servant of God, and unto him comes ever with the work the reward. He is still and strong in God, because he is a co-worker with God, and his life holds for itself a secret which is not known

to another he has come in his very work to the rest that remaineth.

"Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw within the shadow of his room,
Making it rich, like a lily in bloom,

An angel writing in a book of gold.

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said,

'What writest thou?' The vision raised its head,

And with a look made of all sweet accord,

Answered,The names of those who love the Lord!'

And is mine one?' asked Abou. Nay, not so,'

Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still, and said, 'I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men.'

The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
He came again with great awakening light,

And showed the names whom love of God had blest;
And, lo, Ben Adhem's name led all the rest!”

VII.

GASHMU.

NEH. vi. 6: "It is reported among the heathen, and Gashmu saith it."

My text centres in some human interests that were painfully real twenty-two hundred years ago; and I propose, first, to tell you those parts of the story that especially touch the text, and second, to note for you how the text again touches our life and time.

Nehemiah was cup-bearer to an old Persian king. The position was one of great trust. He was a Jew, a prince of the old line, whose father had preferred Persia to Palestine, and remained there when a great many of his countrymen went out of the captivity to the fatherland. It is no matter what his reasons were for settling, but I suppose he never quite forgot the old country, no man ever does, and contrived to transmit the love to his son, who one day hap

pened on some Jews, fresh from Jerusalem, who told him that the people there were in very great distress; the whole province was in afflic tion; the walls of the city broken down, the gates burned with fire; and he tells us when he heard these things he sat down and wept and mourned, and besought God to help him get things righted. Then he determined to appeal to the king, but had to wait four months for the right moment.

One day he had to give the king wine; he was very much troubled: the king saw by his face that he was sad, and said, "Why art thou sad? thou art not sick; this must be some heart sorrow." Then he said, "O king, why should I not be sad, when the city, the place of the graves of my fathers, lieth waste, and the gates are burned with fire." Then the king said, "What is thy request?" And I said unto the king, "Send me to the city of my fathers' sepulchres, that I may build it." So the king said, "How long wilt thou be gone?" And I set a time; and the king sent me away, and gave me letters to the governor to pass me on to Judah, and a letter to the chief forester, bidding him give me all the timber I wanted.

The good patriot in good time got to Jerusa lem, and found about the place a party with some power, not only content to see this ruin, but determined to cry down reform; and it grieved them exceedingly that there was come a man to seek the welfare of the children of Israel. There is then a touching picture of three days silence, in which, no doubt, he pon dered what had best be done. Then he ros up in the night, and with one horse and a few men made a secret survey of the ground, from the valley gate to the dragon well, from the dragon well to the fountain gate; then to the king's pool, where the ruin was so bad his horse could not get along at all. Then he went in the night by the brook, and viewed the wall, and turned back and entered the gate of the valley, and so returned; telling neither priests, nor rulers, nor nobles what he had done. And then, when all was ready, he said, "See, now, what distress we are in! let us build up the walls of Jerusalem, and take away the reproach." And I told them how the hand of God was upon me, and told them the king's words. said, "Let us rise up and build."

Then they all

So one party

built to the sheep gate, and another to the fish gate, and one to the old gate, and one to the palace gate, and one to the valley gate, and one to the fountain gate, and one to the sepulchres, and one to the armory, and one to the hors( gate. And the goldsmiths did a piece, and the apothecaries a piece, and the ministers a piece; and one man, whose children have spread over all the earth, repaired a little piece that stood just opposite his own chamber; and one family, whose children are not all lost, thank God, built a thousand cubits. So, on the twenty-fifth day of the month Elul, early in our September, fiftytwo days from the time they began, walls and gates and locks and bars were all done.

But if this earnest, silent man had done no more than simply build the walls of his native city, I should not select him from ten thousand who have done as well or better. The real thing is, with him as it is with all of us, what he built with the wall; what he went through to build it; what the devil, in different forms, did to stop him, and how he kept on finding new sources of power for the exigencies of the time, holding fast steadily to God until his work was