heir possessions.

'Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed Me. But ye say, Wherein have we
robbed Thee? In tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed with a curse; for ye
have robbed Me, even this whole nation. Bring ye all the tithes into the
storehouse, that there may be meat in Mine house.'

Thus, if we read the Book of Malachi carefully, we shall find much that
throws light on Nehemiah's history; and we can easily imagine how much
the prophet's sympathy and help must have cheered and strengthened the
great reformer in his trying and difficult work.

What became of Nehemiah, the great cup-bearer, the faithful governor of
Jerusalem, we do not know. Whether he returned to Persia and took up his
old work in the palace, standing behind the king's chair in his office
of Rab-shakeh, or whether he remained in Jerusalem, guarding his
beloved city from enemies without and from false friends within, we are
not told. Whether he died in the prime of life, or whether he lived to a
good old age, neither the Bible nor profane history informs us.

But although we know nothing of Nehemiah's death, we know much of his
life. We have watched him carefully and closely, and there is one thing
which we cannot fail to have noticed, and that is that Nehemiah was
emphatically a man of prayer. In every trouble, in each anxiety, in all
times of danger, he turned to God. Standing behind the king's chair,
Nehemiah prayed; in his private room in the Shushan palace, he pleaded
for Jerusalem; and all through his rough anxious life as a reformer and
a governor, we find him constantly lifting up his heart to God in short
earnest prayers. When Tobiah mocked his work, when the Samaritans
threatened to attack the city, when the people were inclined to be angry
with him for his reforms, when he discovered that there were traitors
and hired agents of Sanballat inside the very walls of Jerusalem, when
he brought upon himself enmity and hatred because of his faithful
dealing in the matter of the temple store-house, when he had to
encounter difficulty and opposition in his determination with regard to
the observance of the Sabbath, and when he still further incensed the
half-hearted Jews by his prompt punishment of those who had taken
heathen wives, and by his summary dismissal of Manasseh; in all these
times of danger, difficulty, and trial, we find Nehemiah turning to the
Lord in prayer.

There was one prayer of which he seems to have been especially fond,
th