Darius’s conduct to Daniel was like Herod’s to John the Baptist and Pilate’s to Jesus.  In all the cases the judges were convinced of the victim’s innocence, and would have saved him; but fear of others biassed justice, and from selfish motives, they let fierce hatred have its way.  Such judges are murderers.  From all come the old lessons, never too threadbare to be dinned into the ears, especially of the young, that to be weak is, in a world so full of temptation, the same as to be wicked, and that he who has a sidelong eye to his supposed interest, will never see the path of duty plainly.

What a feeble excuse to his own conscience was Darius’s parting word to Daniel!  ‘Thy God, whom thou servest continually, He will deliver thee!’ And was flinging him to the lions the right way to treat a man who served God continually?  Or, what right had Darius to expect that any god would interfere to stop the consequences of his act, which he thus himself condemned?  We are often tempted to think, as he did, that a divine intervention will come in between our evil deeds and their natural results.  We should be wiser if we did not do the things that, by our own confession, need God to avert their issues.

But that weak parting word witnessed to the impression made by the lifelong consistency of Daniel.  He must be a good man who gets such a testimony from those who are harming him.  The busy minister of state had done his political work so as to extort that tribute from one who had no sympathy with his religion.  Do we do ours in that fashion?  How many of our statesmen ‘serve God continually’ and obviously in their public life?

What a contrast between the night passed in the lions’ den and the palace!  ‘Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage,’ and soft beds and luxurious delights of sense bring no ease to troubled consciences.  Daniel is more at rest, though his ‘soul is among lions,’ than Darius in his palace.  Peter sleeps soundly, though the coming morning is to be his last.  Better to be the victim than the doer of injustice!

The verdict of nightly thoughts on daily acts is usually true, and if our deeds do not bear thinking of ‘on our beds,’ the sooner we cancel them by penitence and reversed conduct, the better.  But weak men are often prone to swift and shallow regrets, which do not influence their future any more than a stone thrown into the sea makes a permanent gap.  Why should Darius have waited for morning, if his penitence had moved him to a firm resolution to undo the evil done?  He had better have sprung from his bed, and gone with his guards to open the den in the dark.  Feeble lamentations are out of place when it is still time to act.

The hurried rush to the den in the morning twilight, and the ’lamentable voice,’ so unlike royal impassiveness, indicate the agitation of an impulsive nature, accustomed to let the feeling of the moment sway it unchecked.  Absolute power tends to make that type of man.  The question thrown into the den seems to imply that its interior was not seen.  If so, the half-belief in Daniel’s survival is remarkable.  It indicates, as before, the impression of steadfast devoutness made by the old man’s life, and also a belief that his God was possibly a true and potent divinity.