Nehemiah 12:30

And the priests and the Levites purified themselves, and purified the people.

Beginning at the right place

I. A pure church may make a sound commonwealth. “They purified themselves.” Like priest, like people. Cleric and laie act and react on each other.” Be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the Lord.” Eli’s sons. Uzzah may not sustain the ark.

II. To a pure people all things are pure. “They purified the people and the gates and the wall.” Citizens and city; sanctuary and house; God’s work and their own.

All things are sacred;

The eye of God is on them all,

And hallows all.”

Jesus revealed God in the minutest. Peter’s vision. The present preparatory. “I think our fathers had a better, grander, a diviner idea even of common life than we have when they spoke of the trades and professions of men as being their calling. There is a great thought in this word. It makes all the men, streets, shops, and warehouses to me as I walk along Divine objects. I feel that I am in a Divine place when I think of the men about me as following their calling. I feel that there is a God above men; that there is a God in human society; a God in the shops and counting-houses of London, touching and teaching every human being; and that every man is occupying the place, and putting his hand to the work to which God has called him. Sometimes you may see a man at a certain calling which is but preparatory. He is meant for something else. Providence opens the way, and he goes up higher and does another thing. God has given us a spiritual vocation--a Divine calling in Christ Jesus--and we are to walk worthy of that vocation here, doing all worldly things in a spiritual manner, preparatory to a higher calling which shall come one day, when we shall enter upon other forms of duty and service, to which the present inferior forms of duty and service faithfully fulfilled shall gradually prepare and fit us. (T. Binney.)