to allow him timber from the king's forests, and every other assistance to forward the work in which he was about to engage.

Thus respectfully attended, the new governor was received with great cordiality at Jerusalem. Having suffered so much from their troublesome neighbours, all classes of people, both the rich and the poor-the husbandman and the artist, were ready to put themselves under his direction, and unite heart and hand to strengthen the state, by erecting the walls of their capital. An immense multitude being gathered, they were divided into companies, officers appointed to oversee each division, and Nehemiah himself superintending with great diligence, the barriers soon began to arise from their ruins. A work, however, so ungrateful to their ancient enemies, did not go on without interruption. The Moabites, the Ammonites, and the Samaritans, who could not endure the prosperity of Judah, threw every possible obstruction in their way: insolent messages were unnoticed, and menaces of violence ensued; but undaunted by these, the work was not retarded. Nehemiah provided the labourers with arms, and watchmen with trumpets to sound an alarm in case of an attack, were set at convenient distances; and inspirited, besides, by the exhortations of their governor, they surmounted every obstacle, and the walls were completed, even to the hanging of the gates, in two and fifty days!

But notwithstanding the unanimity and spirit with which they triumphed over all opposition from their enemies, dissatisfaction existed among themselves. The poor complained that a scarcity and consequent high price of provisions compelled them to borrow money of the rich, on which such exorbitant interest had been exacted, that

their lands had been mortgaged, and finally their children were made slaves! The taking of usurious interest from their brethren was forbidden by the Mosaic law, as tending to destroy that equality which ought in some measure to subsist amongst the members of one family. As soon, therefore, as their complaints reached the ear of Nehemiah, he reproved the oppressors, and obliged them to restore their unjust gains. Indeed, they were ashamed to refuse, with the example of his disinterested liberality before them. An hundred and fifty persons, besides many strangers who visited Jerusalem, being entertained every day at his table, himself and his household devoted to the public works, yet refusing to accept of the presents that had been commonly paid to the governors: nor did he, during the twelve years of his presidency, receive a salary from the king.

CHARLES. How then did he support such an enormous expense ?

MRS. M. He was a man of great wealth, and very cheerfully employed it in the service of his people. Indefatigable in his exertions for their good, the sufferers regained their houses and their vineyards. Other abuses were rectified, and now the inhabitants, in great harmony, prepared for a solemn dedication of the new wall. The princes, the levites, the musicians, and the singers, were all summoned from every part of the country, and, after undergoing the legal purifications, without which they could engage in no religious service, they were distributed in order around the walls, and whilst the priests offered sacrifices, the praises of Jehovah once more ascended from the lofty towers of Jerusalem !

By this time Ezra had finished his edition of the Scrip

tures, and when the people assembled at the feast of Trumpets, or the New-year festival, on the first day of the seventh month of the ecclesiastical year, and the first of the civic year, "the Book of the Law" was read to them by the compiler himself, assisted by thirteen of the principal elders, Ezra reading in the original Hebrew, and the elders repeating, period by period, from the Chaldee, into which he had rendered the whole. Here they found that the fifteenth day of the same month was the time for the feast of Tabernacles. This festival, though of all others the most joyous and social, had been wholly neglected from the days of Joshua; but now that a complete reformation was in progress, by the joint labours of Nehemiah and Ezra, the people came willingly from all parts of Judea to Jerusalem, and celebrated this also. During the

* In this laborious and important work, we are told, upon competent authorities, Ezra was assisted by a body of learned men, called the Great Synagogue, which consisted of one hundred and twenty elders. "The truth of this, (says Prideaux) seemeth most likely to have been, that these one hundred and twenty men were such principal elders as lived in a continued succession from the first return of the Jews from Babylon to the death of Simon the Just, and laboured, in their several times, some after others, in the carrying on of the two great works above-mentioned,” (i. e. restoring the correct usuages of the Jews, and editing the sacred books,) "till both were fully completed, in the time of Simon the Just, (who was made high priest of the Jews in the twenty-fifth year after the death of Alexander the Great) and Ezra had the assistance of such of them as lived in his time. But the whole conduct of the work, and the glory of accomplishing it, is by the Jews chiefly attributed to him, under whose presidency (they tell as) it was done; and, therefore, they look upon him as another Moses."-Prideaux, vol. i. p. 254.

whole seven days of the feast, the Book of the Law was read to them day by day, until the whole was gone through. In this review of their law they saw much of which they had been ignorant, and much more that they had neglected; and with one accord, they professed their determination to adopt another course of conduct. Ezra and Nehemiah, therefore, to improve and confirm them in a temper so desirable, appointed a day of fasting, confession, and prayer, after which a formal adoption of the whole Mosaic law took place, and the covenant was solemnly signed and sealed by the princes, the levites, and the priests, for the whole congregation.

Nehemiah's leave of absence having now expired, he gave Jerusalem in charge to Hannani and Hannaniah, two men of distinguished character, and returned to the palace, with an account of his mission. After some years, perhaps five or six, he obtained leave again to go and inquire into the affairs of Judea. These particulars are but hinted in his history; but it his highly probable that the king of Persia was not insensible to the benefits which must accrue to his empire, by the skilful efforts of such an upright man as Nehemiah, in promoting order and morality in his distant provinces, and, therefore, authorized this second visit. It is also probable, that the time of his stay at Shushan was considerable, for he found much to correct on his return to Jerusalem. Some had again transgressed the law, by forming connexions with the heathens. The most noted amongst these was Manasseh, a priest, who had married the daughter of Sanballat, the governor of Samaria. He was immediately driven from the sacred order. Leaving Jerusalem, he was received by Sanballat, who obtained a license to erect a temple in Samaria, resembling

that in Zion, and Manasseh became the high priest. Sa maria then became the resort of violaters and apostates, and the mongrel religion which had been adopted by the colonists, after the deportation of the Israelites, in the reign of Shalmaneser, was the religion of Manasseh's temple.

In process of time, however, it was purified from its dross: the statutes of Moses alone were acknowledged; yet the hatred of the Jews to the Samaritans, as we find by the New Testament, still continued.

Another grievous vexation to Nehemiah, was the profanation of the Sabbath, which, in his absence, had gone to a shocking length. Jerusalem again rising to opulence, her commerce with the neighbouring states was revived; the Tyrians especially, who, in all periods of their history, were celebrated for their extensive trade, again brought in their merchandize. Ability to purchase, brings with it a taste for foreign luxuries; the Tyrians could well minister to this, and the Jews were not only tempted to defraud the levites of their tithes, that themselves might indulge in the rich manufactures of Tyre, but they admitted the sellers to expose their wares on the Sabbath, and even laboured in their own vineyards on that sacred day. To put a stop to such outrages, Nehemiah ordered the gates of the city to be shut and strictly guarded on the Sabbath: the traders then erected their stalls under the walls of Jerusalem on the outside; but this, too, was forbidden, and menaces of seizure and punishment, at length, effected a reformation.

Ignorance of the law still prevailed amongst the people, and to this fruitful source of all evil, their transgressions might be generally referred. To disseminate knowledge