— — o— 2 1907 eciion LITERARY ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE BIBLE Edited by James Moifatt, D.D. THE BOOK OF DANIEL LITERARY ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE BIBLE EDITED BY JAMES MOFFATT, D.D. The Book of Ecclesiastes The Book of Daniel The Gospel of Saint Mark The Gospel of Saint Luke The Epistle to the Romans The Book of Revelation Edinburgh : T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty LITERARY ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE BIBLE nPHE materials for these volumes are of two kinds. On the one hand, I have set down passages of verse and prose in which some text of this book of the Bible has been used or applied in what appears to be a forcible or notable manner. Some of these are drawn from history and bio- graphy, others from general literature. In the second place, I have admitted passages which develop aptly and freshly not the words but the idea of a Biblical verse. It is hoped that both classes of illustrations may prove interesting to the ordinary reader by enriching the associations and eliciting the significance of the Bible. Some- times the materials printed here will serve as lighted candles placed beside the text of Scrip- ture, while in other cases I trust it is not too y DANIEL presumptuous to expect that the juxtaposition of text and quotation may help to set in motion the minds of those who have to use the Bible constantly in the work of preaching or teaching throughout the Christian churches. JAMES MOFFATT. VJ * Whatever may be thought of the genuineness or authority of any part of the book of Daniel, it makes no difference in my belief in Christianity ; for Christianity is within a man, even as he is a being gifted with reason ; it is associated with your mother's chair, and with the first remem- bered tones of her blessed voice. ' COLERIDGE. DANIEL I. 2,6. Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jeru- salem, etc. * T WAS taken captive when nearly sixteen years of age. I did not know the true God ; and I was taken to Ireland in captivity with so many thousand men, in accordance with our deserts, because we departed from God and kept not His precepts.' ST. Patrick's Confessions. I. 8. But Daniel purposed in his heart. * nPHE strangeness of foreign life threw me back into myself.' NEWMAN, Apologia^ i. A I DANIEL [chap. i. ' T DWELL in Grace's court, Enriched with Virtue's rights : Faith guides my wit ! Love leads my will ! Hope, all my mind delights ! Spare diet is my fare ; My clothes more fit than fine ! I know I feed and clothe a foe, That, pampered, would repine.' ROBERT SOUTHWELL. I. 12/. Give us pulse to eat and water to drink. See Addison's Spectator (No. 195), and Dante's Purgatorio, xxii. 145. I. 21. And Daniel continued even unto the first year of king Cyrus. * \l\ ^^^ failures lie in not going on long enough. I heard a man in a meet- ing in the country long ago say, that one of 2 VER. 2i] DANIEL the most encouraging verses he knew was a verse of common metre to this effect : — " Go on, go on, go on, etc." ' JAMES SMETHAM. * "\ It rHAT is commonly admired as success- ful talent is far more a firm realis- ing grasp of some great principle, and that power of developing it in all directions, and that nerve to abide faithful to it, which is involved in such a true apprehension.' NEWMAN. II. 23 y^ Thou hast made known to us the king's matter. * r\ MYSTERY, whence to one man's hand was given Power over all things of the spirit, and might 3 DANIEL [chap. ii. Whereby the veil of all the years was riven, And naked stood the secret soul of night.' SWINBURNE. II.-III. Nebuchadnezzar's image. See Keble's lines on ' Monday in Whitsun- week.' II. 33. The image seen by the king. * T AM not one who in the least doubts or disputes the progress of this century in many things useful to mankind ; but it seems to me a very dark sign respecting us that we look with so much indifference upon dis- honesty and cruelty in the pursuit of wealth. In the dream of Nebuchadnezzar it was only the feet that were purt of iron and part of clay; but many of us are now getting so 4 VER. 33] DANIEL cruel in our avarice, that it seems as if, in us the heart were part of iron, part of clay.' RUSKIN, in The Two Paths, ' 'T^HINE only gift hath been the grave, To those that worshipp'd thee; Nor till thy fall could mortals guess Ambition 's less than littleness ! Thanks for that lesson — it will teach To after-warriors more Than high philosophy can preach, And vainly preached before. That spell upon the minds of men Breaks never to unite again. That led them to adore These Pagod things of sabre sway, With fronts of brass and feet of clay.' BYRON 's Ode to Napoleon. 5 DANIEL [chap. ii. * TN Nebuchadnezzar's image, the lower the members, the coarser the metal ; the further off the time, the more unfit. To-day is the golden opportunity, to-morrow will be the silver season, next day but the brazen one, and so long till at last I shall come to the toes of clay, and be turned to dust. Grant therefore that to-day I may hear thy voice. And if this day be obscure in the calendar, and remarkable in itself for nothing else, give me to make it memorable in my soul, thereupon, by thy assistance, beginning the reformation of my life.' THOMAS FULLER. II. 40. The fourth kingdom . . , shall break in pieces and crush. ' TET'S have no more dominant races; we don't want them ; they only turn men into insolent brutes.' burne-jones. 6 VER. 42-43] DANIEL II. 42-43. The toes of the feet were part of iron and part of clay. ''T^HERE be also two false Peaces^ or Unities \ the one, when the Peace is grounded, but upon an implicit ignorance ; For all Colours will agree in the Darke. The other, when it is peeced up, upon a direct Admission of Contraries, in Funda- mental! Points. For Truth and Falsehood, in such things, are like the Iron and Clay in the toes of Nebuchadnezzar s Image; They may Cleave, but they will not Incorporate.' BACON. *nrHE image that appeared to King Nebuchadnezzar in a dream was made of gold, of silver, of iron, and of clay. The idol of this world differs from that seen by the Babylonian monarch \ for it is all gold 7 DANIEL [chap. ii. — pure gold — and does not even possess the humanity of clay.' SIR ARTHUR HELPS. II. 45. The stone brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold. ' /^^HRIST'S religion was not a mere creed or philosophy. A creed or a philo- sophy need not have interfered with king- doms of this world, but might have existed under the Roman Empire, or under the Persian. No; Christ's kingdom was a counter kingdom. It occupied ground; it claimed to rule over those whom hitherto this world's governments ruled over without rival ; and if this world's governments would not themselves acknowledge and submit to its rule, and rule under and according to its 8 VER. 49] DANIEL laws, it " broke in pieces " those govern- ments.' NEWMAN. II. 49. Then Daniel requested of the king, and he set Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, over the affairs of the province of Babylon. T 1 ^HEN Omar Khayyam was a pupil of the Imam Howaffah at Naishapur, he struck up a friendship with two other pupils who were of his own age, Hasam and Nizam. One day they made a covenant and pledge with one another that whoever should gain a high position, should share his good fortune with his less favoured com- panions. The vow, it seems, was kept. Nizam became vizier, and did not forget his friends, both of whom received from him or through him what they desired. 9 DANIEL [chap. ii. Daniel was in the gate of the king. * "DEFORE I was humbled I was like a stone lying in deep mud ; and He who is mighty came, and in His own mercy raised me, and lifted me up, and placed me on the top of the wall. . . . And me — who am detested by this world — He has inspired beyond others (if indeed I be such), but on condition that with fear and reverence, and without complaining, I should faithfully serve the nation to which the love of Christ has transferred me.' sr. Patrick's Confessions. lO CHAP. III.] DANIEL III. I. Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold, whose height was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof six cubits. ' "D ENTLEY'S first year at Trinity is marked by at least one event altogether fortun- ate — his marriage. At Bishop Stillingfleet's house he had met Miss Joanna Bernard, daughter of Sir John Bernard, of Brampton, Huntingdonshire. " Being now raised to a station of dignity and consequence, he succeeded in obtaining the object of his affections," says Dr. Monk — who refuses to believe a story that the engagement was nearly broken off owing to a doubt expressed by Bentley with regard to the authority of the Book of Daniel. Whiston has told us what this alleged doubt was. Nebuchad- nezzar's golden image is described as sixty II DANIEL [chap. hi. cubits high, and six cubits broad. Now, said Bentley, this is out of all proportion ; it ought to have been ten cubits broad at least, "which made the good lady weep." The lovers' difference was possibly arranged on the basis suggested by Whiston, — that the sixty cubits included the pedestal.' SIR R. c. jebb's Bentley^ pp. 97, 98. III. 7. All the people fell down and worshipped the golden image. * T ^ rHEN he was away from his beloved Hanover, everything remained there exactly as in the prince's presence. There were eight hundred horses in the stables, there was all the apparatus of chamberlains, court-marshals, and equerries ; and court assemblies were held every Saturday, where all the nobility of Hanover assembled at 12 VER. 14] DANIEL what I can't but think a fine and touching ceremony. A large arm-chair was placed in the assembly-room, and on it the king's portrait. The nobility advanced, and made a bow to the arm-chair, and to the image which Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up ; and spoke under their voices before the august picture, just as they would have done had the king Churfiirst been present himself.' — Thackeray's The Four Georges; ' George the Second.' III. \\f. Is it of set purpose that ye worship not the golden image which I have set up .'* 'TirHOM shall I honour, whom shall I refuse to honour ? If a man have any precious thing in him at all, certainly 13 DANIEL [chap. hi. the most precious of all the gifts he can offer is his approbation, his reverence to another man. This is his very soul, this fealty which he swears to another : his personality itself, with whatever it has of eternal and divine, he bends here in reverence before another. Not lightly will a man give this, — if he is still a man. . . . Will a man's soul worship that, think you? Never; if you fashioned him of solid gold, big as Benlomond, no heart of a man would ever look on him except with sorrow and despair. To the flunky heart alone is he, was he, or can he at any time be, a thing to look upon with upturned eyes of " transcendent admiration," worship, or worthship so-called.' — carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets : ' Hudson's Statue.' M VER. 8-18] DANIEL III. 14. Do not ye serve my gods? ' T SAW an Image all of massie gold, Placed on high upon an altare faire, Not all, which did the same from farre beholde. Might worship it, and fall on lowest staire. Not that great Idole might with this com- paire. To which the Assyrian tyrant would have made The holie brethren falslie to have praid.' SPENSER, Ruines of Time, III. 8-18. Be it known to thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods. * T_T ERE were they who formerly resolved not to defile themselves with the king's meat, and now they as bravely resolved not 15 DANIEL [chap. hi. to defile themselves with his gods. Note — a steadfast, self-denying adherence to God and duty in lesser instances will qualify and prepare us for the like in greater.' MATTHEW HENRY. We will not. * 'T^HE Reformer's chief business always is to destroy falsehood, to drag down the temple of imposture, where idols hold the place of the Almighty. ' The growth of Christianity at the begin- ning was precisely this. The early martyrs . . . died, it cannot be too clearly remem- bered, for a negation. The last confession before the praetor, the words on which their fate depended, were not, "We do believe," but "We do not believe." " We will not, to i6 VER. 24] DANIEL save our miserable lives, take a lie between our lips, and say we think what we do not think."' FROUDE. III. 24. Did we not cast three men bound into the midst of the fire ? *'\A/'E meet in joy, though we part in sorrow ; We part to-night, but we meet to-morrow. Be it flood or blood the path that 's trod, All the same it leads home to God ; Be it furnace-fire voluminous. One like God's son will walk with us. . . . Yet one pang searching and sore, And then Heaven for evermore : Yet one moment, awful and dark. Then safely within the veil and the Ark ; B 17 DANIEL [chap. hi. Yet one effort, by Christ His grace, Then Christ for ever, face to face.' c. G. ROSSETTi, Martyr^s Song. III. 24/ Lo, I see four men loose. See Keble's lines on *The Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity/ III. 24-25. The fiery furnace. » \;^EA, and as thought of some departed friend By death or distance parted will descend, Severing in crowded rooms ablaze with light. As by a magic screen, the seer from the sight. - . . So may the ear Hearing not hear, 18 VER. 24-25] DANIEL Though drums do roll, and pipes and cymbals ring ; So the bare conscience of the better thing Unfelt, unseen, unimaged, all unknown, May fix the entranced soul 'mid multitudes alone.' CLOUGH. '/^ HOLY Lord, who with the Children Three, Didst walk the piercing flame. Help, in those trial-hours, which, save to Thee, I dare not name ; Nor let these quivering eyes and sickening heart Crumble to dust beneath the tempter's dart.' NEWMAN. 19 DANIEL [chap. hi. * T^HAT Babylon has fallen ; but there is another Babylon which still goes on, and always will go on, till Christ comes again to judgment. There is the overwhelm- ing and overawing spectacle of this world, with its pomps and glories. Its look is lofty, and it speaks great things, and its vast array is ever before us. We cannot get away from it. Go where we will it follows us. It is a vision before our minds if not a sight before our eyes ; it is the scene of Babylonian power and greatness still going on, though in another form, and accommodated to every age in succession. . . . Men reject every- where the office of witnessing to Divine truth; they throw it off as an obstacle, a shackle, and a burden, something that stands in their way, and prevents them from being friends with the world, and from getting on in the world. They know the truth, but will 20 VER. 24-25] DANIEL not witness to it. They know that the world is transitory, and they act as if it were eter- nal. . . . Yet we may venture to say, and with certainty, that never, on any occasion, by any one of the humblest servants of God, was this office of witness to the truth executed without a reward. Never in this mixed world did a Christian soul offer to God the sacrifice of a practical confession of Him, by standing apart from the ways of the world — not accepting its voice, not yielding to its spells, or being overawed by its show ; never did any one face any measure of adversity or gloom, or isolation or deprivation, as the consequence and penalty of bearing witness to the truth and expressing that truth in action, but he had, like the three witnesses, in that adversity a companion.' MOZLEY. 21 DANIEL [chap. hi. III. 25. Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire ; and they have no hurt ; and the aspect of the fourth is like the son of God. 