that the design of the building had been communicated to him from heaven.

During its construction, he frequently asserted that angels lent their assistance. An Egyptian, hearing this, and aware that many of his countrymen were masons, remarked to some of them, “You are probably the Khalifa's angels and require neither food, drink, nor payment." Had the Khalifa heard this, he would undoubtedly have removed this wag's head.

The most important place in Omdurman is the "Beit-el-Mal," the seat of the Khalifa's "Treasury." Here is collected the plunder gathered from the provinces, and here is the headquarters of the slave trade of the Soudan. Here are sold every day, slaves brought from the east and west and south, as far as Equatoria-Emin Pasha's old province. The Mahdi and the Khalifa have given a fearful impetus to the slave trade in all its worst horrors.

Thirst for conquest has marked the Khalifa's whole career. To the north-east his greatest general, Osman Digma, has been conducting incessant campaigns. Το Abyssinia he sent another great warrior, Abu Anga, with an immense army.

Southward he has attempted to extend his rule to Equatorial Africa and the head waters of the Nile. Westward, even to the Arab tribes of Wadai. But, above all, he has coveted Egypt, and even dared to despatch an army for its conquest. Surely the overthrow of such a menacing tyranny as this, founded on the wildest fanaticism, the basest lust, and the most ferocious cruelty, would be an infinite relief to the unhappy Soudan.

Slatin Pasha, who after twelve years of indescribable misery, at last escaped from the iron grip of the Khalifa, declares that it is ab

solutely necessary that the head waters of the Nile should not be under the control of either the

Khalifa, or any European power, other than the one in possession of Egypt. He thinks that it is not the Khalifa who is to be dreaded so much as the daring schemes of European engineering skill, which might so divert the head waters of the Nile as to leave Egypt a strip of barren land.

However that may be, we cannot help wishing success to the gallant expedition now operating in the Soudan. The Soudanese know well that it is the British flag that waves over the expedition-Gordon's flag. They now know the difference between the Mahdist type of goodness and the Gordon type.

It was a common

saying among the Moslems of the Soudan, while Gordon was still living, "Had Gordon been one of us, he would have been a perfect man."

For the destruction of that inveterate "sum of all villainies," the slave trade-for the ridding the world of one of its most abominable tyrannies-for the protection of woman's honourfor the free course of the Gospel of Christ-the only hope of wretched humanity anywhere-for the evangelization of scores of millions of our degraded fellowmen, and the establishment of our Christian civilization in one of the largest and most promising sections of the globe-we trust the grand British flag will soon wave in triumph over the length and breadth of the Egyptian Soudan.

Slatin never ceased planning to escape. But the lynx-eyed Khalifa defeated every attempt. It was with the utmost difficulty that he conveyed to his family in Europe the knowledge of his condition. For years they had made strenuous efforts to effect his rescue. At last, a couple of

REV. GEORGE MULLER.

By the death of the Rev. George Muller, of Bristol, at the age of ninety-three years, passed away one of the most memorable examples of a life of trust since the days of Abraham,-the Father of the Faithful. His life story, named in our sub-title, is the record of the marvellous way in which God honours them who honour him. The following are the salient features of this remarkable life.

George Muller Muller was born at Halberstadt, Prussia, in 1805. Until he was twenty years of age he was never acquainted with a single real Christian. Although confirmed at the age of fourteen and actually preparing for Holy Orders, he was idle, dissipated, guilty of falsehood and dishonesty, and when sixteen years of age he was sent to prison for living in great style at a hotel without any resources and then trying to run away without paying his bill. This disgraceful incident to some extent sobered him, and he took

seriously to his studies at Halle, so that at the age of twenty he was well educated and had gained distinction at the university, although he was still utterly godless and never read the Bible. At that age he was invited by a fellow-student to a little prayermeeting in a tradesman's house, frequented by four undergraduates. He immediately abandoned the theatre, the ball-room, and the card-table, to which he had been passionately addicted, and resolved that his future life should be as completely different from the past "as light from darkness and as black from white."

He resolved to become a missionary. His father's disappointment at his choice led to the poor student's determination to accept no more money from him, since "he had no prospect that I should become what he wished me to be, a clergyman with a good living." He began preaching among the miners near Halle, and then in the prisons and poor-houses of Berlin. He went to London to become a missionary to the Jews, but he was soon after led to begin his ministry in Bristol among a cholera-smitten people. He determined in his mind to build and maintain a great orphan house, and began to lay the matter before the Lord. Gifts came in, and people began to offer their services as teachers or caretakers.

