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LECTURE II.

CHRISTIAN STEADFASTNESS.

"But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's meat, nor with the wine which he drank: therefore he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself. Now God had brought Daniel into favour and tender love with the prince of the eunuchs."-Daniel i. 8, 9.

HAVING said so much by way of preface to my exposition of this book, let me endeavour briefly to look at the particular verse I have selected for remark, which is really a very important one. "Then Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's meat." Daniel, as far as carried away a

we can gather, was very young when he was captive into Babylon. He is called "a child," and we speak of the three children; but, as I told you on a former occasion, the word rendered "child," means "a stripling," "a young man ;" the presumption therefore is that Daniel at this time was about fifteen or sixteen years of age; and at the end of three years, when after living on pulse and water he appeared much fairer and fatter in flesh than those of his countrymen who consented to become partakers of the royal bounty, he was probably about twenty years of age. But it may be asked, what was it that made Daniel so firmly refuse to eat of the king's meat or drink of the king's wine, when there was so great a temptation to do so? It could not be that he thought it sinful to drink wine, or improper to dine with the king of the country. I have no doubt he knew just as well as others that wine was more agreeable to his taste than water, and that to dine at the royal table would be a great honour; but the reason of his refusal was evidently this: the king of Babylon, like all heathens, was in the habit of what we would call "asking a blessing" before his meals, or, as it is

more popularly termed, "saying grace;" in doing which he took a portion of his food and dedicated it to the god whom he worshipped, and also a portion of the wine he was about to drink, and poured out a libation to his idol before tasting it himself; and thus, as it were, consecrated, according to his idea, the whole to the heathen god. Daniel now felt that he could not conscientiously partake of it, because it would have been, as I shall hereafter show, implicating himself with heathenism, and acting unfaithfully to his country, his religion, and his God; and he was prepared to run all hazards rather than even appear to do so. What was it, then, that made Daniel thus resolute and firm? It was this: Daniel had received an early religious education; he was not brought up at a school where he learned the world and nothing more, or mere secular education to the exclusion of religion, just as if that were possible. He was not educated at a school where he was taught what the French schoolmasters are now teaching-pantheism and socialism; but he was brought up at the home of his father, where he acquired the knowledge of the God of Abraham, and that savingly and with profit. Early education was to Daniel, under God, the means of his preservation. The deep engraving of truth upon the heart of the young is never altogether effaced. Those impressions of divine truth that are made on our hearts in youth often emerge in after years with all the freshness and the beauty of yesterday. Silenced they may be; extinguished they rarely are: overshadowed they may be; but obliterated they cannot be. I know, when I learned that scriptural but extremely abstruse work-perhaps more so than need be "The Shorter Catechism," I did not understand it; in those days education was not so well comprehended, and it was not thought so necessary to explain to the understanding what was to be stored in the memory, as it is now; but my memory was stored with the truths of that precious document; and when I grew up I found those truths which had been laid aside in its cells as propositions which I could neither understand nor make use of, become illuminated by the sunshine of after years, and, like some hidden and mysterious writing, reveal in all their beauty and their fulness those precious truths which I had neither seen nor comprehended before, and which have been so long and are

now preached in the church of my fathers, and no less so, I trust, in every section of the evangelical church of the Lord Jesus Christ. The words spoken by parents to their children in the privacy of home, or by teachers to their pupils in the more busy scene of the schoolroom, are like words spoken in a whisperinggallery, and will be clearly heard at the distance of years, and along the corridors of ages that are yet to come. Teach your children early truths, even if they cannot comprehend them, and those truths, impressed upon their minds when young, will prove like the lode-star to the mariner upon a dark and stormy sea, associated with a mother's love, with a father's example, with the roof-tree beneath which they lived and loved, and will prove mighty in after life to mould the man and enable him to adorn and improve the age in which he is placed. The heart of a child is ductile; it is a soft soil, into which we may cast seed which shall either produce poisonous weeds, or spring up and expand into fruit-bearing trees. Reverence the child-that little white pinafore in the infant-school ought to be looked upon at least as reverently as the black apron of the most learned bishop or archbishop that ever lived. It has an importance that you cannot over-estimate; that child may play a part that shall be terrible as that of a Napoleon-the scourge of nations; or beautiful as that of Daniel-the faithful amid the faithless many. "Train up a

child in the way he should go,"-mark the words, not "in the way he would go," that is the French system of education; but "in the way he should go-and when he is old he will not depart from it.

