From another point of view the record of the names of people who have rendered good service may be valuable. It will be a stimulus to their successors. The Early Church preserved the names of her confessors and martyrs in the diptychs which were expressly provided for use in public worship, that God might be praised for their noble lives, and that the living might be stimulated to follow their example. Here is one of the great uses of history. We cannot afford to forget the loyal service of the past, because out of it we draw inspiration for the present. The people with a great history have come into a rich heritage. To be a child of a really noble house, to spring from a family truly without reproach--a family all whose sons are pure and all whose daughters are brave--surely this is to receive a high commission to cherish the good name unsullied. As the later Jews gazed at the towers of Jerusalem and marked well her bulwarks, with the thought that this massive strength was the fruit of the toil and sacrifice of their own forefathers--so that the very names of individual ancestors were linked with exact spots on the grey walls--they would hear a call to loyal service worthy of their noble predecessors. To proceed, we may observe further that the groups of builders fall into several classes. The first place is given to the priestly order--"the high-priest and his brethren the priests."[170] This is quite in accordance with the sacerdotal spirit of the times, when the theocracy was emerging into power to take the place left vacant by the decay of the house of David. But the priests are not only named first. Nehemiah states that they were the first to respond to his appeal. "_Then_"--_i.e._, after he had addressed the assembled Jews--"Then Eliashib the high-priest _rose up_," etc. This man--the grandson of Jeshua, from whom so much was expected by Zechariah--was the first to set his hand to the tremendous task. First in honour, he was first in service. The beauty of his action lies in its silence. Not a word is recorded as spoken by him. But he was not satisfied to sanction the work of humbler men. He led the people in the best possible way, by beginning the work himself, by directly taking upon him his share of it. In this noble simplicity of service Eliashib was followed by the priesthood generally. These men put forth no claims to immunity from the obligation of civic duties or secular occupations. It never occurred to them to object that such employments were in the least degree inconsistent with their high office. The priestly order was hampered by the strictest rules of artificial separation; but the quaint notion--so common in the East, and not quite unknown in the West--that there is something degrading in hard work did not enter into them. [170] Neh. iii. 1.