Finally, special care was taken for what we may call "Church finance" in the collection of the tithes. This comes last; yet it has its place. Not only is it necessary for the sake of the work that is to be carried on; it is also important in regard to the religious obligation of the worshipper. The cry for a cheap religion is irreligious, because real religion demands sacrifices, and, indeed, necessarily promotes the liberal spirit from which those sacrifices flow. But if the contributions are to come within the range of religious duties, they must be voluntary. Clearly this was the case with the Jewish tithes, as we may see for two reasons. First, they were included in the covenant; and adhesion to this was entirely voluntary. Secondly, Malachi rebuked the Jews for withholding the payment of tithes as a sin against God,[245] showing that the payment only rested on a sense of moral obligation on the part of the people. It would have been difficult to go further while a foreign government was in power, even if the religious leaders had desired to do so. Moreover, God can only accept the offerings that are given freely with heart and will, for all He cares for is the spirit of the gift. [245] Mal. iii. 8-12. CHAPTER XXVIII. _THE HOLY CITY._ NEHEMIAH vii. 1-4; xi. We have seen that though the two passages that deal with the sparsity of the population of Jerusalem are separated in our Bibles by the insertion of the section on the reading of The Law and the formation of the covenant, they are, in fact, so closely related that, if we skip the intermediate section, the one runs on into the other quite smoothly, as by a continuous narrative;[246] that is to say, we may pass from Nehemiah vii. 4 to Nehemiah xi. 1 without the slightest sign of a junction of separate paragraphs. So naive and crude is the chronicler's style, that he has left the raw edges of the narrative jagged and untrimmed, and thereby he has helped us to see distinctly how he has constructed his work. The foreign matter which he has inserted in the great gash is quite different in style and contents from that which precedes and follows it. This is marked with the Ezra stamp, which indicates that in all probability it is founded on notes left by the scribe; but the broken narrative in the midst of which it appears is derived from Nehemiah, the first part consisting of memoirs written by the statesman himself, and the second part being an abbreviation of the continuation of Nehemiah's writing. The beginning of this second part directly links it on to the first part, for the word "and" has no sort of connection with the immediately preceding Ezra section, while it exactly fits into the broken end of the previous Nehemiah section; only with his characteristic indifference to secular affairs, in comparison with matters touching The Law and the temple worship, the chronicler abbreviates the conclusion of Nehemiah's story. It is easy to see how he constructs