Mr. Muller and Mr. Craik took charge, that it seemed best on the whole to relinquish that chapel as a place of worship. As certain customs there obtaining had existed previously, it seemed to these godly-minded brethren that it would be likely to cause needless offence and become a root of bitterness should they require what they deemed unscriptural to be renounced; and it seemed the way of love to give up Gideon Chapel after these eight years of labour there, and to invite such as felt called on to separate from every sectarian system, and meet for worship where free exercise would be afforded for every spiritual gift, and where New Testament methods might be more fully followed, to assemble with other believers at Bethesda, where previous hindering conditions had not existed. Mr. Muller remained very intimately connected with Bethesda and its various outgrowths, for many years, as the senior pastor, or elder,--though only _primus inter pares,_ i.e., leader among equals. His opinions about the work of the ministry and the conduct of church-life, which did so much to shape the history of these churches, therefore form a necessary part of this sketch of the development of church-life.