Daniel 1

Daniel 1:1-21

DANIEL-A DREAM OF A LAD Daniel 1:1-21THE predictive element, like the Gulf Stream, makes its way from shore to shore of the Sacred Word; but, in three Books of the Bible, this stream, like the Jordan River, widens and deepens into very seas of prophetic import. I speak, of course, of Daniel, Zechariah and Revelation. We have just completed a somewhat diligent and exhaustive study of Revelation; Daniel and Zechariah await our consideration.Dr. C. I. Scofield is wholly justified in his remark, “Daniel is the indispensable introduction to New Testament prophecy, and he is distinctly the Prophet of the ‘times of the Gentiles” (Luke 21:24). His vision sweeps the whole course of the Gentile world-rule to its end in catastrophe, and to the setting up of the Messianic Kingdom.”But, in order to a proper understanding of the Book itself, one must become acquainted with its author; and this first chapter is a fine and somewhat full portrait of the Prophet in the days of his youth; and a corresponding promise of the wisdom he will exercise, the visions he will experience or interpret, and the ages, he, by the help of the Holy Ghost, will unfold to the good student of sacred Scripture.Remembering, therefore, the setting of this first chapter, we address ourselves to the subject of Daniel, The Ideal Young Prophet! Three phrases may suffice for our study: The Captive Lad, The Conscientious Lad, and The Competent Lad.THE CAPTIVE LAD“In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon unto Jerusalem, and besieged it. And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, with part of the vessels of the House of God: which he carried into the land of Shinar to the house of his god, and he brought the vessels into the treasure house of his god. “And the king spake unto Ashpenaz the master of his eunuchs, that he should bring certain of the Children of Israel, and of the king’s seed, and of the princes; “Children in whom was no blemish, but well favoured, and skilful in all wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and understanding science, and such as had ability in them to stand in the king’s palace, and whom they might teach the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans. “And the king appointed them a daily provision of the king’s meat, and of the wine which he drank: so nourishing them three years, that at the end thereof they might stand before the king. “Now among these were of the Children of Judah, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah” (Daniel 1:1-6). These six verses invite three remarks:He was the subject of a captivity for which he was in no wise responsible. For a long time the threat of judgment had hung over Judah; her true Prophets had repeated it again and again to be largely disregarded. This very captivity had been foretold and the desolation, and even destruction of Jerusalem, had been prophesied. Ezekiel, our last study, made judgment his refrain.But, alas, for the little interest men take in prewritten history! Even the professed people of God have slight confidence in the fulfilment of inspired predictions. The reason is not far to seek!

They poorly comprehend, and still more poorly believe in inspired truth. The warnings of Noah were as lucid as language could make them, and yet in the days that were before the flood, men went on “eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away”. When the “Prophetic Conference” was held in Los Angeles, February, 1914, and attention was called to the predictive Scriptures concerning the certainty of wars and rumors of wars, “nation rising against nation, and kingdom against kingdom” and all to be followed by famine, and pestilence, and earthquake the Editor of the “Christian Advocate”—mark the name—spoke of such teaching as “Pathetic” and declared that the Conference ought to be called “A Pathetic Conference” instead of “a Prophetic One.”In less than four months therefrom the great world powers had loosed the dogs of war, unlimbered their cannons and commenced the literal fulfilment of the prophetic Word.As, in that judgment against wicked Judah, the innocent were compelled to suffer with the guilty, so in this visitation of wrath upon those potentates who have provoked battle, blood and death, the peace-loving children shall endure the hardships, privation, captivity, and even crucifixion of the world-condition for which they are in no wise responsible. Truly, the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, and the most pathetic thing about it all is their personal suffering and plaintive cry. The significant words of Mrs. Browning, written as a protest against the sweatshops and factory-slavery of England’s children, find a fulfilment in the face of this judgment upon the nations—“Do you hear the children weeping, O my brothers; Ere the sorrow comes with years? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers. And that cannot stop their tears. The young lambs are bleating in the meadows; The young birds are chirping in the nest; The young fawns are playing with the shadows, The young flowers are bending toward the west, But the young, young children, O my brothers! They are weeping bitterly, in the playtime of the others, In the country of the free.” The captivity of Daniel was the direct consequence of the sins of his seniors and sire.His very nobility increased the ignominy of his experience. He was “of the king’s seed” (Daniel 1:3). He was born to rule; not to serve. He was bred in the expectation of a scepter, and never dreamed of slavery to heathen masters.It had been spoken by the Prophet Isaiah unto Hezekiah, “Behold, the days come, that all that is in thine house, and that which thy fathers have laid up in store unto this day, shall be carried into Babylon: nothing shall be left, saith the Lord. And of thy sons that shall issue from thee, which thou shalt beget, shall they take away; and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon”.But his seniors had so far forgotten it, or else so perfectly despised the prophetic Scriptures, that the lad grew in ignorance of his coming fate.When, therefore, about 606 B. C., the hosts of Nebuchadnezzar came upon Jerusalem, he took not alone the king Jehoiakim, but “of the king’s seed, and of the princes”, among whom was Daniel.Our hearts bleed when men of high birth and breeding are sent to prison by the lowbrowed.

