VII.

DANIEL IN BABYLON.

THERE were giants in the earth in those days, for

those old Hebrew prophets were a marvellous race of men. It is difficult for us to regard them as parts of the ordinary creation of God. Only in such an age, when Revelation was a simple thing, and men felt, as they saw the symbol or the vision, that the Divine was "not far away from any one of them:" only beneath such a sky, whose sun, as it blasted the desert into desolation, or greened the olive slope into beauty, was a perpetual monition both of threatening and of promise: only among such a people, of deep religious instincts, and impressible in a high degree, could they have lived, and flourished, and become the powers they were. They were not soldiers, but when they rebuked kings, theirs was a courage which the most stalwart crusader might have envied. They were not priests, but never priest spake solemn words with greater seemliness of utterance, nor with diviner power. As we trace their long and lofty line, and their notable ones crowd upon our memories, we seem to shrink from any discussion of their characters, as if they were creatures from the spirit-land. Some such feeling steals over us, as might have prompted the affrighted Gadarenes when they prayed for the

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departure of the Saviour, or as might have burdened the wondering soul of Peter when, in his first vision of Christ's miraculous power, he said, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." They seem to be in the nature of humanity rather than of it, to be surrounded by conditions, and to dwell in an existence of their own, with which the rest of the world can have but a scanty sympathy, or rather a mingled feeling, which is half admiration and half awe. They are not men so much as distinct individual influences, passive beneath their swelling inspiration, standing before the Lord, like the lightnings, which are his messengers, or as the "stormy wind, fulfilling his word."

It is evident that the peculiarities of their office, and their comparative isolation from the experiences of common humanity, prevent us, in the general, from acknowledging their fitness as examples by which to regulate our own life and conduct. There is a shrewd impiety in human nature, which has formed its own. estimate of what its patterns ought to be, and which demands that certain initial conditions shall be rigidly fulfilled. There must be identity of nature, and there must be similarity of circumstance. The man must have like passions, and those passions must have been powerfully tried. Failure in these conditions would at once neutralize the force of the example, even as a blemish in physical beauty would, to a Greek of the olden time, have ostracized Apollo from the fellowship of the gods.

There is none among the brotherhood of the Prophets who so thoroughly comes home to us as

that Hebrew youth, of the royal line of Judah, from whose history we are purposing to be instructed now. He was inspired, but he had a life apart from his inspiration, and we recognise in it the common elements of which lives are made. Principle and persecution sorrow and success the harp-song of thankfulness and the breeze-like voice of grief-all the constituents which are shapely in the formation of character; we meet with them in his experience, just as we have felt them in our own. He comes to us, therefore, no stranger, but robed in our own humanness. He is no meteor vision-sweeping out of darkness to play for a brief space the masque of human living, and then flitting into darkness as unbroken-he comes eating and drinking, doing common things, thrilled with common feelings— though those feelings prompt him to heroic action, and those common things are done in a majestic way. My object is to teach lessons from the life and character of Daniel. My chief purpose, I am not ashamed to avow, is to do my listeners good, and though the platform is broader than the pulpit, and may be indulged with wider latitude of range and phrase, I should be recreant to my great, loved lifework, if I were not to strive mainly to make my words tell upon that future when eternity shall flash upon the doings of time.

It is affirmed of the religion of Jesus, that it is adapted for all changes of human condition, and for all varieties of human character. Clearly, a religion which aims to be universal must possess this assimilating power, or, in the complexities of the world, it

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would be disqualified for the post which it aspires to fill. The high claims which its advocates assert for Christianity, have been passed through the crucible. of the ages, and have been verified by the experience of each generation. It is not hemmed in by parallels of latitude. It is not hindered by any "wall of partition." It can work its marvels in every clime. can translate its comforts into every language. its Founder, its delight is in the "habitable parts of the earth," and wherever man is, in rich metropolis or in rude savannah, whether intellect has exalted or savagery degraded him, there, in the neighbourhood and in the heart of man, is the chosen sphere of Christianity, where she works her changes, diffuses her blessings, raises up her witnesses, and proves to every one who embraces her his angel of discipline. and of life. It may be that you are thinking, some of you, that your circumstances are exceptional; that Religion is a thing only for stream-side villages and quiet hours-not for the realm of business, nor "the tragic hearts of towns." That is a grave error, my brother. Heaven is as near the great city as the breezy down. You can preserve as bright an integrity, you can hold as close a fellowship with the true and the Divine in the heart of London, the modern Babylon, as did Daniel in Babylon, the ancient London.

This brings me to my first thought-the earnest piety which was the foundation-fact of Daniel's consistent life. He was a religious man. His religion influenced his character, kindled his heroism, and had largely to do with his success. His religion, more

over, was not a surface sentiment, traditionally inherited, and therefore loosely held. Opinions have often been entailed with estates, handed down as reverenced heirlooms from one generation to another. Men have rallied round a crimson banner, or shouted lustily for the buff and blue, for no better reason than that the same colours had sashed and rosetted their fathers

perhaps for a century of years. In the history of human opinion it would be curious to inquire how much of it has been the pride of partisanship, or the inheritance of affection, how little of it the force of conviction, and the result of honest thought and study. But Daniel's was an inwrought piety, whose seat was in the heart, and it was of that brave sort which no disaster was able to disturb.

And it was no easy matter to maintain it. Look at him as he is first introduced to our notice. He was lonely, he was tempted, he was in peril. Loneliness, temptation, danger- these are words which perhaps, from painful personal experience, some of us can understand. Add to these the further condition of bondage, a word, thank God, whose full meaning a free people does not understand, and you have some conception of the position of Daniel, when we first become acquainted with him in the palace of the King of Babylon.

Moreover, the circumstances of Babylon, at the time when he was carried there, would necessarily expose his piety to greater hazards. It is always difficult for a slave to profess a faith other than the faith of his master. The victory which Nebuchadnezzar had gained would barb the tongue of the Chaldean scoffer