ecame a sacrifice of a sweet smell acceptable, well
pleasing to God. Such joy constantly filled Mr. Muller's heart. He was
daily refreshed and reinvigorated by the many proofs that the gifts
received had been first sanctified by prayer and self-denial. He lived
and breathed amid the fragrance of sweet-savour offerings, permitted for
more than threescore years to participate in the joy of the Lord Himself
over the cheerful though often costly gifts of His people. By reason of
identification with his Master, the servant caught the sweet scent of
these sacrifices as their incense rose from His altars toward heaven.
Even on earth the self-denials of his own life found compensation in
thus acting in the Lord's behalf in receiving and disbursing these
gifts; and, he says, "the Lord thus impressed on me from the beginning
that the orphan houses and work were HIS, _not_ MINE."

Many a flask of spikenard, very precious, broken upon the feet of the
Saviour, for the sake of the orphans, or the feeding of starving souls
with the Bread of Life, filled the house with the odour of the ointment,
so that to dwell there was to breathe a hallowed atmosphere of devotion.

Among the first givers to the work was a poor needlewoman, who, to Mr.
Muller's surprise, brought _one hundred pounds._ She earned by her work
only an _average, per week,_ of _three shillings and sixpence,_ and was
moreover weak in body. A small legacy of less than five hundred pounds
from her grandmother's estate had come to her at her father's death by
the conditions of her grandmother's will. But that father had died a
drunkard and a bankrupt, and her brothers and sisters had settled with
his creditors by paying them five shillings to the pound. To her
conscience, this seemed robbing the creditors of three fourths of their
claim, and, though they had no legal hold upon her, she privately paid
them the other fifteen shillings to the pound, of the unpaid debts of
her father. Moreover, when her unconverted brother and two sisters gave
each fifty pounds to the widowed mother, she as a child of God felt that
she should give double that amount. By this time her own share of the
legacy was reduced to a small remainder, and it was out of this that she
gave the one hundred pounds for the orphan work!

As Mr. Muller's settled principle was _never to grasp eagerly at any
gift whatever the need or the amount of the gift,_ before accepting this
money he had a long conversation wit