The slavery of the African, while transgressing the inalienable rights of man, was to him more blessing than hardship; and the greatest favor that has ever fallen out to the Ethiopian himself occurred when he was carried captive to America, and made a hewer of wood and a drawer of water for his white brethren. It brought him into a new civilization; it opened up to him the privileges of education and Christianity; and that slavery was the first step toward his real emancipation.How different when the heathen hand was laid upon Judson, and that splendid, cultured, justly proud man, was thrust into the damp, filthy prison at Oung-Pen-la to languish for months, and to be treated with every indignity by men who were unfit to loose the latchet of his shoes; and when John Bunyan—that winged intellect—was subjected to the foulness of Bedford’s jail.I have seen a thousand canaries caged.

My heart has not been touched with special pity at the sight. The little bird scarcely knows that he is an imprisoned thing; he can fly from perch to perch and feel at freedom still. But I never look upon a great eagle, chained at the feet, without resenting it. He was hatched in a higher altitude. His wing was intended to carry him to the heights; the deep dome of heaven is his homelike atmosphere; and it is both an indignity and an outrage for him to be brought down to the earth and tethered to the same, and looked upon with scorn and contumely by every passer-by.So with this proud lad! The experience of the deepest ignominy can never be known to the debased; its refinement of cruelties is retained for the proud, the clean, the cultured. “How are the mighty fallen!

Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon; lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph”!His Judean loyalty did not oppose the Chaldean learning. There was a time when the average American imagined that the heathen of the world knew nothing.

The fact that they knew nothing of our religion, led us to conclude that their ignorance of natural science was as deep as their heathen superstition! That impression has been corrected, and we know now that even static Africa, as well as modern China and Japan, in spite of all their heathenism, amass much natural information.Daniel no more protested against the learning of the Chaldeans than Moses did against that of the Egyptians. Knowledge, gained from whatever source, may be turned to good! It is worth one’s while to make himself familiar even with the premises which he cannot believe, and conclusions to which he cannot consent. Sometime ago a man asked the question as to whether I would at all read a book on Higher Criticism, and seemed somewhat surprised when I told him that my library had almost as many volumes, published from the standpoint of the Critics, as from that of the Conservatives. Chaldean learning it is!

Poor premises and false conclusions characterize it. Those facts, instead of being the reason for refusing to touch it, have always seemed to me an appeal for its study.To deny the devil is to put one’s self in more danger from him; and to ignore errors is to imperil one’s self the more by their realities.

