Consciousness of religion cannot be of necessity wrong, and it is only a false estimate of human nature with regard to God which enables men to take another view with regard to such sets. With boldness and without hesitation Paul says he has run good course and fought a good fight; and he based upon this declaration that there was laid up for him a crown of righteousness. In the same way we find constant recognition by David of his own good conduct throughout the Psalms; And Samuel protests his innocence in the sight of the congregation. Hezekiah upon his sick-bed narrates the better sets of his life as a reason for God to prolong his term of years; while more than one of the apostles reminds our Lord of their self-denying adherence to His cause. While Nehemiah’s consciousness of certain acts that he knew he had done to please God shines with a soft and mellowed lustre on his figure whenever he comes into notice, the evident simplicity of his purpose and sincerity of his mind, and the utter absence of anything like censoriousness or boastfulness, prevent him from being in the least degree shadowed by vanity or presumption. A view like Nehemiah’s of those sets which are performed with a pure intention of pleasing God is justified, because--
1. The doing so involves truthfulness in our estimate of moral action.
2. Of the very direct encouragement that we receive from the consciousness that we have done what is pleasing to God. In our intercourse with our fellow-creatures nothing so encourages in the effort to please as the fact of having pleased; nothing so discourages as the consciousness of not having given satisfaction, or what is worse, the impression that we have dissatisfied. (E. Monro.)
Prayer for God’s blessing
The Rev. Dr. Brock, of Bloomsbury, when about twenty-one years old (1828), and just out of his apprenticeship, left Devonshire for London. “He had not gone far from his home before he stopped, and sat down under a hedge, in a lane, and opening his Bible at the 13th chapter of Nehemiah, his eye fell upon the 31st verse: ‘Remember me, O my God, for good.’ Kneeling down upon his knees under that hedge, with his hand upon the passage, ha put up a fervent prayer that God would befriend him by remembering him for good in his metropolitan life. How strikingly was that prayer answered! Dr. Brock himself used to say, ‘Who can tell how much of the success of my after-life may be traced back to that prayer?’”