'T^ENNYSON makes his Sir John Oldcastle cry out : — ' Nay, I can burn, so that the Lord of Ufe Be by me in my death. Those three ! The fourth Was Hke the Son of God ! Not burnt were they. On them the smell of burning had not past. That was a miracle to convert the king. These Pharisees, this Caiaphas- Arundel What miracle could turn ? He there again, He thwarting their traditions of Himself^ He would be found a heretic to Himself, And damn'd to burn alive. So caught, I burn. 22 VER. 27] DANIEL Burn ? heathen men have borne as much as this, For freedom or the sake of those they loved, Or some less cause, some cause far less than mine; For every other cause is less than mine.' III. 27. The fire had no power over their bodies. * "X 1 7HEN a child,' says Thomas Fuller, ' I loved to look on the pictures in the Book of Martyrs. I thought that there the martyrs at the stake seemed like the three children in the fiery furnace, ever since I had known them there, not one hair more of their head was burnt, nor any smell of the fire singeing of their clothes. This made me think martyrdom was nothing. But, oh ! though the lion be painted fiercer than he is, 23 DANIEL [chap. hi. the fire is far fiercer than it is painted. Thus it is easy for one to endure an affliction, as he limns it out in his own fancy, and repre- sents it to himself but in a bare speculation. But when it is brought indeed, and laid home to us, there must be a man, yea, there must be God to assist the man, to undergo it.' /^~^OLE exhorts Cranmer, in Tennyson's Queen Mary (Act iv., Scene 3) : — * Remember how God made the fierce fire seem To those three children like a pleasant dew. Remember too The triumph of St. Andrew on his cross, The patience of St. Lawrence in the fire. Thus, if thou call on God and all the saints, God will beat down the fury of the flame. Or give thee saintly strength to undergo.' 24 . CHAP. IV.] DANIEL IV. 4-5. And I Nebuchadnezzar was at rest in my house, and flourishing in my palace. I saw a dream which made me afraid. * T3 EMEMBER,' Mr. F. W. H. Myers once wrote to a friend, 'that first of all a man must, from the torpor of a foul tran- quillity, have his soul delivered unto war.' IV. 19/! Nebuchadnezzar's dream. * Then was I as a tree Whose boughs did bend with fruit : but in one night, A storm or robbery, call it what you will, Shook down my mellow hangings, nay, my leaves. And left me bare to weather.' Belisarius, in Cymbeline. 25 DANIEL [chap. iv. IV. 22-30. Thou art grown and become strong. * /'^AN we believe that He whose words were so terrible against the pride of Egypt and Babylon, against that haughty insolence in men, on which not Hebrew prophets only, but the heathen poets of Greece looked with such peculiar and profound alarm, — that He will not visit it on those who, in their measure, are responsible for its words and temper, when it takes possession of a Christian nation? Can we doubt what His judgment will one day be on the cynical parade of exclusive selfishness, the cynical worship of mere dexterity and adroitness, in the sophists and tyrants of the old heathen world ; and can we doubt what He will think when Christians, disciples of the Lord of truth and righteousness, let themselves be dazzled in 26 VER. 27] DANIEL matters of right and wrong, by the cleverness of intellectual fence? . . . We have almost elevated pride to the rank of a national virtue ; so far from seeing any harm in it, we extol it as a noble and admirable thing. You see it unconsciously revealed in the look and bearing which meet you constantly in society and in the streets. You see it in that tone of insolence which seems to come so naturally to many of us in the expression of our disapproval and antipathy.' R. W. CHURCH, IV. 27. Wherefore, O king, break off thine iniquities by shewing mercy to the poor, ' "pOOR naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are. That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, 27 DANIEL [chap. iv. How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, Your loop'd and window'd raggedness defend you From seasons such as this ? 1 have ta'en Too little care of this ! Take physic, pomp ; Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel.' THE KING in Lear^ Act iii.. Scene 4. ' ^1 rE can figure the thought of Louis that day, when, all royally caparisoned for hunting, he met, at some sudden turning. in the wood of Senart, a ragged peasant with a coffin : " For whom ? " — It was for a poor brother slave, whom Majesty had sometimes noticed slaving in those quarters. *'What did he die of?"— "Of hunger":— the king gave his steed the spur.' CARLYLE. 28 VER. 30] DANIEL ' A DECENT provision for the poor is the true test of civilisation.' DR. JOHNSON. IV. 30. Is not this great Babylon which I have built for the royal dwelling place, for the glory of my majesty? "T^INGSLEY, writing of Sir Walter Raleigh's haughty temper, observes: * Proud ? No wonder if the man be proud ! "Is not this great Babylon, which I have built?" And yet all the while he has the most affecting consciousness that all this is not God's will, but the will of the flesh ; that the house of fame is not the house of God ; that its floor is not the rock of ages, but the sea of glass mingled with fire, which may crack beneath him at any moment, and let 29 DANIEL [chap. iv. the nether flame burst up. He knows he is Hving in a splendid lie.' TN the preface to his Bible in Spain, Borrow attributes Spanish cruelties in religion not to fanaticism, but to the way in which Rome worked on the predominant feeling of pride in the Spanish nature : ' It was by humouring her pride that she was induced to waste her precious blood and treasure in Low Country wars, to launch the Armada^ and to many other insane actions. Love of Rome had ever slight influence over her policy ; but flattered by the title of Gonfaloniera of the Vicar of Jesus, and eager to prove herself not un- worthy of the same, she shut her eyes, and rushed upon her own destruction with the cry of " Charge Spain."* 30 VER. 30-37] DANIEL IV. 30-37. Nebuchadnezzar's con- fession. * OORROW, pain, and death are sweet to whosoever dares, instead of fighting with or flying from them, to draw near, to examine closely, to inquire humbly, into their nature and their function. He began to perceive that these three reputed enemies, hated and feared of all men, are, after all, the fashioners and teachers of humanity; to whom it is given to keep hearts pure, godly, and compassionate, to purge away the dross of pride, hardness, and arrogance, to break the iron bands of ambition, self- love, and vanity, to purify by endurance and by charity.' LUCAS MALET, Sir Richard Calmady. 31 DANIEL [chap. iv. * npHE greatest obstacle to any improve- ment or change in John Bull's senti- ments just now is the egregious vanity of the beast. He has been so plastered with flattery, that he has become an impervious mass of self-esteem. Nothing is so difficult as to alter the policy of individuals or nations who allow themselves to be persuaded that they are the " envy of surrounding nations and the admiration of the world." Time and adversity can alone operate in such cases.' COBDEN, to John Bright, in 185 1. IV. (25) 37. They shall make thee to eat grass . . . till thou know that the Most High ruleth. * 'T^HIS Nebuchadnezzar curse, that sends men to grass like oxen, seems to follow but too closely on the excess or continuance 32 VER. (25) 37] DANIEL of national power and peace. In the per- plexities of nations, in their struggle for existence, in their infancy, their impotence, or even their disorganisation, they have higher hopes and nobler passions. Out of the suffering comes the serious mind ; out of the salvation, the grateful heart ; out of endurance, fortitude ; out of deliverance faith.' RUSKIN, Modern Painters, * T FOUND occasion at this time to con- clude, that the Unto of our river fords secretes pearls so much more frequently than the Unionidce and Anadonta of our still pools and lakes, not from any specific peculiarity in the constitution of the creature, but from the effects of the habitat which it is its nature to choose. It receives in the fords and shallows of a rapid river many a rough c 33 DANIEL [chap. iv. blow from sticks and pebbles carried down in times of flood, and occasionally from the feet of men and animals that cross the stream during droughts ; and the blows induce the morbid secretions of which pearls are the result. There seems to exist no inherent cause why Anadon cygnea^ with its beautiful silvery nacre — as bright often, and always more delicate than that of Unio margaritiferus — should not be equally