Solomon, wise above his fellows, was doubtless made so by his father’s injunction, who taught him, saying,“Get wisdom, get understanding: * * “Forsake her not, and she * * shall keep thee. “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding. “Exalt her, and she shall promote thee: she shall bring thee to honour, when thou dost embrace her. “She shall give to thine head an ornament of grace: a crown of glory shall she deliver to thee” (Proverbs 4:5-9). Truly did Swett Marden write:“The ignoramus does not utter laws on science; the dolt never writes an Oddessy, an Ӕ ?neid, a Paradise Lost, or a Hamlet.”Moses was a bigger man because he was schooled in the Egyptian university; and Daniel a greater one because he added Chaldean to Judean learning; and the greatness of both of them was proven by the fact that they could thread their way through these labyrinths of false teaching and remain alike faithful to God and to His Word.This is perfectly illustrated by our second phrase.THE LAD “And the king appointed them a daily provision of the king’s meat, and of the wine which he drank. “But Daniel purposed m his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s meat, nor with the wine which he drank” (Daniel 1:5; Daniel 1:8). He had a conscience and was not ashamed of it. Paul, writing to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 8:7) declares“There is not in every man that knowledge”, namely, that God is one, and beside Him there is none other, “For”, says he, “some with conscience of the idol unto this hour eat it as a thing offered unto an idol; and their conscience being weak is defiled”.Daniel knew the law of the Lord against eating meat offered to idols. His conscience was more than a natural one; it was a Scripturally instructed one and was keen accordingly.To me the greatest change that has come, in modern times, is at this particular point. I am perfectly confident that the whole educational system is now set to the tone of might, so boisterous, so physical, so brutal as to almost obliterate the quiet voice of conscience! From the day the lad enters the public schools, and appears upon the football grounds to the time when he comes away from the University an accomplished athlete, he is made to feel that nothing so effeminate as a parley over the fine points of right and wrong, is to be given even serious consideration.The story that Theodore Parker tells of his tender youth, related on the campus of the modern school, would set the children to derisive laughter. He says, “When I was a little boy my father led me to a distant part of the farm one day, but soon sent me home again.

On the way I had to pass a little pond; a rhodora in full bloom, a rare flower, attracted my attention, and drew me to the spot. I saw a little tortoise sunning himself in the shallow waters at the roots of the flaming shrub!

I lifted the stick I had in my hand to strike the harmless reptile; for though I had never killed any creature, yet I had seen other boys do so. But all at once something checked my arm and a voice within me said, clear and loud, ‘Don’t do it. It is wrong.’ I held my uplifted stick in wonder at the new emotion, and hastened home and told my mother, and asked what it was within that told me it was wrong. She wiped a tear from her eye, and taking me in her arms, said, ‘Some men call it conscience; but I prefer to call it the voice of God. If you listen to and obey it, it will speak clearer and clearer, and always guide you right; but if you turn a deaf ear and disobey, then it will fade out, and leave you in the dark and without a guide. Your life depends on heeding that little voice.”It might be well to remind the Center-Rush that the day a man parts company with the effeminate thing known as “conscience,” he loses the first essential to success in life, and the greatest essential to life itself.Daniel determined to conform his conduct to its dictates.

On the one side was custom, and the important people with whom he was associated, and re-enforcing the demand that he eat the king’s meat and drink the king’s wine, was the fact that the king himself had appointed it.What an appeal! There are many men who would refuse wine at the hand of an inferior; men who would disdain to drink it over the bar, passed out by some beefy, dull bartender; but when offered by the hand of the politician, or proffered by the man of large means; above all, when presented by the dimpled, jewelled hand of the social queen, who can withstand?

