but lest they should cause a weak brother to offend. They would avoid the least appearance of evil; they would model their conduct so that,-placed as they were in a conspicuous position, their public profession and public acts should be such as were calculated to incite in the hearts of their humbler captive fellowcountrymen a spirit of patriotism and a spirit of reverence. No desire merely to stand well in the eyes of the sovereign potentate in whose power they found themselves; no mere wish, in obedience to the laws of worldly prudence or of formal etiquette, to conform to the regulations of a religious ritual that a prince of idolatrous proclivities approved of, could induce them to sacrifice their own principles, or to weaken the conscientious convictions of others. They determined to take their stand at the very outset on the side of the right, instead of on the side of the expedient, and to resist the very first appearances of evil, however plausible and outwardly harmless these appearances may be. For when, by indirect courses or by illegitimate means, wealth, or fame, or ease may be obtained by any of us, we should be ready to reject the insidious offer or the dishonourable procedure-refuse the meat offered to idols, "the daily provision of the king's meat and of the wine. which he drank," and to choose contentedly "the pulse to eat and the water to drink." "Poverty is great riches, if a man be content with that he hath," while riches, honour, and leisure acquired by the sacrifice of our conscientious convictions, or by the degradation or deception of some weaker brother, lead eventually but to littleness of spirit and disappointment of heart. The first step, then, in the path of sin or crime, the first wandering from the path of righteousness, must be carefully guarded against, lest,

-inadvertently and heedlessly, if not wilfully, we do violence to the dictates of our own conscience, or cause in any way a weak brother to offend.

II. THAT THE ROAD TO EMINENCE IS THROUGH THE GATE OF SELF-DENIAL.

Daniel and his three friends disdained the rich viands that were within their reach, and confined their diet to pulse and water. Yet" their countenances appeared fairer and fatter in flesh than all the children which did eat the portion of the king's meat;"" and among them all was found none like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah: therefore stood they before the king." So, in religious matters as in secular, it is eternally true; as Bunyan in his allegory declares that Hold-world, Money-love, Save-all, and By-ends, beguiled by Demas at the hill Lucre, came to an untimely fate on the way; while the pilgrim who desires to obtain a welcome to the Delectable Mountain must receive it from the lips of such shepherds as Knowledge, Experience, Watchful, and Sincere.

III. THAT IT IS NOT WHAT WE RECEIVE, BUT WHAT WE ASSIMILATE THAT ENRICHES US.

Daniel and his three companions flourished more in health and beauty on the pulse and water than all the other royal captives did upon the most sumptuous fare. It is not what we eat, but what we digest, that nourishes the body; it is not what we read, but what we apprehend, that strengthens the mind; it is not what we profess, but what we believe that edifies the soul. It is possible for a man to be a very good churchgoer, a very diligent receiver of the Holy Communion, a very assiduous listener to numerous sermons, and yet for him to be but an indifferent Christian. As life consisteth not merely in the abundance of the things

that a man possesses, so spirituality is not composed of doctrinal accuracy or of ceremonial observances, but of practical Christian morality and of unsullied Christian faith.

IV. THAT THE ISSUES OF EVENTS ARE IN THE HANDS OF GOD.

The unnamed royal captives, who partook of the richer and more nutritious diet provided for them by the king, might have been expected prima facie to have attained to a greater degree of health and strength and beauty than the four captive princes whose names are mentioned could, on their abstemious diet of pulse and water, have hoped to reach. But events were otherwise ordered by God; and through His blessing the pulse and water were rendered more powerfully nutritious than the diet provided by the king. God's ways are not as man's ways. One planteth and another watereth, but it is God that gives the increase: and at His word the small cake and little cruse of oil of the impoverished widow can be made to be sufficient to provide for a household during years of famine; and the five loaves and two fishes of the disciples can be distributed so as to afford an abundant sustenance to a multitude of five thousand.

V. THAT THE EDUCATION OF THESE ROYAL CAPTIVES IS TYPICAL OF THE COURSE OF HUMAN LIFE.

These captive royal children in Babylon were to be taught the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans according to the command of the great king Nebuchadnezzar. And the king appointed them a daily provision of the king's meat and of the wine which he drank, so nourishing them three years, that at the end thereof they might stand before the king. So we are sent into this world as into a training school by the

King of kings, that we way be fitly taught the heavenly knowledge and the celestial language which we need to make us able duly to appreciate the beauties and to join in the hallelujahs of the strange land wherein hereafter we are destined to abide. Our great King, too, of His bounty gives us each day our daily bread for body, mind, and soul, and pours out for us freely the wine from the true vine. This heavenly food some grossly abuse, some foolishly neglect, some ascetically reject; not for the same reason that caused Daniel and his three companions to reject the rich diet provided for them, but simply from human ignorance or conceit. Some of these royal captive children, doubtless, unduly indulged their pampered appetites with the good things provided for them; others, it may be, absorbed in the dreams of ambition, disregarded the claims of their physical nature to an injurious extent. Neither of these parties amongst the children,-parties that aptly typify the sensualist and the worldling,-would be likely to prove in the end fit for the presence and the favour of the king of Babylon: but neither would Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, who, rejecting their regularly appointed food, confined themselves to pulse and water, and whose conduct may be taken as emblematical of asceticism, have appeared in countenance fairer and fatter, and "in all matters of wisdom and understanding" "ten times better," than all those around them, unless God,-approving as He did of the REASON of their voluntary abstinence,-had blessed them in their daily course of life.

Asceticism in itself, any more than worldly-mindedness in itself, cannot render any one fit for the presence of the heavenly King. A proud, a vain, an envious, a jealous, an uncharitable heart may beat as well under

the hair shirt of the self-torturing flagellist as under the purple robes of the monarch; and Antony in his dreary cell and Simon Stylites on his lonely pillar may have been as far from the kingdom of heaven as the sensual Belshazzar at his luxurious banquet, or the worldly-minded Pilate in his tesselated hall.

After three years these royal captives had to appear before king Nebuchadnezzar: so, after the three-fold period, youth, manhood, and old age,-into which our mortal life in its full completeness may be divided, we have all "to stand before the King." How then shall we appear? Shall we stand unknown, unfriended uncomely, unprepared, as those unnamed royal children did? or shall we, like Daniel and his three companions, stand "in favour and tender love," fitted by our "knowledge and skill in all learning," to be "fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God?" Should we by our evil lusts or by our disgraceful negligence have rendered ourselves fit only to be numbered amongst the former of these two classes, then a future of unfathomable mystery, spent in banishment from the King's presence, awaits us as it did those unnamed Israelitish children of the king's seed but should we, by self-denial, perseverance, prayer, and faith, have qualified ourselves by God's grace to be ranked beside those chosen royal scions, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, then, whatever may be the fiery furnaces of affliction and the lions' dens of temptation through which we may be called on during our mortal life to pass, the same ultimate happy destiny, but in a higher, more spiritual, and more abiding form, shall await us at the hand of the King of kings that those four pious youths met with at the hands of an earthly potentate-youths of