pro- ductive of pearls ; but, secure from violence in its still pools and lakes, it does not pro- duce a single pearl for a hundred that are ripened into value and beauty by the exposed current- tossed Unionidcz of our rapid mountain rivers. Would that hardship and suffering bore always in a creature of a greatly higher family similar results, and that the hard buffets dealt him by fortune in the rough stream of life could be trans- 34 VER. 37] DANIEL muted, by some blessed internal predisposi- tion of his nature, into pearls of great price.' — HUGH MILLER, My Schools and Schoolmasters, IV. 37. I Nebuchadnezzar. * "PXPRESS confessions give definiteness to memories that might more easily melt away without them.' GEORGE ELIOT. V. I . Belshazzar the king made a great feast. * pOMP, in our apprehension, was an idea of two categories; the pompous might be spurious, but it might also be genuine. It is well to love the simple — we love it; nor is there any opposition at all between that and the very glory of pomp. But, as we once put the case to Lamb, if, as a musician, as the leader of a mighty 35 DANIEL [chap. v. orchestra, you had this theme offered to you — "Belshazzar the king gave a great feast to a thousand of his lords" — . . . surely no man would deny that, in such a case, simplicity, though in a passive sense not lawfully absent, must stand aside as totally insufficient for the positive part. Simplicity might guide, even here, but could not furnish the power ; a rudder it might be, but not an oar or a sail.' DE QuiNCEY, on Charles Lamb. See Byron's Hebrew Melodies^ ' The Vision of Belshazzar.* V. 2 f, A great feast. * TF men love the pleasure of eating, if they allow themselves to love this pleasure, if they find it good, there is no limit to the augmentation of the pleasure, no limit be- 36 VER. 1-17] DANIEL yond which it may not grow. The satisfac- tion of a need has limits, but pleasure has none. . . . And, strange to say, men who daily overeat themselves at such dinners — in comparison with which the feast of Bel- shazzar, that evoked the prophetic warning, was as nothing — are naively persuaded that they may yet be leading a moral life.' TOLSTOY. V. I- 1 7. Then was the king greatly troubled. * "pROM the words of Daniel it appears that Belshazzar had made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand. The golden and silver vessels are gorgeously enumerated, with the princes, the king's concubines, and his wives. Then follows — " In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote over 37 DANIEL [chap. v. against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king's palace ; and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote. Then the king's countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosened, and his knees smote one against another." This is the plain text. By no hint can it be otherwise inferred, but that the appearance was solely confined to the fancy of Belshazzar, that his single brain was troubled. Not a word is spoken of its being seen by any one else there present, not even by the queen herself, who merely under- takes for the interpretation of the phenomena as related to her, doubtless, by her husband. The lords are simply said to be astonished, i.e. at the trouble and change of countenance in their sovereign. Even the prophet does not appear to have seen the scroll which the king saw. He recalls it only. He speaks of 38 VER. 25] DANIEL the phantom as past.' — From Charles lamb's essay on The Barren7iess of the Imaginative Faculty in the Productions of Modern Art. V. 22. Thou hast not humbled thine heart. nPHE late Mr. F. W. H. Myers, speaking of his early passion for the classics, confesses that they ' were but intensifications of my own being. They drew from me and fostered evil as well as good ; they might aid imaginative impulse and detachment from sordid interests, but they had no check for pride.' V. 25/ Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin. TN describing the squalor of Vauxhall Walk, Lambeth, Wilkie Collins observes that ' in this district, as in other districts 39 DANIEL [chap. v. remote from the wealthy quarters of the metropolis, the hideous London vagabond — with the filth of the street outmatched in his talk, with the mud of the street out-dirtied in his clothes — lounges, lowering and brutal, at the street corner and the gin-shop door; the public disgrace of his country, the un- heeded warning of social troubles that are yet to come. Here the loud assertion of Modern Progress — which has reformed so much in manners, and altered so little in man — meets the flat contradiction that scatters its pretensions to the wands. Here, while the national prosperity feasts, like another Belshazzar, on the spectacle of its own magnificence, is the writing on the wall, which warns the monarchy Money, that his glory is weighed in the balance, and his power found wanting.' From No Name, Scene iii. i. 40 VER. 25] DANIEL in\ESCRIBING the later days of Raleigh's career at Court, Kingsley sums up the tale of his fopperies with the words : ' But enough of these toys, while God's hand- writing is on the wall above all heads. Raleigh knows the handwriting is there. . . . Tragic enough are the after-scenes of Raleigh's life ; but most tragic of all are these scenes of vain-glory, in which he sees the better part, and yet chooses the worse, and pours out his self-discontent in song which proves the fountain of delicacy and beauty which lies pure and bright beneath the gaudy, artificial crust. What might not this man have been ! And he knows that too. . . . Anything to forget the handwriting on the wall, which will not be forgotten.' 41 DANIEL [chap. v. V. 27. Tekel : Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wantingf. TN the Spectator (No. 463) Addison de- scribes a dream of a pair of golden scales which showed the exact value of everything that is in esteem among men. Among the experiments which he made with this balance was the following : ' Having an opportunity of this nature in my Hands, I could not forbear throwing into one scale the Principles of a Tory, and into the other those of a Whig ; but as I have all along declared this to be a Neutral Paper, I shall likewise desire to be silent under this Head, also, though upon examining one of the weights, I saw the word tekel engraved on it in Capital Letters.' T N his Bible in Spain Borrow describes his feelings when he boldly opened a shop in 42 VER. 27] DANIEL Madrid for the sale of Testaments. * " How strangely times alter," said I, the second day subsequent to the opening of my establish- ment, as I stood on the opposite side of the street, surveying my shop, on the windows of which were painted in large yellow characters, Despacho de la Sociedad Biblica y Estrangera ; "how strangely times alter. . . . Pope of Rome ! Pope of Rome ! look to thyself. That shop may be closed ; but oh ! what a sign of the times, that it has been permitted to exist for one day. It appears to me, my Father, that the days of your sway are num- bered in Spain ; that you will not be per- mitted much longer to plunder her, to scoff at her, and to scourge her with scorpions, as in bygone periods. See I not the hand on the wall? See I not in yonder letters a Mene, Mene, Tekel^ Upharsin} Look to thyself, Batushca.'" 43 DANIEL [chap. v. ' jWr ARGOT, in the Fifth Act of Tenny- son's Harold, exclaims : — ' Mock-king, I am the messenger of God, His Norman Daniel ! Mene, Mene, Tekel ! Is thy wrath Hell, that I should spare to cry, Yon heaven is wroth with thee ? ' V. 30 (cf. 28). Thy kingdom is divided. ... In that night Belshazzar was slain. 'Canst thou discern The signs of seasons, yet perceive no hint Of change in that stage scene in which thou art Not a spectator, but an actor ? or Art thou a puppet moved by enginery ? The day that dawns in fire will die in storms, Even though the noon be calm.' SHELLEY. 