THE first day of the week finishes the prophecy of Zechariah. This also is covered in the series “From Babylon to Zion,” so that we will not use space for notes upon this important and interesting book. Four days of the week our readings are upon the book of Nehemiah, covering a period of time from about 446-408, the last reform on his return to Jerusalem. The book itself tells us who Nehemiah is and the work that he did, working always with the highest good of Jerusalem in mind; impatient toward the people because of their slackness in doing the work of God; indignant toward those who were sinning against God in uniting with the heathen peoples, even bringing them into the very temple itself. Sometimes the zealous reformer’s manner was not one that we should like to copy, and yet when we take all the circumstances surrounding him into consideration we can not feel to condemn him. He was there for God; the city was the Lord’s city, and the people were the Lord’s people.
NATIONAL REFORMERS are wont to take the last chapter as justification for their demand for Sunday laws, utterly regardless of the fact that Nehemiah was doing his work under a theocracy guided by God and His prophets, in a nation and city belonging to the Lord and the Lord’s special people alone, while they have no such credentials to present. The theocracy ended with Israel, when Israel came to that place where deliberately they declared, “We have no king but Cæsar.” God does not set up His kingdom on earth by might or by power, but in the hearts of His people, by His Spirit. The literal earthly kingdom will not be established until He Himself comes. There is one thought in the sixth chapter that is worthy of consideration; it embodies a principle which ought to be with God’s servants always,—that when the enemies of the Jews came and did all in their power through craft and art and dissimulation to hinder the work, asking Nehemiah to leave that work and counsel with them with a view to compromise, he could reply to them four times over, “I am doing a great work, so that I can not come down.”
THE last two days of our week are upon Psalms 73-79, beginning, according to the Jewish division, the third book of the Psalms. They are filled with inspiring thoughts of God and His mercy and power to save. The last psalm is very applicable to the time of the captivity, when Jerusalem had been brought low and its people scattered.