But conscience, if it is to be followed at all, will take no account of such circumstances! Compromise with it is inconceivable!The man, therefore, who proposes to be politic, and when “in Rome, do as the Romans do,” should know that such conduct is death to conscience. And he who silences that small voice has impoverished his soul and sustained a loss from which he can never recover. No wonder George Washington wrote:“Endeavor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of fire called conscience.”No wonder Byron declared:“Whatever creed be taught, Or land be trod, Man’s conscience is the oracle of God.” No man has ever once regretted that he regarded and no man has ever once departed from its voice, but lived to regret the hour.He was thereby compelled to appear peculiar. In his refusal to eat this meat and drink this wine he was not behaving like the elite about him. Remember Daniel did not live in the day when they were teaching the evil effect of alcohol in the public schools—Daniel did not belong to a time when the Union had gone into Prohibition lines; Daniel had not heard of the temporary banishment of Vodka from Russia and of Absinthe from France, nor had he listened to Lloyd George pleading with England to dispose of intoxicating drink that she might enhance her chance of winning the war. King George had not then spoken in favor of temperance; nor had the United States abolished legalized liquor saloons from the land.But God had spoken, and in the judgment of Daniel the Word of the Lord involved more of wisdom than the will of the Czar, the action of the French Republic, or the opinion of King, or Congress!It would have been unnecessary for Daniel’s father to tell him that the cigarette was deleterious, and for Daniel’s teacher to present a scientific statement of its component parts to prove the same. Daniel went to a higher source of authority and believed, as the Bible teaches, that his body was the temple of God, and he refused to defile it.Such radicalism in opinion and conduct was the solitary hope of Daniel’s day, and the sole hope of prosperity for Daniel’s people; and such refusal to conform ourselves to the age of which we are a part, is now the only hope of the individual Christian or of the Church of God.But I may speak to those who are not Christian men, who do not know, and therefore do not concern yourselves with what God has to say upon such subjects. Then see what science has to speak, for possibly you are a devotee of that.

When the great Dr. Lorenz was in this country and sat down to a table where the guests indulged in drink, his own wine cup was pushed aside, untasted.

His companion at his side, asked, “Are you a teetotaler?”“Yes,” said Dr. Lorenz, “I am; but not a temperance agitator. I am a surgeon. My success depends upon my brain being clear, my muscles firm and my nerves steady. No one can take alcoholic liquor without blunting these physical powers which must be kept on edge. As a physician I must not drink.”I can perfectly understand how a man who is a physical and nervous wreck, may be tempted to try temporarily the use of a stimulant; but does it not seem little short of cowardice for a man in youth, or in all the fullness of middle life, to resort to stimulants when his brain reminds him of the fact that every time he takes the same there is a reaction that reduces his powers and renders him less capable of resistance?Coffee may be a delight; but when I found it injurious, I should have counted myself a coward had I not given it up at once.

Tea is, to me, a decided stimulus and the taste of it is attractive. Just on that account I dare not drink it daily lest it lose its wonted effect and in the hour when I am jaded, this overworked servant be unable to come to my relief.The problem of how to live at one’s best and accomplish one’s work most efficiently is one of the biggest of life.

Strong “meats” and “drinks” have never helped to conserve it; but, ten thousand times they have defeated men who, had they resisted them, might have been Daniels indeed. If I could have the ear of the youth of the land, I know of no cause I could plead with greater import than that of conscience in clean, careful, abstemious, scientific living. Daniel will forever stand out as an example in that line.THE LAD One is quite prepared by his previous study to receive the inspired remark concerning Daniel and his brethren, “God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom”; and in “all matters of wisdom and understanding, that the king enquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in all his realm” (Daniel 1:17; Daniel 1:20).And yet, the lad’s accomplishment was not mental only.In physical form he was a fine model. A child in whom was no blemish, but well-favored, “fairer and fatter in flesh than all the children which did eat the portion of the king’s meat” (Daniel 1:15). Here is a fair plea, and perhaps even a forceful argument, for the vegetarian. There can be little doubt that meat has as often weakened muscles as made them; and there is no dispute that wines are physically deleterious. False stimulants whether in the form of highly seasoned meats or intoxicating drinks have never meant physical reinforcement.Forty years ago I knew a man, well formed in body, well developed in brain, but in his social hours he felt that stimulants were essential to physical endurance and intellectual scintillation. For full twenty-five years he has been the weakened victim of this false philosophy.