44 VER. 30-31] DANIEL V. 30-31. Belshazzar was slain, and Darius the Mede took the kinofdom. * "ly'INGS and Emperors have long ago arranged for themselves a system like that of a magazine-rifle : as soon as one bullet has been discharged, another takes its place. Le rot est mort, vive le roi ! So what is the use of kiUing them ? ' TOLSTOY. VI. 3-4. An excellent spirit was in him, etc. ' AITHATEVER the world thinks, he who hath not much meditated upon God, the human soul, and the summum bonum, may possibly make a thriving earthworm, but will most indubitably make a sorry patriot and a sorry statesman.' BERKELEY. 45 DANIEL [chap. vi. VI. 4. Forasmuch as he was faithful. * T^HAT we have little faith is not sad, but that we have but little faithfulness. By faithfulness faith is earned. When, in the progress of a life, a man swerves, though only by an angle infinitely small, from his proper and allotted path (and this is never done quite unconsciously even at first; in fact that was his broad and scarlet sin — oh, he knew of it more than he can tell), then the drama of his life turns to tragedy, and makes haste to its fifth act.' THOREAU'S Letters, ' A ^ yE have more sneakers after Ministerial favour,' wrote SirWalter Scott in 1826, *■ than men who love their country and who upon a liberal scale would serve their party.' 46 CHAP. VII.] DANIEL VII. \f. And four great beasts came up from the sea * T AM amusing myself with thinking of the prophecy of Daniel as a sort of allegory. All those monstrous, " rombustical " beasts with their horns — the horn with eyes and a mouth speaking proud things, and the little horn that waxed rebellious and stamped on the stars, seem like my passions and vain fancies, which are to be knocked down one after another — until all is subdued with a universal kingdom over which the Ancient of Days presides — the spirit of Love — the Catholicism of the universe — if you can attach any mean- ing to such a phrase.' GEORGE ELIOT to Sara Hennell. VII. lo. The books were opened. r^OMPARE the reference in Tennyson's Sea Dreams, and this rabbinic saying : 47 DANIEL [chap. vii. 'Consider three things, and thou wilt not fall into the hands of transgression : — know what is above thee, a seeing eye, a hearing ear, and all thy deeds written in a book.' VII. 12/] The reign of one like the Son of Man. * T) Y resigning his strength, by declining to appeal to force, by committing himself into God's hand, Jesus took the direct path to supreme power and universal dominion. Such is the honour which he felt to be owing to the kingdom of the Truth, to leave it to win its own way against the suffrages of all men. " He must reign . . ." Christ steals on and on in the world of human thought, and the enmity of one age falls before him in the next. " Every battle (among men) is with confused noise and garments rolled in blood " ; but after quite another manner 48 VER. 12] DANIEL God is bringing about the unification of all nations under Christ. Truth's battle which is Love's success, steals on, like some sweet mystic fire which "subdues all things to itself."' DR. JOHN PULSFORD. VIII. 2. I was in the palace . . . and I saw in the vision. E VEN in a palace life may be lived well' MARCUS AURELIUS. See M. Arnold's Sonnet, Worldly Place. I was by the river Ulai. T N his Remarkable Passages of the Life and Death of Mr. John Semple, minister of Carsphairn in Galloway, Patrick Walker tells how 'that night after his wife died, he spent the whole ensuing night in prayer and medita- tion in his garden. The next morning, one of his elders coming to see him, and lament- D 49 DANIEL [chap. viii. ing his great loss and want of rest, he replied : " I declare I have not, all night, had one thought of the death of my wife, I have been so taken up in meditating on heavenly things. I have been this night on the banks of Ulai, plucking an apple here and there." ' VIII. 3/, 7/ The pageant of the beast empires. * A S I gazed out into vacancy, the grey masses began to move, to wave to and fro; it seemed as if the wind swept heavy veils away, and suddenly there lay disclosed right before me a sheet of cold, dark northern sea. A rock rose out of it, snow-covered, and carrying on its crags long icicles, which hung down to the sinister-looking water. On the top of the rock sat a huge polar bear ; his paws were holding the carcass of the last animal he had found in this wilderness, and 50 VER. 3, 7] DANIEL he looked triumphantly around as if to say, "Now am I sole lord of the world." But already the black waters moved and gurgled, and out of them arose the shining body and the huge fins of a snake-like monster ; his walrus head carried a real mane, and from his mouth hung seaweed and the remnants of some small fish — the last he had found in the sea. His glassy, greenish eyes stared about, and they also seemed to say, "Now am I quite alone, master of the world." But suddenly the huge white bear and the sea monster caught sight of each other; the enormous fins beat the waves, the cruel paws clawed at the rock. Both were yet gorged with food, but already they were measuring one another with angry looks like future adversaries. They had devastated the whole world, and now they met in this deso- late waste for the ultimate fight. ... I SI DANIEL [chap. viii. believe that for a moment the clouds which ever surround us had lifted, allowing me to catch a glimpse of the history of the world ; which often is a history of wild beasts.' — From The Letters Which Never Reached Him, Compare the closing paragraphs of Victor Hugo's Shakespeare. VIII. 27. I was astonished at the vision, but none understood it. * r~^ REAT position often invests men with a second sight whose visions they lock up in silence, content with the work of the day.' JOHN MORLEY. * TT E dreamed a dream so luminous, He woke (he says) convinced ; but what it taught 52 VER. 27] DANIEL Wirhholds as yet. Perhaps those graver shades Admonished him that visions told in haste Part with their virtues to the squandering Hps, And leave the soul in wider emptiness.' GEORGE ELIOT. VIII. 2^, I Daniel fainted and was sick certain days, then I rose up and did the king's business. * nPHERE 'S many a good bit of work done with a sad heart.' GEORGE eliot's Adam Bede. IX. 2. I understood by the books. * "POR if I write, paint, carve, a word indeed On book or board or dust, on floor or wall, 53 DANIEL [chap ix. The same is kept of God, who taketh heed That not a letter of the meaning fall Or ere it touch and teach the world's deep heart.' E. B. BROWNING. IX. 3. With fasting. ' TOASTING is an indispensable condition of a good life; but in fasting, as in self-control in general, the question arises, With what shall we begin? — How to fast, how often to eat, what to eat, what to avoid eating ? And as we can do no work seriously without regarding the necessary order of sequence, so also we cannot fast without knowing where to begin — with what to com- mence self-control in food. Fasting! and even an analysis of how to fast, and where to begin — the very notion of it sounds ridiculous 54 VER. 4] DANIEL and wild to most men. I remember how, with pride at his originality, an evangelical preacher, who was attacking monastic asceticism, once said to me, " Ours is not a Christianity of fasting and privations, but of beefsteaks " * TOLSTOY. IX. 4. O Lord, the great and dreadful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy. * 'X'HE attractive aspects of God's character must not be made more apparent to such a being as man than His chastening and severer aspects. We must not be invited to approach the Holy of Holies without being made aware, painfully aware, of what Holi- ness is. We must know our own unworthi- ness ere we are fit to approach or imagine an 55 DANIEL [chap. ix. Infinite Perfection. The most nauseous of false religions is that which affects a fulsome fondness for a Being not to be thought of without awe, or spoken of without reluctance.' BAGEHOT. IX. 4 /i We have sinned. ' T7OR God is at hand, and the Most High rules in the children of men. . . . The same light which lets you see sin and trans- gression, will let you see the covenant of God, which blots out your sin and transgres- sion, which gives victory and dominion over it, and brings into covenant with God. For looking down at sin and corruption and dis- traction, ye are swallowed up in it ; but look- ing at the light, which discovers them, ye will see over them.' GEORGE FOX to Lady Claypole. 