parallel also in the history and experience of the Christian Church, beset the movements of Nehemiah and his builders, the greater number of them being organized or prompted by those sleepless adversaries from without. Now they were threatened with sudden and simultaneous assault; again, the enemy made secret efforts to find an entrance into the city and to stop the work of the Lord. To-day, conspiracies were formed on various pretences to draw Nehemiah into their toils, some false-hearted men among the Jews themselves helping the treacherous attempt; to-morrow, the report was spread that in all this Nehemiah was plotting rebellion against Artaxerxes, and that he intended to make himself their king; a third day, some faint-hearted men of Judah came to him and sought to palsy him and his people with their craven fears.

Notwithstanding, in the midst of all these discouragements and obstructions, the brave soul of this heroic man never quailed; the wall rose like a thing of life, every new day marking progress, and in less than two months the holy city was girded round with its defences; its ten massive gates were set up, and men could walk on its summits, and looking forth on their disappointed and astonished adversaries, could see how the dismay and reproach with which they had sought to confound and cover them had returned into their own bosoms.

THE SPIRIT AND THE MEANS BY WHICH THE BUILDING OF THE WALL WAS CARRIED ON.

VIII. 1. One interesting feature in the operations of these builders was subdivision of labor combined with harmony of aim. Each organized company of workers had its own place on the wall assigned to it, and each person in that company had his own allotted part of the work to do, and did it. In like manner, the solitary laborer fell in with the general arrangements and concentrated his energies on the part of the wall that was given him to build. By this means it was secured that there should

be no superfluity of labor in one place, and no proportionate lack in another; that there should be no jostling or crossing of each other's path on the part of the workers; and that the full strength of the great host of builders should be elicited to the utmost without any waste of power.

But while each individual and company thus kept to their allotted sphere and place on the wall, the interest of each extended over the entire structure. Each rejoiced in the success of his neighbor, and felt that he was co-operating with all for one great and common end.

If

It should be thus with Christians and Christian churches in spreading the gospel over the world. There should everywhere be a friendly recognition of each other's services and success. one has already begun to build on one part of the wall, we should pass him with a kindly greeting and benediction, and go and work where as yet there is no builder. "If thou wilt go to the right hand, then I will go to the left." While, with a good will, that embraces in it all honest workers for Christ, our prayers should extend over the whole circuit of Christian missions all round the globe, and find frequent utterance to the cry, "Let the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen, and amen."

2. Nor should the remarkable circumstance be overlooked, because of the important lesson which it suggests, that wherever a man's house stood in proximity to the wall, he began by building that portion of the wall which stood over against his own house. For how naturally does the observation grow out of this fact, that personal religion and family piety ought to precede and accompany all other and more extensive efforts for building up the cause of Christ in the world, and that the man who is setting a holy and consistent Christian example in his own social sphere, and the parent who is sending forth morally-trained and Christianly-educated children upon the world is doing not a little for building up the walls of Jerusalem!

3. The whole mass of the people seem to have given themselves with undivided will to this work of pious patriotism. With some insignificant exceptions, the heart of the entire city, in every rank and age of its population, was stirred to its very centre, and moved to rise up and build. The idlers, and grumblers, and prophets of evil days, and procrastinators who said, "This is not the time to build," were transmuted, if not by principle, yet by the power of a common sympathy, into better men. The whole strength of Jerusalem, mental, moral and physical, was concentrated on that wall, for "the people had a mind to work."

4. But nothing was more remarkable in Nehemiah and his builders, or more contributed to the success of their enterprise, than their spirit of prayerful perseverance and unwavering confidence in God. We saw the first sublime purpose of building the wall formed with prayer in the heart of Nehemiah while he was still in the distant Shushan; multitudes of the people appear to have been raised in some degree to the religious level of their leader when he came among them; the consequence of all which was that the whole sublime enterprise which had been begun in prayer also continued and was ended in it: "Hear, O our God, for we are despised." "Think upon me, my God, for good.” "Now therefore, O God, strengthen my hands."

This spirit did not make them cease from watching the schemes and movements of their enemies, but it kept them from fearing them. It did not withhold them from the use of every means that seemed adapted for their defence and safety; for Nehemiah tells us that they "watched as well as prayed," and that even while they stood on the wall and built, they had a sword girded on their side, ready to be drawn against every Horonite or Ammonite or Arabian that might seek to stop the work of the Lord. But it made them hopeful of divine protection wher these means were used, and effectually preserved them from all fainting of heart or feebleness of hand, even when their enemies.

were boldest and their difficulties and discouragements at the

worst.

And joined with all these thoughts and exercises, the consideration which made Nehemiah strong, and by which he made the people united and invincible, was, that they were working and fighting on God's side, by God's command and with God's promised help: "The God of heaven, he will prosper us." "Be not ye afraid of them: remember the Lord which is great and terrible." And as a good man once said, "What God calls a man to do, he will carry him through. I would undertake to govern half a dozen worlds if God called me to do it, but I would not undertake to govern half a dozen sheep unless God called me to do it."

It is remarkable how this consciousness of laboring and fighting in God's cause and by God's command has sometimes imparted to a whole people a kind of supernatural strength, and given them an invincibility and a power which no mere earthly element could ever have communicated. In the brightest times of Jewish history, it enabled the chosen race to "do exploits, and to turn to flight the armies of the aliens." And what armies, in the annals of our own nation, ever proved themselves so invincible as those in whom natural bravery was refined, elevated and confirmed by the sense of a divine cause and by religious. fervor? "Call you this madness? Madness lies close by, as madness does to the highest wisdom in man's life always; but this is not mad. The dark element; it is the mother of the lightnings and the splendors; it is very sure, this."

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XXXVII.

SIMEON.

E at once dismiss from our notice those numerous childish legends and crude fancies that have descended in the false gospels and in other ancient but unauthorized writings regarding this venerable man, and form our mental portrait of him from the few bold outlines that have been sketched by Luke; only remarking that nothing tends to produce a stronger presumption in proof of the inspiration of the four Gospels than the contrast which their contents, and even their wise reticence, afford, to those garrulous traditions which have dared to borrow their name. The two classes of writings are not separated from each other by a faint and shadowy outline, but by a distance almost as great as that which stretches between heaven and earth.

Simeon is described by Luke as "a just and devout man;" that is, one who united in his character habitual integrity in his transactions and intercourse among men, with sincere and unaffected piety toward God. The two classes of duties should be regarded by us as inseparable as Christ's seamless robe; and where there is true love to God in the heart, there will be no attempt to separate them. When Solomon, in that memorable judgment which made him famous throughout the land, called for a sword and proposed to divide the child in two and give a half to each of the two women who pretended to be its mother,