Looking Back: The Rebuilding of the Walls

From March 1943

The Rebuilding of the Walls

Among all these stories probably none has been so often dealt with from the pulpit as that of Nehemiah. It provides many striking parallels to the circumstances of our own day. The people had known defeat; and they had lacked leadership. It required the ringing call of Nehemiah to nerve them for the struggle; and so too Britain was roused to new endeavour and determination by the new leader sent her in her need. In that typical quisling, Shemaiah, who had been “hired” to bring Nehemiah into disrepute, we see a forerunner of the fifth-columnist of to-day.  The walls of Britain, like those of Jerusalem, were breached and many of her gates destroyed, and Winston Churchill, like Nehemiah, had to set himself to their rebuilding. How much his leadership has meant during these past three years will not be fully appreciated until we are able to look back when it is all over; but something of its significance is shown by the importance attached to the mere fact that he and his American counterpart had met in North Africa. Among the allied nations and among their enemies alike the meeting of these two men at this juncture was felt to be a portent.

Is it fanciful to believe that one reason why they inspire such confidence is that in the part they have played in this great struggle they are so obviously animated, not by any spirit of personal ambition, but by a passion for justice and fair dealing? Each in his own way has shown that he places the moral and spiritual above the material, and so has provided a leadership that appeals to the highest instincts in the people they represent.

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