to-day.

I am doing a great work; but I love my own ease, or pleasure, or
convenience, better than I love the work, these must come first and the
work must come second.

So speak the actions of many so-called workers, and thus it is that so
much Christian work is a dead failure.

But, says Nehemiah, 'I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come
down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave it, and come down to
you?'

Let us remember his words, let us inwardly digest them, and the very
next time that we are tempted to give up work for God and to run off to
something else, let us take care to echo them.

But Sanballat is determined not to be beaten, he will try again and yet
again. Four times over he sends Nehemiah a friendly invitation to a
friendly conference, four times over Nehemiah steadily refuses to come.
Then, when that plot completely fails, Sanballat loses his temper.

One day a messenger arrives at the gate of Jerusalem with an insult in
his hand. The insult is in the form of a piece of parchment; it is a
letter from Sanballat, an 'open letter,' ver. 5.

Letters in the East are not put into envelopes, but are rolled up like a
map, then the ends are flattened and pasted together. The Persians make
up their letters in a roll about six inches long, and then gum a piece
of paper round them, and put a seal on the outside. But in writing to