It was wholly a work of faith and there was no appeal. The first contribution towards the orphanage consisted of one shilling from a poor missionary, and the first legacy consisted of six shillings and sixpence halfpenny, the savings of a short life, by a little lad on his deathbed. April, 1835, the

first orphan house was opened with twenty-six children under a voluntary matron.

How this modest charity enlarged, year by year, until the attention of the Christian world was fixed on the mammoth system of orphanages at Ashley Down, is a story too long for present telling.

There were many times when treasury and larder were empty, and the grim shadow of want hung over the thousands of orphan children committed to his care, but in these periods of trial his faith shone but more brightly; he would gather his flock of little ones around him, and in simple, trustful prayer lay their need before the heavenly Father. And the orphan's God always heard and unfailingly supplied the want.

As the result of his life of faith five massive buildings have been erected on Ashley Down at a cost of £115,000, or some $575,000, for building, fitting, and furnishing. These buildings have a total of 500 rooms, and can accommodate 2,050 orphans and 112 teachers and helpers. The average sum expended yearly in support of these orphans is £26,000, or $130,000. The aggregate number thus succoured reached over 10,000.

Aside entirely from the orphanage work, there have been established 127 schools for 123,000 pupils in many lands.

The work of the wide circulation of the Scriptures in many different languages has been carried on. Up to this time there have been distributed 275,000 Bibles, 1,426,500 New Testaments, 218,000 portions of the Bible, such as Gospels, etc., and 21,000 copies of the Psalms, and other devout books to the number of III,489,607.

Upon direct missionary labours, in various lands, £255.000 ($1.275,000) have been expended, giv

ing partial or complete support to hundreds of missionaries.

For more than half a century he generously assisted missions in England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Spain, Italy, the United States, Canada, South America, Essequibo, Demerara, South Africa, Central Africa, North Africa, Egypt, Palestine, Armenia, India, Straits of Malacca, and China.

Five times in succession he had offered himself to God for missionary service; but for some reason not then apparent, God did not accept him for this form and field of activity, much to his disappointment and surprise. He did permit him, however, to assist more than one hundred men to enter the foreign field. Still more marvellously God has permitted George Muller himself, when near eighty, to go on sixteen mission tours to forty-two different countries, including twice to India; the Straits of Malacca, China, Japan, New South Wales, Victoria, Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. For seventeen years of his later life he has moved about in this manner, travelling in all over two hundred thousand miles. Muller emphasizes prayer as the one great weapon for carrying on God's war against the powers of evil. The

money received and expended by him has been about $6,974,000; and, as he emphatically claims, all received from God in answer to prayer, without in a single case directly or indirectly asking any man for a penny.

Here, says Dr. Pearson, is the unique spectacle of a solitary man, himself entirely without money, poor to the day of his death, so far as independent means are concerned, undertaking, in simple reliance on the promises of a prayerhearing God, to support hundreds

of missionaries, distribute millions of Bibles and other books and tracts, build five huge orphanhouses and support 2,000 orphans, himself travelling over forty-two countries; and in all these lands preaching the Gospel and bearing witness to the faithfulness of God. Yet he has never had any property in lands or money in banks wherewith to meet these immense daily costs. In sixty-five years he has never known one instance in which the prayer has not been answered and the need met, though sometimes literally only from meal to meal, with no adequate surplus for the next! Moreover, in order not to weaken his testimony to a prayer-hearing

offered unto God for twenty-five years." And he added, "I have been daily praying to God for fifty-two years for the conversion of two men; and I have no doubt they will both turn to God, for God has laid on my heart, and permitted and enabled me daily, for over half a century, to bear before him in faith, in the name of Jesus, this request; and now I often praise him in advance for what he is going to do in answer to my prayers."

In appearance he was tall, erect, stately, was hearty and hale, and courteous and warm-hearted in his intercourse. Up to his end "his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated." On the

God, he has enjoined on all of his helpers never to make known the exigencies of the work to any one outside the institution, but to unite with him in spreading all such wants before God alone. Lest his annual reports might be thought to be indirect appeals, for some three years no report was published, and yet the supplies continued to come with as little interruption and in as great abundance as before.

Mr. Muller's confidence in prayer is boundless, yet childlike in simplicity. He gave this fact to his co-workers as a tonic to their faith "I have," said he, "only yesterday afternoon received the answer to a prayer daily

Sunday preceding his death he preached as usual in one of the sanctuaries of which he had been pastor for the unparalleled period of sixty-seven years. His faculties remained bright and fresh to the very close. A singular feature of his absolute confidence in God was that he always refused to accept a regular salary or to insure any of his institutions against fire.

He was a great lover of the Bible, which during the latter period of his religious life he read through four times every year. He systematically read the Bible from the first chapter of Genesis to the last of the Revelation more than one hundred times.