DANIEL IN BABYLON.

(Daniel i:8-20.)

I. The Analysis.

1. The Purpose of Daniel's Heart (verse 8).

2. The Answering Favor of God (verse 9).

3. The Perplexity of the Steward and the Victorious Test (verses 10-20).

II. The Heart of the Lesson.

The heart of this lesson is the exceeding value of a definite heart purpose. ''Daniel purposed in his heart." That is the key to the character of Daniel, and the key also to his life story. "Daniel purposed in his heart to be loyal to Jehovah in even so minor a detail of obedience as eating and drinking, and we may reverently say that Jehovah purposed in His heart that Daniel should be a monument in Babylon of His power and wisdom. And we read: "And Daniel continued even unto the first year of King Cyrus." That was God's answer to Daniel's purpose of heart. King followed king in Babylon, even the dynasty changed, but "Daniel continued." Great cabals were formed of mighty princes and influential courtiers to put down Daniel, but "Daniel continued." Daniel himself was a sinner (ix:20), but "Daniel continued." The one steadfast thing in all that changing, shifting court was an alien and hated Jew because Daniel had "purposed in his heart," and because Jehovah had purposed in His heart.

Do not suppose the purpose in Daniel's heart arose from a mere dietary question—of whether the king's meat, or pulse, were the better food. Not at all. Daniel belonged to a people in covenant relations with God. In Daniel's nation the government was a theocracy. Whoever might sit visibly on David's throne, the invisible One was the real king, and He had ordered even the dietary of His people. Daniel would not eat the king of Babylon's meat because Daniel's king had instructed otherwise.

Think how many excuses Daniel might have made at the bar of his own conscience. He might have pleaded his circumstances. He was in Babylon through no wish of his own. God in His providence had permitted him to be carried away captive. He might have pleaded a reasonable and prudent, self-interest, fearing, not unreasonably, to offend that irresponsible despot whose slave he was. He might have pleaded the relative unimportance of the matter.

It was no question of breaking the moral law. He was not asked to worship other gods, nor to bear false witness, nor to blaspheme. It was just a question of eating and drinking—why carry to such an extreme the puritanic customs of remote and provincial Judaea?

Thousands of young men have reasoned thus who have gone down from the home farm to the new scenes and new ways of the great city, and thousands have fallen by the way just because they had not firmness of moral fibre and strength of conviction to purpose in their hearts to maintain the temperance in eating and drinking in which they had been nurtured, and which their best convictions approved.

Other thousands have maintained simplicity of life, but have given way at the point of business rectitude. Great financial prosperity may have come to some of them, but at the awful cost of an approving conscience, and, too often, of an old age of public contempt and obloquy.

The story of Daniel can never grow old so long as there are young men to be tempted to surrender principle at the demand of expediency—so long as men and women of any age are called upon to choose between the easy way of conformity to lower standards, and the other way of a purposeful heart.