ch giving is an illustration of self-sacrifice on a large
scale, and brings corresponding blessing.

The _motives_ prompting gifts were often unusually suggestive. In
October, 1857, a donation came from a Christian merchant who, having
sustained a heavy pecuniary loss, _wished to sanctify his loss by a gift
to the Lord's work._ Shortly after, another offering was handed in by a
young man in thankful remembrance that twenty-five years before Mr.
Muller had prayed over him, as a child, that God would convert him. Yet
another gift, of thirty-five hundred pounds, came to him in 1858, with a
letter stating that the giver had further purposed to give to the orphan
work the chief preference in his will, but had now seen it to be far
better to _act as his own executor_ and give the whole amount while he
lived. Immense advantage would accrue, both to givers and to the causes
they purpose to promote, were this principle generally adopted! There is
"many a slip betwixt the cup" of the legator and "the lip" of the
legatee. Even a wrong wording of a will has often forfeited or defeated
the intent of a legacy. Mr. Muller had to warn intending donors that
nothing that was reckoned as real estate was available for legacies for
charitable institutions, nor even money lent on real estate or in any
other way derived therefrom. These conditions no longer exist, but they
illustrate the ease with which a will may often be made void, and the
design of a bequest be defeated.

Many donors were led to send thank-offerings for _avoided_ or _averted
calamities:_ as, for example, for a sick horse, given up by the
veterinary surgeon as lost, but which recovered in answer to prayer.
Another donor, who broke his left arm, sends grateful acknowledgment to
God that it was not the _right_ arm, or some more vital part like the
head or neck.

The offerings were doubly precious because of the unwearied faithfulness
of God who manifestly prompted them, and who kept speaking to the hearts
of thousands, leading them to give so abundantly and constantly that no
want was unsupplied. In 1859, so great were the outlays of the work that
if day by day, during the whole three hundred and sixty-five, fifty
pounds had been received, the income would not have been more than
enough. Yet in a surprising variety and number of ways, and from persons
and places no less numerous and various, donations came in. Not one of
twenty givers was personally known to Mr. Muller, and