Let me notice another feature in the prophet. Daniel was of noble, if not of royal birth. He was of the royal tribe of Judah; and this shows us that while "not many mighty, not many noble are called,” there are some even of the highest rank who have adorned by their practice the faith which they professed. Isaiah and Daniel were of the royal tribe; David was a shepherd-boy; Amos was a herdsman; Zechariah, a captive from Babylon; Elisha, a ploughman; so that we have among the Old Testament prophets, the prince and the peasant, the noble and the commoner, all equally inspired by the Spirit of God, and proclaiming with equal distinctness the truths of the everlasting gospel. I know

that the minister of the gospel should look upon the conversion of a single soul as transcending and eclipsing every thing; but under the present constitution of society-whether that constitution be good or bad, it is not for me here to discuss—rank and wealth and power have a mighty influence, and we ought specially to thank God when families occupying the highest place in the land are found, as they are found, more and more every day, allying themselves to that which gives splendour to the most ancient coronet, and grandeur to the mightiest and most illustrious crown. Daniel then was of the royal tribe, and probably of the royal family, a man of rank and dignity, and he enlisted all his power and all his influence in the service of his country, his religion, and his God.

In the third place, Daniel and his three friends were evidently scholars; they were men of learning and talent. Daniel was skilled in all the secular as well as the religious knowledge of his country; and when we contend for sacred education, you must not suppose that we mean to imply that secular and scientific knowledge is useless to you, or in any way to disparage the pursuit of it. Only read the subsequent part of this chapter, and you will find that Daniel was skilled in all the learning of the times, and it proved of eminent advantage to him and his countrymen. For aught we know, those Babylonians, gazing upon the starry firmament in that splendid atmosphere, and in that glorious climate upon the plains of Shinar, may have had a knowledge of astronomy which might make even Newton look less if we only knew all that the Chaldeans knew. Daniel, however, was a Hebrew, and was taught in the Hebrew school-science associated with religion. And such knowledge proved of use to him, for it was a great means of his exaltation to power. At the present day the possession of sound secular knowledge, in India, for instance, is of very great importance. I need not tell you that the Hindoos in India we have 100,000,000 of fellow-subjects; with them science is always most intimately connected with religion, so much so that it is one of the principles of their creed that all knowledge is equally inspired. They believe their chemistry, their astronomy, their geology, to be as much inspired as any principle in their religion. If, then, you

among

can prove to a Hindoo that any part of his science is wrong, you have not only made him a better philosopher, but you have taken out a stone from the very arch of which his whole system of belief is composed. When the Church of Scotland sent out her missionaries, she made the experiment; but when they tried to teach the Hindoos science as well as religion, some people said, "What, are missionaries going out from a Christian church to teach astronomy?" and certainly the objection seemed plausible enough but the result has proved how complete was the popular misapprehension. To give an instance of the advantages arising from the course we adopted, I may state, that the Hindoos believe that the earth is not a round globe, but an extended plain; and that when an eclipse takes place, it is some great animal whose shadow produces this effect upon the moon, and that it betokens some disaster: but when one of our missionaries proved to a Brahmin what is the true figure of our globe, and demonstrated to him that an eclipse would take place on a certain day, and at a certain hour, and would be visible at a certain place, he had proved to the Brahmin that what he believed to be an inspired dogma was a gross scientific blunder; and by so doing he not only made the Brahmin a better philosopher, which was not worth doing, but he succeeded in shaking his faith in his whole system of religious belief, and thus led him to infer that if one article in his creed were false, might not all its articles be false together? This shows us the great importance of teaching scientific knowledge. Now, Daniel was acquainted with all branches of knowledge, and it was of great use to him, as it ever will be in the hand and under the control of religion. So connected it becomes a Levite in the temple of God, a handmaid of the bride. It acts as a pioneer of the gospel till the spoils that are taken from Egypt shall beautify the temple of Salem, and all nature bring its trophies to adorn the Redeemer's triumph.

It is evident, in the next place, that though the king of Babylon liked Daniel the scholar, he did not much like Daniel the Christian. He wished Daniel and his friends to be taught all the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans; and he wished him at the same time to be taught to serve the gods and sympathize with the religion of the Chaldeans. The king liked Daniel's scholar