56 VER. 5] DANIEL IX. 5. We have sinned and have dealt perversely. ' I HAVE told, O Britons, O my brethren, I have told Most bitter truth, but without bitterness. Nor deem my zeal or factious or mistimed ; For never can true courage dwell with them, Who, playing tricks with conscience, dare not look At their own vices. We have been too long Dupes of a deep delusion ! Some, belike. Groaning with restless enmity, expect All change from change of constituted power ; As if a government had been a robe. On which our vice and wretchedness were tagged Like fancy-points and fringes, with the robe 57 DANIEL [chap. ix. Pulled off at pleasure. . . . Others mean- while, Dote with a mad idolatry ; and all Who will not fall before their images And yield them worship, they are enemies Even of their c juntry ! ' COLERIDGE, J^ears in Solitude. IX. 20. And whiles I was . . . confess- ing my sin and the sin of my people Israel. See Miss Rossetti's lines, 'By the Waters of Babylon.' My sin and the sin of my people. * ir\0 you know, when I see a poor devil drunk and brutal, I always feel, quite apart from my sesthetical perceptions, a sort of shame, as if I myself had some hand in it.' W. MORRIS. 58 VER. 20] DANIEL * 1V[ O man's thoughts ever fell more into the forms of a kind of litany than Mr. Maurice's. . . . They were the confessions befitting a kind of litany, poured forth in the name of human nature, the weakness and sinfulness of which he felt most keenly, most painfully, but which he felt at least as much in the character of the representative of a race by the infirmities of which he was over- whelmed, as on his own account. . . . When- ever you catch that he feels— as all the deeper religious natures have always felt — a sort of self-reproachful complicity in every sinful tendency of his age, you feel that the litany in which he expresses his shame is not so much morbid self-depreciation as a deep sense of the cruel burden of social infirmity and social sin.* R. H. HUTTON. 59 DANIEL [chap. ix. * 'T^homas Boston of Ettrick, in his Memoirs^ mentions the scandal caused by a local minister having been guilty of adultery. ' I well know/ he adds, ' that many a heavy heart it made to me, and re- member the place where I was wont heavily to lament it before the Lord in secret prayer.' IX. 23. At the beginning of thy suppli- cations the commandment cam^ forth. * "P EMEMBER the rebuke which I once got from old Mr. Dempster of Denny, after preaching to his people : " I was highly pleased with your discourse, but in prayer it struck me that you thought God unwilling to give.^^ Remember Daniel: "At the begin- ning of thy supplications the commandment came forth." ' m'cheyne to Bonar. 60 VER. 24] DANIEL IX. 2'^f, Consider the vision. See Keble's lines on ' Thursday before Easter.' IX. 24. To bring in everlasting right- eousness. * IVTOT long after Phryne's religious per- formance at Eleusis came the last days, too, of the national life of the Jews, under the successors of Alexander. The religious conceptions of the Jews of those days are well given by the Book of Daniel. How popular and prevalent these concep- tions were is proved by their vitality and power some two centuries later at the Chris- tian era, and by the large place which they fill in the New Testament. We are all familiar with them ; with their turbid and austere visions of the Ancient of Days on his throne, and the Son of Man coming with the 61 DANIEL [chap. x. clouds of heaven to give the kingdom to the saints of the Most High and to bring in everlasting righteousness. Here, then, is the last word of the religion of the Hebrews, when their national life is drawing to an end, when their career has been, for the most part, run ; when their religion has had nearly all the development which, within the limits of their national life, belonged to it. This, we say, is its last word : To bring in everlast- ing righteousness. ' MATTHEW ARNOLD. See, further. Literature and Dogma, iii. ad init. X. I y! Even a great warfare. * 'T'HEN suddenly would come a dream of far different character — a tumultuous dream — commencing with a music such as now I often heard in sleep — music of pre- 62 VER. i] DANIEL paration and of awakening suspense. The morning was come of a mighty day — a day of crisis and of ultimate hope for human nature, then suffering mysterious echpse, and labouring in some dread extremity. Some- where, but I knew not where — somehow, but I knew not how — by some beings, but I knew not by whom — a battle, a strife, an agony, was travelling through all its stages — was evolving itself, like the catastrophe of some mighty drama, with which my sympathy was the more insupportable, from deepening confusion as to its local scene, its cause, its nature, and its undecipherable issue. . . . Some greater interest was at stake, some mightier cause, than ever yet the sword had pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed. Then came sudden alarms ; hurryings to and fro, trepidations of innumerable fugitives; I knew not whether from the good cause or 63 DANIEL [chap. x. the bad ; darkness and lights ; tempest and human faces.' — de quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. X. 8. So I was left alone, and saw this great vision. * 'T^HIN, thin the pleasant human noises grow, And faint the city gleams ; Rare the lone pastoral huts — marvel not thou! The solemn peaks but to the stars are known, But to the stars, and the cold lunar beams ; Alone the sun arises, and alone Spring the great streams.' M. ARNOLD. ' TT takes solitude to get yourself saturated by any thought^ and to the great majority of men even solitude will not effect 64 VER. ii] DANIEL it, but only lower their thinking power to the congealing point. Nevertheless, as Mr. Darwin saw in relation to the growth and decay of species, the very condition which kills out a weak thinking power, feeds and elevates to the glowing point a strong think- ing power. . . . Till the life of a thought becomes identical with the life of an emotion, it will never really dominate the minds of men. And so far as I can judge by history, this result is never attained for thought, without long, solitary brooding over it.' R. H. HUTTON. X. II. O Daniel, thou man greatly beloved. ' A ND as I walked towards the jail, the word of the Lord came to me, saying, " My love was always to thee, and thou art in My love." And I was ravished with the E 65 DANIEL [chap. x. sense of the love of God, and greatly strengthened in my inward man. But when I came into the jail, where the prisoners were, a great power of darkness struck at me, and I sat still, having my spirit gathered into the love of God.' Yoyi's Journal^ 1649. Stand upright. * T^O you know, more people perish from lack of proper self-appreciation than from consumption.' maxim gorky. X. 12. From the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, thy words were heard. ' T T is strange to say, but it is a truth which our own observation and experience will confirm, that when a man discerns in himself most sin and humbles himself most, when his comeliness seems to him to vanish 66 VER. 12] DANIEL away and all his graces to wither, when he feels disgust at himself, and revolts at the thought of himself — seems to himself all dust and ashes, all foulness and odiousness, then it is that he is really rising in the kingdom of God, as it is said of Daniel, " From the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words."' NEWMAN. See Dora Greenwell's Covenant of Life^ PP- 134/. XI. 2/] And now I will show thee the truth. Behold, there shall stand up three kings in Persia, etc. * "\ ^ /"HILE philosophy had for the Jews no meaning, history had a deeper sig- nificance than it had for any other people. 