of men to concern themselves about what they were commissioned to foretell, and Daniel was a particular fool to let his soul be troubled concerning these zoologic visions of things in the distant ages. But this is just the difference between the true and acknowledged servants of God and those who claim to be their brethren, successors and representatives in our day. By the Fathers whatever the Holy Ghost made known concerning the future was treasured and studied as the most precious of communications, dwelt upon with the most special interest and heeded as the guiding light of God amid this world's abounding darkness. But with most of our modern teachers to ignore and avoid what is written about the future. is the higher wisdom and the better piety. And if perchance they are pushed into the subject, the sum of their teaching is that it may perhaps mean this, or perhaps that, or perhaps nothing that we can at present decipher. And thus a vast and vitally interesting part of God's revelation is emasculated and practically turned into a useless encumbrance of the sacred pages. Jehovah says, " Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it," even though it be a vision which is yet for an appointed time unknown to us. But men have become wiser than their Maker, and know better what becomes a sober theologian and a right preacher; and we must shut the Book and close our mouths about it, or consent to be accounted mad! Alas, alas for the reigning religion of our day!

Brethren, if we would be like the holy prophets,

and prove ourselves their followers, we must have an eye, an ear and a heart for their sacred word concerning what must shortly come to pass. Every utterance of the Lord is precious, and especially every word which tells what we are to look for and expect. And as you value your safety in these ominous and perplexing times, and would be ready for what is about to come upon the earth, beware how you ignore or neglect what God has caused to be written for our learning, lest, being in darkness, the great day should overtake you as a thief!

LECTURE ELEVENTH.

THE CHOSEN PEOPLE'S FORTUNES; OR, THE SEVENTY WEEKS.

Daniel 9: 1-27.

THIS chapter, more than any other in the Book of

Daniel, lays open to us the inner life of the prophet. It shows that he who was so illustrious in his wisdom and public relations was no less noted for his deep spirituality and earnest private devotions, whilst it suggests that the former were largely the result of the latter. True faith and living piety help to make wise and great. Close personal communion with God and habitual leaning upon Him are the source of man's greatest dignity and grandest successes. Nor could Daniel have been the man that he was, so honored a premier, so wise a prophet or so beloved a favorite of Heaven, but for his having been so earnest a believer and so devout a suppliant. And if we would learn something of the manner and substance of those prayers which he offered three times a day at his window looking toward Jerusalem, we here have a specimen of them written and put in form by himself, just as it poured forth again and again from his saintly lips. Nor can I but think that if the government officials of our day would learn to indite and

use such words as the daily outpouring of their deepest hearts, they would learn a patriotism of which, unfortunately, they know too little, though they talk so much, and our political affairs would cease to be the shame and scandal of the country and the mortifying grief of all right-minded citizens which they now are. Certainly, better public servant than Daniel, as tested by three different administrations, and fully admitted even by those who hated him most, never filled an office of state. He was wise, faithful and absolutely faultless. And the secret source of it was that no engagements of empire, no plots or accusations of men, no subtle attempts to draw him off, could ever serve to keep him from his prayers and duties to his God. And here in this chapter we are enabled to come near that open window and to listen to the very words of his intensest prayers. A writer on the subject has said, "I know not that there is in the Bible a sublimer litany than that which is contained in this chapter, or clauses more appropriate as channels of a Christian's prayers than these earnest, beautiful, yet simple petitions.' Happy they who are kindled by the same spirit to a like unction!

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It is worth observing, too, by what exercises and circumstances this particular intensity of devotion and pious earnestness was inflamed and fed. It appears from the first verses that Daniel was a student of prophecy, of unfulfilled prophecy, and especially of the numbers and dates contained in the sacred predictions. It seems that he was very anxious to find

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out about "the times and the seasons prophetic word had alluded, and wished to decipher all about the days and the years in which God's foreshowings were to be accomplished. Many consider such studies and anxieties the most barren and dangerous to which we can give ourselves. It is a common idea that we are not only not called upon, but not even authorized, to pry into unfulfilled prophecies, and especially unfulfilled prophetic dates. The assertions are even put forth in the name of Christianity that it is damaging to true piety and destructive of all right Christian activity and devotion to examine and talk about such things. But the holy Daniel was of a different mind and spirit. He studied the writings of the prophets. He searched into what was foretold to come to pass, and particularly "the number of the years whereof the word of the Lord" had spoken. But, so far from working harm to his piety, or of unfitting him for the practical duties of life, he here writes it down as the special source and spring of the intensest of all his devout activities-the very thing which aroused him to the sublimest exhibition of living soul-religion-which in no manner unfitted him for due attention to "the king's business." There is indeed much reason to suspect that one of the real causes of the superficiality and leanness of modern piety is that the professed people of God no longer understand or believe what the prophets have written, and refuse to study or hear about things to come as God has revealed them for our learning. Let them study what Daniel studied, and learn the whole plan