and feasted from the king's table with the food and drink of which the king himself partook, it would be difficult to imagine what could more stir and inflame the aspirations of their youthful hearts. What might they not hope when thus noticed and honored from the throne?

But, whilst duly sensible and appreciative of the royal favor, "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." To partake of these royal viands was, to him, contrary to his religion and his conscience. It was the common custom among the heathen, when they sat down to a meal, to offer or dedicate a portion of the provisions and drink to the gods. In the place of our asking a blessing, they had a ceremony of acknowledgment or dedication to their household deities. Paul refers to this, and, on the ground of Christian principle, forbids participation where eatables are thus devoted to idols. The Jewish law was still more rigid, and strictly prohibited certain classes of food altogether, and other classes also if not prepared in a prescribed way. There was no security, therefore, that, in every mouthful he might take of this meat and drink from the table of the king, Daniel would not be violating the laws of his God. The question consequently was, whether he should consult his conscience or his appetite and comfortwhether or not he should let his religion go and accept common cause with idolaters whether he should relinquish fidelity to the throne of his Maker

or risk his good standing with the king, who was disposed to favor him. Had he been one of those easy-going Christians of our day who are ready to make any worldly pleasure, gain, or convenience an ample excuse for setting aside any claims or duties of religion, we should never have heard of any scruple on the subject; but then we never should have had the illustrious Daniel. It takes sterner stuff to make saints, prophets, and holy princes than that which shuts its eyes and asks no questions, and is content to accommodate itself to almost any thing and any place. Abraham's conscience would not let him stay in Ur, though his going out would lead him he knew not whither. Moses' conscience would not allow him to accept Egypt's throne and riches, though it sent him an exile for forty years in the wilderness. Paul could not permit himself to confer with flesh and blood, though at the sacrifice of everything earthly. And any one who would be a true man of God must be willing to risk all, and even life itself, rather than go against conscience and the clear will of Jehovah. The worldly-wise may call it squeamishness, and sneer at it as a straining at gnats, that Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the viands of the king's table; but it was the great foundation-stone of all his greatness. Principle is never small. It is even greater when exhibited in little things than in matters so imposing that there is scarcely room for trial. And he that is faithful in little is thereby also faithful in much. The man who has no regard for pence is not to be trusted for

pounds. Our own history has shown us how a mighty revolution and the creation of a great and glorious nationality may be wrapped up in a box of tea. Daniel took his stand for God, conscience, and righteousness even in the little matter of his meat and drink, and thus laid the groundwork of a character which passed untarnished and unscathed through seventy years of political life, which outlived envy, jealousy, and dynasties, and which stands out to this day the brightest on all the records of humanity. We wonder and gaze with awe upon him as we contemplate his sublime career.

Elevated from his early youth to the presidency over all the colleges of Babylon's wise men, then to the judge's bench, then to the headship of all the governors of an all-conquering empire, and holding his place amid all the intrigues indigenous to Oriental despotisms through three successive monarchies; honored during all the forty years of Nebuchadnezzar's reign; entrusted with the king's business under the insolent and sensual Belshazzar; acknowledged by the conquering Medo-Persians; the stay and protector of his people under every administration through all the dreary years of their long exile; dwelling with the great in the most dissolute as the most grand and powerful of all the old heathen cities; invulnerable to the jealousies and envies of plotting satraps, and maintaining himself unspotted to the end as a worshipper of Jehovah in a court and empire made up of idolaters, Daniel's life presents an embodied epic of faith and greatness, and exhibits one of the rarest pic

tures ever shown in any mere man. And yet the whole of it had its root and beginning in his youthful resolve not to defile himself with the portion of the king's viands!

Josephus resolves the whole matter into the wisdom of a vegetarian diet for success in study. But Josephus wrote as a sycophant and a craven. He knew better, but wished to avoid reflections upon the idolatry of the emperors and people whom he desired to propitiate and please. Had he possessed a spark of Daniel's devotion and honesty, he never would have perpetrated such an absurdity. The question was not about what sort of diet is most conducive to learning, but about the requirements and commands of God with respect to things offered to idols and contrary to the Law. It was not a question about vegetable food or of total abstinence from vinous drinks, but one of loyalty to his Maker, to his conscience, and to the ordinances of Heaven. It was not a question of dietetics, but one of high religious principle and duty. Daniel might have kept himself to pulse and water all his days and never been more of a man than Josephus was; but he had learned the statutes of Jehovah, and kept himself devoutly to them. Hence the blessing of his humble fare, and of himself in the use of it, which turned deficiencies into successes, weaknesses into power, and adversities into glorious triumphs. It is not meat and drink that make men prosperous, wise, and great. It is not the eating of the king's portion, nor abstinence from it, but solemn, self-sacrificing devotion to sacred principle, which develops

Daniels, Hananiahs, and noble masters of wisdom and saints of God.

But it was not in offensive self-assertion that these youths declined the king's viands. An obtrusive piety is never of God. True religion is always courteous, modest, and anxious to avoid unnecessary collisions. With all its inflexibility it is always amiable and kind. There be some who seem to think they cannot be faithful without being rude, or true to God without harshness toward men. But here we have all the modesty and politeness of genuine refinement, and all the courtesy of an accomplished courtier, with all the steadfastness of the most devoted piety, evincing the genial sincerity, and heralding in its simplicity the future greatness of the man. Daniel showed no acerbed temper. He did not fly into an indignant passion about his religion and his God. He did not break out in declamation against Babylonian ways and idolatries. He did not feign himself insulted by the offers of his king because they did not harmonize with his views and feelings. There was no bravado, no insolence, no defiance. That would have been as wrong as to eat of the king's meat. It would not have recommended him or his cause, and could only have made matters worse. Therefore, with the modesty of a true man, with due regard to the situation, and with that humility of spirit which considers the rights and feelings of others while yet faithful to principle, he put the whole thing in the shape of mild and gentle request that he and his three friends might be permitted to live on pulse and water, if only by way