What is more clear and at the same time more important is the great truth detected by Ezra and recorded by him in a grateful burst of praise. Without any warning the chronicler suddenly breaks off his own narrative, written in the third person, to insert a narrative written by Ezra himself in the first person--beginning at Ezra vii. 27 and continued down to Ezra x. The scribe opens by blessing God--"the Lord God of our fathers," who had "put such a thing in the king's heart as to beautify the house of the Lord which is in Jerusalem."[85] This, then, was a Divine movement. It can only be accounted for by ascribing the original impulse to God. Natural motives of policy or of superstition may have been providentially manipulated, but the hand that used them was the hand of God. The man who can perceive this immense fact at the very outset of his career is fit for any enterprise. His transcendent faith will carry him through difficulties that would be insuperable to the worldly schemer. [85] Ezra vii. 27. Passing from the thought of the Divine influence on Artaxerxes, Ezra further praises God because he has himself received "mercy ... before the king and his counsellors, and before all the king's mighty princes."[86] This personal thanksgiving is evidently called forth by the scribe's consideration of the part assigned to him in the royal edict. There was enough in that edict to make the head of a self-seeking, ambitious man swim with vanity. But we can see from the first that Ezra is of a higher character. The burning passion that consumes him has not a particle of hunger for self-aggrandisement; it is wholly generated by devotion to the law of his God. In the narrowness and bigotry that characterise his later conduct as a reformer, some may suspect the action of that subtle self-will which creeps unawares into the conduct of some of the noblest men. Still the last thing that Ezra seeks, and the last thing that he cares for when it is thrust upon him, is the glory of earthly greatness. [86] Ezra vii. 28.