But the main point to notice in this speech is the unconscious revelation of his real motive in demanding the act of worship.  The crime of the three was not that they worshipped wrongly, but that they disobeyed Nebuchadnezzar.  He speaks of ‘my gods’, and of the ’image which I have set up.’  Probably it was an image of the god of the Babylonian pantheon whom he took for his special patron, and was erected in commemoration of some victorious campaign.

At all events, the worship required was an act of obedience to him, and to refuse it was rebellion.  Idolatry is tolerant of any private opinions about gods, and intolerant of any refusal to obey authority in worship.  So the early Christians were thrown to the lions, not because they worshipped Jesus, but because they would not sacrifice at the Emperor’s command.  It is not only heathen rulers who have confounded the spheres of civil and religious obedience.  Nonconformity in England was long identified with disloyalty; and in many so-called Christian countries to-day a man may think what he likes, and worship as he pleases in his chamber, if only he will decently comply with authority and pretend to unite in religious ceremonies, which those who appoint and practise them observe with tongue in cheek.

But we may draw another lesson from this truculent apostle of his god.  He is not the only instance of apparent religious zeal which is at bottom nothing but masterfulness.  ’You shall worship my god, not because he is God, but because he is mine.’  That is the real meaning of a great deal which calls itself ‘zeal for the Lord.’  The zealot’s own will, opinions, fancies, are crammed down other people’s throats, and the insult in not thinking or worshipping as he does, is worse in his eyes than the offence against God.

The kind of furnace in which recusants are roasted has changed since Nebuchadnezzar’s time, and what is called persecution for religion is out of fashion now.  But every advance in the application of Christian principle to social and civil life brings a real martyrdom on its advocates.  Every audacious refusal to bow to the habits or opinions of the majority, is visited by consequences which only the martyr spirit will endure.  Despots have no monopoly of imperious intolerance.  A democracy is more cruel and more impatient of singularity, and especially of religious singularity, than any despot.

England and America have no need to fear the old forms of religious persecution.  In both, a man may profess and proclaim any kind of religion or of no religion.  But in both, the advance guard of the Christian Church, which seeks to apply Christ’s teachings more rigidly to individual and social life, has to face obloquy, ostracism, misrepresentation, from the world and the fossil church, for not serving their gods, nor worshipping the golden image which they have set up.  Martyrs will be needed and persecutors will exist till the world is Christian.