His body and brain have alike been involved and the competent physician to whom he has made appeal held out no promise of permanent recovery. Undoubtedly the adoption of Daniel’s course would have kept his body under blessing.In mental acumen he was unmatched! The text tells us that “God gave them knowledge and skill in all * * wisdom”, and declares again “In all matters * * that the king enquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in all his realm”.The amount of gray matter one develops is never determined by the amount of meat and wine he eats and drinks.Sometimes we have come upon the early history of some man who has become great and noble, and our tears are started by the circumstances, that in youth, or in the college days, he often endured the pangs of hunger; but when we come to know that an empty stomach makes an active brain, and the very circumstance often produces mental clearness, we must realize that far greater misfortune might be fallen upon than to be denied wine and even for intervals meat and bread.This child of poverty, this victim of hardships, was, after all, the favored lad. We are told that a patrician once said to Cicero, “You are a plebeian.”To this the great Roman orator replied, “I am a plebeian; the nobility of my family begins with me; that of yours will end with you.”In spiritual discernment he was a child of the king.“Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams” (Daniel 1:17). That was no natural talent: that was the enduement of the Spirit, the experience of God’s power.One never reads the story of Daniel without being reminded of that of Joseph. In the interpretation of dreams he had presented a like claim, “Not of us, but from God.”But to be in touch with Him one must be His own. “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned”.When one reflects upon this fact he is fitted to join with Isaac Watts in the petitions of the great hymn: “Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove, With all Thy quickening powers, Kindle a flame of sacred love In these cold hearts of ours.

“Look! How we grovel here below, Fond of these earthly toys; Our souls can neither fly nor go To reach eternal joys.

“In vain we tune our formal songs; In vain we strive to rise; Hosannas languish on our tongues, And our devotion dies.

“Dear Lord, and shall we ever live At this poor dying rate, Our love so faint, so cold to Thee, And Thine to us so great?

“Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove, With all Thy quickening powers; Come shed abroad a Saviour’s love, And that shall kindle ours.”

Daniel 1:8

COURAGE, OR THE EARNEST OF Daniel 1:8IT is said, “the boy is father to the man.” If that be true, our text in telling us what sort of a boy Daniel was prophesies Daniel the man. But I am going to give this second discourse upon Daniel to the boy, for as yet he is a lad, and there are certain traits in this lad’s character suggested by our text that are only too seldom found in the hearts and lives of our modern young men, and yet they are traits that make for manliness, and as well for Godliness.DANIEL’S WAS TOTAL —NOT The text does not say that Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not eat so much of the king’s meat as to make himself sick, nor drink so much of the king’s wine that he could not walk straight; instead he discarded the whole business. His total abstinence differentiated him from the gluttons and drunkards and temperance advocates among the Chaldeans. If Daniel were alive today, he would be in the minority, reckoned by good men as Puritanical and by good partisans as a crank of a Prohibitionist.Daniel was not a temperance man, he was a total abstainer instead. Many a man boasts himself a temperance man and yet bowls up every week. So long as he can find his way to his home and turn the key in his door, he is a temperance man, e’en though he keeps a demi-john and wine glasses and all that sort of a thing. Kentucky, in the days of my boyhood, was full of such friends of temperance, and I find that even yet Minneapolis is not free from them.Did it ever occur to you that there are only three steps from the occasional tippler to the tottering wreck and wretch?

The tippler of this year will be a man of many tumblers next year, and by the year following will have tumbled himself, and finally he may plunge into the pit. It is a delusion of the devil’s, that every beginner-at-drink entertains, in thinking that he will be the hundredth man and escape such evil results.Neal Dow, in a temperance congress once said, “There was an old preacher who used to introduce the marriage sermon with these words, ‘John, matrimony is a blessing to a few, a curse to many, and an uncertainty to us all.

John, will you venture?’”The advocates of moderate drinking say, “We know drink is a curse to thousands, safety to a few and uncertainty to us all, but let us chance it” while the platform on which Daniel stood affirms, “total abstinence is a blessing to thousands, a curse to nobody, and safe for everybody!”By this doctrine Daniel defeated the devil. Dr. Basil Manley once said, in my hearing, “Young men, I know of one sure, never-failing prescription against drink; it is this—never take the first drink.” What wise counsel! What fools we are to disregard it and make a breach in the walls of our character!Hawthorne, in the Scarlet Letter, speaks a stern, sad truth when he says,“The breach which guilt has once made in the human soul is never, in this mortal state, repaired. It may be watched and guarded so that the enemy may not force his way again into the citadel and might even, in his subsequent assaults, select some other avenue in preference to that in which he had formerly succeeded. But there is still the ruined wall and near it the stealthy tread of the foe that would win over again his unforgotten triumph.”Arthur Dimmisdale was only the representative of thousands who have illustrated that unwelcome truth.I have known many men to drink and gamble and give themselves to fleshly lusts.

