birth.  Like Moses, or like the young Pharisee Saul, these Jewish boys nurtured their faith by knowledge of their enemies’ belief, and used their childhood’s lessons as weapons in fighting for God’s truth.  It is not every man’s duty to become familiar with error, or to master anti-Christian systems.  But if it become ours, we are not to turn away from the task, nor to doubt that God will keep His own truth alight in our minds, if we realise the danger of the position, and seek to cling to Him.

V. So we have the last scene in the youths’ appearance before Nebuchadnezzar.  A three years’ curriculum was considered necessary to turn a Jewish boy into a Chaldean expert, fit to be a traitor to his nation, an apostate from his God, and a tool of the tyrant.  So far as knowledge of the priestly and astronomical science went, the four Hebrews came out at the top of the lists.  The great king himself, with that personal interference in all departments which makes a despot’s life so burdensome, put them through their paces, and was satisfied.  His object had been to get instruments with which he could work on the Captivity, and, no doubt, also to secure servants who had no links with anybody in Babylon.  Foreigners, ‘kinless loons,’ are favourites with despots, for plain reasons.  But Nebuchadnezzar could not fathom the hearts of the lads.  An incarnation of unbridled will would find it difficult to understand a life guided by conscience, and religious scruples would have sounded as an unknown tongue to him.  But yet, as he and they stood face to face, who was stronger, the conqueror or the youths who feared God, and none besides?  They were in their right place at the head of the examination lists.  They had not said, ’We do not believe in all this rubbish, and we are not going to trouble ourselves to master it,’ but they had set themselves determinedly to work, and been all the more persevering because of their objection to the diet.  If a young man has to be singular by reason of his religion, let him be singularly diligent in his work, and seek to be first, not merely for his own glory, but for the sake of the religion which he professes.

‘Plain living and high thinking’ ought to go together.  England and America have many names carved high on their annals, and written deep on their citizens’ hearts, who have nourished a sublime, studious youth in poverty, ‘cultivating literature on a little oatmeal,’ and who all their lives have ‘scorned delights and lived laborious days.’  It is the temper which is most likely to succeed, but which, whether it succeeds or not, brings the best blessings to those who cultivate it.  Such a youth will generally be followed by an honoured manhood like Daniel’s, but will, at all events, be its own reward, and have God’s blessing.

‘Daniel continued unto the first year of king Cyrus.’  These simple words contain volumes.  During all the troubles of the nation, from the king’s insanity, and the murders of his successors, amidst whirling intrigues, envies, plots, and persecutions, this one man stood firm, like a pillar amid blowing sands.  So God keeps the steadfast soul which is fixed on Him; and while the world passeth away, and the fashion thereof, he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.