II.
The Piety of the Open Window.
1. Daniel kneeled and prayed. He had arrived at an age when rash enthusiasm does not as a rule commend itself. And it would have been the easiest thing in the world to have refrained from making any open parade of his devotions. Who was to know, if he did not choose to tell, how Daniel passed his hours of seclusion ? He was not a poor young captive now, but a great noble whose bidding multitudes obeyed, second only to the king himself; none dare intrude on his privacy. And it would not only have been the part of prudence to keep his religious observances to himself ; he may well have felt that it would be for the interests of his adopted country that he and no other should steer the ship of State through the troubled waters of foreign policy. Men's prayers can be said in private as well as in public ; and God would hear him no less in his secret chamber than if he were in the Temple at Jerusalem. If ever a man had good excuse for not making any open and public profession of unpopular beliefs, that man was Daniel. But yet he disobeyed the order of the king, and that with defiance. " When he knew that the writing was signed " — there was no delay until he might first gain the ear of the king and entreat his clemency — " when he knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house ; (now his windows were open in his chamber toward Jerusalem ;) and
1 Phillips Brooks, Essays and Addresses, 381.
262 OPEN WINDOWS
he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime."
Tj The story of Daniel's trial is a parable of what happens every day, with young as with old. Things seem to be going well with us. Our lot is cast in a fair ground. We have a goodly heritage. Our religious life is easy, and requires no sacrifice, as it seems, either of comfort or fame or power. And then we suddenly discover that it would be for our advantage to conform more closely to the laws, social, moral, or religious, which the society around us prescribes. And self-interest urges that it is but a small matter, after all, that is at stake, and that it is not seemly to put ourselves in opposition to the opinions of the majority. Who are we that we should lay down rules for the conduct of life ? Power and fame, these may be used for great and worthy ends ; is it not the foolish part to sacrifice them for some fantastic scruple which even our best friends cannot under- stand ? And so in our miserable self-deceit we silence the voice of conscience, and go on our way with one more link broken between ourselves and God. And if it be true quite generally — as indeed it is, and without qualification — that if we disobey any slightest hint of conscience, no matter whether other people understand it or not, we do so at our peril, it is even more plainly and emphatically true that we dare not tamper with conscience in the special matter of prayer. It was in this particular that Daniel felt, and rightly felt, that he dare make no change in his daily habits. Prayer is so intimately associated with all that is best and strongest in the religious life that anything which tends to lessen the sense of its importance or its solemnity is injurious to the health of the soul. Prayer : it is the very heart and centre of religion ; and therefore it is that the habit of persistence in prayer under difficulty is one of the most important habits which we can acquire.1
Tl " 0 prayer," cried the impassioned preacher [Whitefield] in another part of his sermon at the second Calvinistic Methodist Conference, " 0 prayer, prayer ! it brings and keeps God and man together ; it raises man up to God, and brings God down to man. If you would keep up your walk with God, pray, pray without ceasing. Be much in set prayer. When you are about the common business of life, be much in secret ejaculatory prayer. Send, from time to time, short letters post to heaven, upon the wings of faith. They will reach the very heart of God, and will return to you loaded with blessings." 2
1 J. H. Bernard, Via Domini, 265.
a L. Tyerraan, The Life of George Whitefield, ii. 56.
DANIEL vi. 10 263
2. Daniel prayed three times a day. Doubtless the points of time when he performed these acts of devotion were morning, noon, and night. The Jewish sacrifices morning and evening would suggest two of those times for prayer, if nature itself did not, — if suggestion were necessary. But, as Martineau has beautifully said, "All nations and all faiths of cultivated men have chosen the twilight hour, morning and evening, for their devotion," "with an instinctive feeling" that the Being of God " is the meeting-place of light and shade, and that in approaching Him we must stand on the confines between the seen and the unseen." Although the midday prayer was not so general, yet pious souls at noontide refreshed themselves with an act of Divine communion. Daniel observed these times of prayer " as he did aforetime." He had formed the habit. Eegularity as to times of prayer is necessary if devotion is to be sustained. It is not the irregular and impulsive act, but the restraint of impulse, or at least its guidance, that forms habit.