any common ground; it claimed exclusive relation to 'our God,' which
meant, 'not yours'; it underscored the claim by reiterating that
Jehovah was the 'God of Israel'; it put forward the decree of Cyrus,
as leaving no option but to confine the builders to the people whom it
had empowered to build.

Now, it is easy to represent this as a piece of impolitic narrowness,
and to say that its surly bigotry was rightly punished by the evils
that it brought down on the returning exiles. The temper of much
flaccid Christianity at present delights to expand in a lazy and
foolish 'liberality,' which will welcome anybody to come and take a
hand at the building, and accepts any profession of unity in worship.
But there is no surer way of taking the earnestness out of Christian
work and workers than drafting into it a mass of non-Christians,
whatever their motives may be. Cold water poured into a boiling pot
will soon stop its bubbling, and bring down its temperature. The
churches are clogged and impeded, and their whole tone lowered and
chilled, by a mass of worldly men and women. Nothing is gained, and
much is in danger of being lost, by obliterating the lines between the
church and the world. The Jew who thought little of the difference
between the Samaritan worship with its polytheism, and his own
monotheism, was in peril of dropping to the Samaritan level. The
Samaritan who was accepted as a true worshipper of Jehovah, though he
had a bevy of other gods in addition, would have been confirmed in his
belief that the differences were unimportant. So both would have been
harmed by what called itself 'liberality,' and was in reality
indifference.

No doubt, Zerubbabel had counted the cost of faithfulness, and he soon
had to pay it. The would-be friends threw off the mask, and, as they