The dominion of this world over multitudes is illustrated by the names of coins of many countries.  They have their pieces of money which they call sovereigns and half sovereigns, crowns and half crowns, Napoleons and half Napoleons, Fredericks and double Fredericks, and ducats, and Isabellinos, all of which names mean not so much usefulness as dominion.  The most of our windows open toward the exchange, toward the salon of fashion, toward the god of this world.  In olden times the length of the English yard was fixed by the length of the arm of King Henry I., and we are apt to measure things by a variable standard and by the human arm that in the great crises of life can give us no help.  We need, like Daniel, to open our windows toward God and religion.

But, mark you, that good lion-tamer is not standing at the window, but kneeling, while he looks out.  Most photographs are taken of those in standing or sitting posture.  I now remember but one picture of a man kneeling, and that was David Livingstone, who in the cause of God and civilization sacrificed himself; and in the heart of Africa his servant, Majwara, found him in the tent by the light of a candle, stuck on the top of a box, his head in his hands upon the pillow, and dead on his knees.  But here is a great lion-tamer, living under the dash of the light, and his hair disheveled of the breeze, praying.  The fact is, that a man can see further on his knees than standing on tiptoe.  Jerusalem was about five hundred and fifty statute miles from Babylon, and the vast Arabian Desert shifted its sands between them.  Yet through that open window Daniel saw Jerusalem, saw all between it, saw beyond, saw time, saw eternity, saw earth, and saw heaven.  Would you like to see the way through your sins to pardon, through your troubles to comfort, through temptation to rescue, through dire sickness to immortal health, through night to day, through things terrestrial to things celestial, you will not see them till you take Daniel’s posture.  No cap of bone to the joints of the fingers, no cap of bone to the joints of the elbow, but cap of bone to the knees, made so because the God of the body was the God of the soul, and especial provision for those who want to pray, and physiological structure joins with spiritual necessity in bidding us pray, and pray, and pray.

In olden time the Earl of Westmoreland said he had no need to pray, because he had enough pious tenants on his estate to pray for him; but all the prayers of the church universal amount to nothing unless, like Daniel, we pray for ourselves.  Oh, men and women, bounded on one side by Shadrach’s red-hot furnace, and the other side by devouring lions, learn the secret of courage and deliverance by looking at that Babylonish window open toward the south-west!  “Oh,” you say, “that is the direction of the Arabian Desert!” Yes; but on the other side of the desert is God, is Christ, is Jerusalem, is heaven.