For me to celebrate Nehemiah as a church builder and to urge this supremely as how Christians should regard him may raise some eyebrows. But that is what I shall do in this book, and I want to begin by explaining why. So now I glance back fifty years. He was an odd little man, lean, intense, and jerky, with a face that seemed to light up as he spoke. His dress was odd, too, by my undergraduate standards, for he wore a brown monastic habit, the uniform
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