I have known very few to reform, save those regenerated by God’s grace. The fallen have many hours of penitence and entertain many good purposes; but their arch-enemy sees to it that they fall again, and yet again.One winter forty years ago, I was preaching a series of sermons at Farwell Hall, Chicago, and a poor fellow professed repentance and declared by all that was holy that, having tasted the dregs of sin, he was satisfied to quit such a life and turn to God.Six months later, on one Thursday night, after I was asleep and the midnight had gone, my doorbell rang.

I went to the door and opened it, and lo my reformed man. His breath was eloquent, his knees tottering, his feet uncertain, and after a few minutes he said, “I did intend to do right; but I have been at my cups again.”When I was on a farm and a dog killed a sheep, we shot him, however valuable he had been. We knew that after one experience in tasting the blood of a lamb, he would never recover from his love of it. So far as any help in himself is concerned, it is a good deal so with the man who has once formed an evil habit.The bar-keeper, the shark at gambling, the harlot, seldom lose their grip on a soul that they have once seduced to sin. The entrapped fly may writhe and wrestle and burst the bands at one point, but I have noticed that the spider spins him in his web faster even than the swift wing of any fly can snap them.Daniel was wise. He kept clear of the trap.

He took no chances with moderation. He said, “Sobriety is good enough for me!” He probably felt as our own great Edison expressed himself to Miss Willard, when she asked him why he never used intoxicating liquors, “Because I have a better use for my brain.”DANIEL TO PLAYING THE FOOL He dared to refuse the invitation of a friend. Ashpenaz was fond of this beautiful boy, and we have no reason to doubt that Daniel reciprocated his love. The text says, “God had brought Daniel into favour and tender love with the prince of the eunuchs”.Had Daniel been like some young men, that would have settled the question of meat and drink. The world is full of soft-souled Rehoboams who cannot say “no” to their friends.Some time ago a woman said to me, “My husband is not bad at heart. He errs on the side of his social nature. When his friends want him to drink, he cannot refuse.”Poor pitiable excuse of a man; the fellow who has not moral back-bone enough to say “no.” He is doomed.

He is a piece of putty in the fingers of friends and they will press him into monster form. The man who has no will of his own is the weakest member of society.Some parents express their purpose to break the will of the child. Dr. Henson has said sagely, “Break his neck, if you want to, but, for humanity’s sake keep his will, if he has one. It is a fortune in itself. It does not ask what others wish, it asks what is right.

It does not ask what others think of me, it determines instead a course that retains self-respect!”General Garfield said, “I do not much care what others think and say about me; but I do respect the opinion of one man and value it very much, and that is the opinion of James Garfield. I can get away from others, but I have to be with him all the time. It makes a great difference whether he thinks well of me or not.”While our warm-hearted, weak-headed simpleton who is so affectionate that he cannot say “no,” is on his way to perdition, this self-respecting man is steadily advancing to the presidency of the greatest people beneath the sun.If Daniel had not said “no” to Ashpenaz, his history would have been written in the annals of failure and read in hell, instead of having record in the earth and giving joy in Heaven. “You’re starting, my boy, on life’s journey, Along the grand highway of life; You’ll meet with a thousand temptations— Each city with evil is rife. This world is a stage of excitement, There’s danger wherever you go; But if you are tempted in weakness, Have courage, my boy, to say No!

“In courage alone lies your safety, When you the long journey begin; Your trust in a Heavenly Father Will keep you unspotted from sin. Temptations will go on increasing, As streams from a rivulet flow; But if you’d be true to your manhood, Have courage, my boy, to say No!

