of these benevolent activities made the needs greater, so, in answer to
prayer, the Hand of the great Provider bestowed larger supplies.

Divine interposition will never be doubted by one who, like George
Muller, gives himself to prayer, for the coincidences will prove too
exact and frequent between demand and supply, times and seasons of
asking and answering, to allow of doubt that God has helped.

The 'ethics of language' embody many lessons. For example, the term
'poetic retribution' describes a visitation of judgment where the
penalty peculiarly befits the crime. As poetic lines harmonize, rhyme
and rhythm showing the work of a designing hand, so there is often
harmony between an offense and its retribution, as when Adonibezek, who
had afflicted a like injury upon threescore and five captive kings, had
his own thumbs and great toes cut off, or as when Haman was himself hung
on the gallows that he built for Mordecai. We read in Psalm ix. 16:

"The Lord is known by the judgment which He executeth:
The wicked is snared in the work of his own hands."

The inspired thought is that the punishment of evil-doers is in such
exact correspondence with the character of their evil doings as to show
that it is the Lord executing vengeance--the penalty shows a designing
hand. He who watches the peculiar retributive judgments of God, how He
causes those who set snares and pitfalls for others to fall into them
themselves, will not doubt that behind such 'poetic retribution' there
is an intelligent Judge.

Somewhat so the poetic harmony between prayer and its answer silences
all question as to a discriminating Hearer of the suppliant soul. A
single case of such answered prayer might be accounted accidental; but,
ever since men began to call upon the name of the Lord, there have been
such repeated, striking, and marvelous correspondences between the
requests of man and the replies of God, that the inference is perfectly
safe, the induction has too broad a basis and too large a body of
particulars to allow mistake. The coincidences are both too many and too
exact to admit the doctrine of _chance._ We are compelled, not to say
justified, to conclude that the only sufficient and reasonable
explanation must be found in a God who hears and answers prayer.

Mr. Muller was not the only party to these transactions, nor the only
person thus convinced that God was in the whole matter of the work and
its support. The _donor