67 DANIEL [chap. xi. It was the chief factor in their national unity, the source from which they drew ethical and spiritual enlightenment. Thither they turned as to living oracles inscribed with the finger of the Almighty. To history they appealed as the supreme tribunal of God's justice. The great monarchies, Egypt, Assyria, Baby- lonia, Persia, pass across the scene. Their fortunes cross and interlock into those of the chosen race. Israel is the pivot on which their destiny turns. History, in a word, is the drama in which God Himself is the pro- tagonist, vindicating His justice and moral government on the stage of the visible world.' — BUTCHER, Harvard Lectures on Greek Subjects^ pp. 29-31. 68 VER. 27, 45] DANIEL XI. 19. But he shall stumble and fall and shall not be found. * /"^ OLD and iron are good To buy iron and gold j All earth's fleece and food For their like are sold. Hinted Merlin wise, Proved Napoleon great. . . . Fear, Craft, and Avarice Cannot rear a state.' Emerson. XI. 27, 45. It shall not prosper . . . he shall come to his end, and none shall help him. * T IFE and more life unto the chosen, death To all things living that would stifle them. So speaks each god that makes a nation strong.' GEORGE ELIOT. 69 DANIEL [chap. xi. XI. 32. He shall pervert by flat- teries. * /^ROWS pick out the eyes of the dead, when the dead no longer need their eyes. But flatterers destroy the souls of the living, and blind their eyes.' EPICTETUS. Cf. the Flatterer in the first part of the Pilgrim! s Progress. The people that know their God shall be strong, and do exploits. * npHE course of this man's hfe had been very simple, and yet crowded with events and with manifold activity. The element of his energy was an indestructible faith in God, and in an assistance flowing immediately from him.' GOETHE, upon Jung Stilling. 70 VER. 32] DANIEL * "D UT best befriended of the God He who, in evil times, Warned by an inward voice. Heeds not the darkness and the dread, Biding by his rule and choice, Feeling only the fiery thread Leading over heroic ground, Walled with mortal terror round, To the aim which him allures, And the sweet heaven his deed secures . , , Stainless soldier on the walls. Knowing this — and knows no more — Whoever fights, whoever falls, Justice conquers evermore, Justice after as before — And he who battles on her side, God, though he were ten times slain, Crowns him victor glorified, Victor over death and pain ; For ever j but his erring foe, 71 DANIEL [chap. xi. Self-assured that he prevails, Looks from his victim lying low, And sees aloft the red right arm Redress the eternal scales. He, the poor foe, whom angels foil, Blind with pride and fooled by hate, Writhes within the dragon coil, Reserved to a speechless fate.' EMERSON. The people that know their God shall do exploits. * Tjr E found his work, but far behind Lay something that he could not find- Deep springs of passion that can make A life sublime for others' sake. And lend to work the living glow That saints and bards and heroes know. 72 VER. 33] DANIEL The power lay there — unfolded power — A bud that never bloomed a flower ; For half-beliefs and jaded moods Of worldlings, cynics, critics, prudes. Lay round his path and dimmed and chilled/ W. E. H. LECKY. XI. ^;^, They shall fall by the sword and by flame, by captivity and by spoil, many days. ' TT is sometimes argued that religious con- victions are not as strong as they were in old times.' But 'that the fervour for truth is not diminished may be seen in regions outside theology. ... At this moment hundreds of educated men are defying the whole power of the Russian empire in the struggle for constitutional liberty. Every month sees a score or more 73 DANIEL [chap. xi. of them consigned to a hopeless dungeon or sent to Siberia, and the ranks close up again firmer after every fresh gap. Some of us cannot have forgotten how a crowd of Poles, men and women, knelt down in 1861 in the great square of Warsaw, praying and singing hymns, as fifteen volleys of grape shot tore through their ranks. The sacrifice was unavailing ; but it is by sacrifice of this sort that national character is regenerated, and as long as the spirit of martyrdom lives, there seems no need to despair of the future of humanity.' C. H. PEARSON. XI. 35. And some of them that be wise shall fall. See Browning's poem, ' A Lost Leader.' 74 VER. 35] DANIEL Even to the time of the end. * TN Greek authors of classical times there is no trace of the thought that the human race as a whole, or any single people, is advancing towards a divinely appointed goal ; there is nothing of what the moderns mean by the " Education of the World," " the Progress of the Race," the " Divine guidance of Nations." The first germ of the thought is in Polybius^ {circa 204-122 B.C.), whose work illustrates the idea of a providential destiny presiding over the march of Roman history, and building up the imperial power of Rome for the good of mankind.' — butcher's Aspects of the Greek Genius^ pp. 155-156. ^ i.e. a contemporary of the prophet who wrote the book of Daniel (J. M.). 75 DANIEL [chap. xi. XI. 36/! Neither shall he regard any God : for he shall magnify himself above all. * ZITHERS may occupy themselves, if they will, in seeking a nostrum to destroy the phylloxera; be it mine to find one that shall destroy the Christian religion.' M. PAUL BERT. ' OAJVS foy : full large of limbe and every joint He was, and cared not for God or man a point.' ^ SPENSER. ' /^~^AN there be a more dreadful delusion than to see God where He is not, or to imagine ourselves more enlightened than Jesus Christ ? ' DR. WILLIAM BARRY. 76 VER. 43-45] DANIEL XI. 43-45. He shall have power over the treasure of gold and of silver. . . . Yet he shall come to his end. * T CAN never forget the inexpressible luxury and prophanenesse, gaming and all dissoluteness, and as it were total forgetfuU- nesse of God (it being Sunday evening) which this day se'nnight I was witness of, the king sitting and toying with his con- cubines, a French boy singing love songs in that glorious gallery, whilst about twenty of the greate courtiers and other dissolute persons were at Basset round a large table, a bank of at least 2000 in gold before them, upon which two gentlemen who were with me made reflexions with astonishment. Six days after was all in the dust ! ' Evelyn's Diary ^ Feb. 1685. 77 DANIEL [chap. xii. XL 45. Yet he shall come to his end, and none shall help him. * /^UR physical organism was devised for existence in the atmosphere of our globe and so is our moral organism devised for existence in justice. Every faculty craves for it, is more intimately bound up with it than with the laws of gravitation, light, or heat; and to plunge into injustice is to fling ourselves head foremost into what is hostile and unknown.' MAETERLINCK, The BuHed Temple. XI J. 3. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firma- ment : and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever. * T DO believe the station of a popular preacher is one of the greatest trials on VER. 3] DANIEL earth : a man in that position does not stop to soberly calculate how much, or rather how little is done when there appears a great effect, nor to consider how immense is the difference between deeply affecting the feelings and permanently changing the heart. The preacher who causes a great sensation and excited feelings is not neces- sarily the one who will receive the reward of shining as the stars for ever and ever, be- cause he has turned many to righteousness.' F. W. ROBERTSON. XII. 3. As the stars. * A/ONDER stars are rising. Have you ever noticed their order, heard their ancient names, thought of what they were, as teachers, "lecturers,'' in that large public hall of the night, to the wisest men of old ? Have you ever thought of the direct promise 79 DANIEL [chap. xii. to you yourselves, that you may be like them if you will? "They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firma- ment ; and they that turn many to righteous- ness, as the stars, for ever and ever." They that be wise. Don't think that means knowing how big the moon is. It means knowing what you ought to do, as man or woman ; what your duty to your father is, to your child, to your neighbour, to nations your neighbours.' RUSKIN, Fors Clavigera, Ixxv. ' T LIKE to associate my friends with parti- cular stars, there is something so sweet and intimate and confidential in a star. The sun and the moon, but especially the sun, are too universal and general for particular friendship; but you may consider a star as your own.' ERSKINE OF LINLATHEN. 