“Be careful in choosing companions, Seek only the brave and the true; And stand by your friends when in trial, Ne’er changing the old for the new; And when by false friends you are tempted The taste of the wine cup to know, With firmness, with patience, and kindness, Have courage, my boy, to say No!

“Have courage, my boy, to say No. Have courage, my boy, to say No. Have courage, my boy, have courage, my boy. Have courage, my boy, to say No.” Perhaps Daniel doubted if a true friend was ever a tempter. Thoughtful people will entertain the same doubt. The moment a man asks me to drink with him or go with him into any sin, he excites first suspicion of his friendship. All the flattery of the finest gentleman cannot cover up his fiendish purpose when once he proposes sin.Our cities are full of boys and girls who see no evil design in an escort’s invitation to enter a drinking house; but to suppose that such an escort is your friend, is to show that Satan could dress himself in finery, flatter you a little and get your consent to go with him to hell. Poison from the hand of a flatterer is no less deadly because he names it “nectar.”A few years since, just out of Lafayette, Indiana, a man, infatuated with a wretched woman and her money, was all attention to his beautiful, but sick wife. He flattered her as never before, showed such devotion as she had never seen from him, would permit no other hand to administer her medicine.

Daily she grew worse until her death was on. Trusting in his tenderness, she took from his hand a drug that was well disguised.

After her hasty burial, he returned to his home and so behaved himself as to excite suspicion. Detectives were put on his track. Proof of his guilt was forth-coming and ere many months he was landed in the Michigan City Penitentiary for life. He served but two summers and then God summoned him from his cell to stand before His throne and meet His righteous judgment.But all murderers do not so fare. Every city has in it friends who, acting under the disguise of friendship, slowly instill death into confiding lives.Young men, don’t lose your souls in satanic traps! Genuine love never tempts its subject to sin, and if it does it is ours to present a character that baffles every evil design.It is claimed by naturalists that a scorpion never attempts to sting a victim until it has first discovered a vulnerable point.

He will fasten himself upon man and beast and will begin a deliberate search for some unprotected spot. If he find none, he releases his hold and retreats.It is a good deal so with the tempters of this life; only when they find a weakness in our character will they attempt to wound and wreck us.It is the soft spot in our morality or mentality upon which they do their fatal work.

The only safe man, the only woman who walks the ways of this world with a great degree of safety is the man or woman whose principles are fixed and whose character is established in holiness.DANIEL THE OF HIS SOUL ABOVE THOSE OF HIS STATION Success in his judgment was not a question of station.He did not feel that he must live on high wines, sweet meats, and in splendid dress. The measure of one’s manhood is largely taken by his attitude toward the things of the flesh. He is on a low level who seldom lifts his thought above meat and drink, dress and station.There were many acts in Moses’ life that proved his greatness. He was indeed an uncrowned king, but the earnest of all his greatness appears in a single resolution. Paul expresses it in that wonderful eleventh chapter of Hebrews, when he says,“By faith Moses, when he was come of years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; “Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; “Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt”. In that sentence there shines the soul of a man; yes, of a king!Daniel’s spirituality resulted in temporary success. The text says he came before the king “fairer and fatter in flesh than all the children which did eat the portion of the king’s meat”, and further informs us that he surpassed them in “knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom”.Sensuality does not preserve beauty, but destroys it instead; nor indeed is it an aid to useful knowledge. The man of the highest morality has the best prospect of high mentality.Character in itself is an accomplishment, and it aids mightily in making conquest in mental things.It may have looked to some that Daniel’s refusal to indulge in the king’s meats and drinks would destroy his prospects, but God makes the appointments to the world’s best positions.Count Zinzendorf seemed to sacrifice everything when he left rank, wealth and great political power and turned preacher, but God rewarded him with a wealth of grace, with honors immortal and powers almost Divine.The family and friends of Wendell Phillips were put to the deepest shame when the most promising son of that old New England house espoused the cause of the hunted, hated black man. But Wendell Phillips came to be regarded as the grandest man that ever appeared in that famed family.Jesus Christ gave us the secret of true success when He said, “He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for My sake shall find it”.Long before Christ’s birth, Daniel had demonstrated the truth of His words.