80 VER. 3] DANIEL ' T OOK, what a company of constellations ! Say can the sky so many lights contain ? Hath the great earth these endless genera tions ? Are there so many purified by pain ? These thro' all glow and eminence of glory Cry for a brighter, who delayeth long ; Star unto star the everlasting story Pours in a splendour, flashes in a song.' F. W. H. MYERS. T_T EINE, in his Confessions^ tells of an in- terview he once had with Hegel. After supper the poet, looking out of the window, began to speak sentimentally of the stars as the dwelling-place of the blessed. Hegel muttered, ' Hum ! hum ! The stars are simply a brilliant leprosy on the face of heaven.' ' In God's name,' cried the poet, 'is there then no happy place above where F 81 DANIEL [chap. xii. the virtuous may find reward after death?' Whereupon Hegel rejoined, ' So you think you deserve a pourboire for tending your sick mother, or for not poisoning your elder brother ! ' They that turn many to righteousness. * 'T^ AKE as many to heaven with you as ye are able to draw. The more ye draw with you, ye shall be the welcomer yourself.' S. RUTHERFORD. XII. 4. Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased. * TT is written. Many shall run to and fro ^ arid knowledge shall be increased. Surely the plain rule is. Let each considerate person have his way, and see what it will lead to. 82 VER. 4] DANIEL For not this man and that man, but all men make up mankind, and their united tastes the taste of mankind. How often have we seen some such adventurous and perhaps much censured wanderer light on some out- lying, neglected, yet vitally momentous pro- vince; the hidden treasures of which he first discovered, and left proclaiming till the general eye and effort were directed thither, and the conquest was completed. Wise was he who counselled that speculation should have free course, and look fearlessly toward all the thirty-two points of the compass, whithersoever and howsoever it listed.' Sartor Resartus^ book I. i. * nPHE art of printing appears to have been providentially reserved till these latter ages, and then providentially brought into use, as what was to be instrumental for the 83 DANIEL [chap. xii. future in carrying on the appointed course of things. The alterations which this art has already made in the face of the world are not inconsiderable. By means of it, whether immediately or remotely, the methods of carrying on business are in several respects improved, knowledge has been increased^ and some sort of literature is become general.' BUTLER. XII. 4, 9. Shut up the words and seal the book . . . till the time of the end. * A/TY book will await its reader; has not God waited six thousand years before He has created a man to contemplate His works ? ' KEPLER. 84 VER. lo] DANIEL XII. lo. They that be wise. • ^ OD will not judge men by what they know; yet to have used knowledge rightly will be a staff to support and comfort us in passing through the dark valley.' JOWETT. But the wicked shall do wickedly. * 1 1 rHERE, if not in Christ, is the power that can persuade a sinner to return, that can bring /lome a heart to God} Common mercies of God, though they have a leading faculty to repentance, yet the rebellious heart will not be led by them. The judgments of God, public or personal, though they ought to drive us to God, yet the heart un- changed runs the further from God. Leave Christ out, I say, and all other means work not this way; neither the works nor the F2 85 DANIEL [chap. xii. word of God sounding daily in his ear, Return^ reticr?i. Let the noise of the rod speak it too, and both join together to make the cry louder, yet the wicked will do wickedly.^ LEIGHTON. XII. 13. For thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days. * "XJATURE in her grave nobleness is not less, but more dear now, when I remember that I shall soon bid her good even, to enter into the presence of her Lord and mine. New heavens and a new earth — I cannot sever my human heart from mine own land ; and who shall say that those noble countries, casting off all impurity in the fiery trial that awaits them, shall not be our final heaven ? ' I love to think that it may be so ; I love 86 VER. 13] DANIEL to think that the Lord, in His humanity, looks tenderly upon the mortal soil on which He sojourned in His wondrous life, and that here, perchance, in these very lands, made holy by His grace and power, our final rest shall be. It may be but a fancy; but it comes upon me with gentle might, like the whispered comfort of an angel. A new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness — a glorified humanity which, remaining human, is mortal no longer ! with the judgment and the condemnation and the wars of the Lord overpast, and the earth and the heaven one fair broad country, and Himself over all, blessed for ever ! These are the old man's dreams j and they shed new glory over the pleasant places in which my lines have fallen.' — From Adam Graeme of Mossgray, by MRS. OLIPHANT. 87 DANIEL [chap, xu * OPARE no deceit. Lay the sword upon it ; go over it : keep yourselves clear of the blood of all men, either by word or writing ; and keep yourselves clean, that you may stand in your throne, and every one have his lot, and stand in the lot in the Ancient of Days.' fox's Address to the Quakers^ 1656. Thou shalt rest. ' |I) ROTHER, we do not lay you down so deep But we ourselves shall overtake you soon : We dream a little longer, while you sleep ; And sleep than dreaming, yours the better boon. Who sleeps not and is thankful when he can? In dreaming there is little rest, be still. 88 VER. 13] DANIEL We are but oxen of the Husbandman, In his good time we sow what seed he will. Till Earth put out her dead-like buds in spring, 'Twere well to sleep the whole black winter through. Sweetly the cool earth round your ears shall cling; We turn to dreams again ; sleep soundly, you.' PROF. J. S. PHILLIMORE. Thou shalt stand in thy lot. * JESUS, that Flower of Jesse set without hands, getteth many a blast, and yet withers not, because He is His Father's noble Rose, casting a sweet smell through heaven and earth, and must grow ; and in the same 89 DANIEL [chap. xii. garden grow the saints, God's fair and beau- tiful lilies, under wind and rain, and all sun- burned, and yet life remaineth at the root. Keep within His garden, and you shall grow with them, till the great Husbandman, qui dear Master Gardener, come and transplant you from the lower part of His vineyard up to the higher, to the very heart of His garden, above the wrongs of the rain, sun, and wind.' SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. Printed by T. and A, Constable, Printers to His Majesty at the Edinburgh University Press LITERARY ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE BIBLE EDITED BY THE REV. JAMES MOFFATT, D.D. Vol. I. The Book of Ecclesiastes. Vol. II. The Book of Daniel. Vol. III. The Gospel of St. Mark. Vol. IV. The Gospel of St. Luke. Vol. V. The Epistle to the Romans. Vol. VI. The Book of Revelation. The materials employed in compiling these volumes are of two kinds. On the one hand have been set down passages of verse and prose in which some text has been used or applied in a forcible or notable manner. Some of these are drawn from history and biography, others from general litera- ture. In the second place, the author has admitted passages which develop aptly and freshly not the words but the idea of a Biblical verse, and it is hoped that both classes of illustrations may prove interest- ing and valuable to the ordinary reader as well as to the preacher and teacher by enriching the associa- tions and eliciting the significance of the Bible. LONDON: HODDER AND STOUGHTON 27 PATERNOSTER ROW JJate Due BS1555.M695 The book of Daniel. Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 1 1012 00075 3923