The Pulpit Commentary — Daniel — Section 214

cxcgotically out of tho passage, nevertheless) is suggested by the text, which is ndmirnbly trentcd by Hornco Bushnell, in '8ermons on Living SubjectR,' For the snke of any who may not hnve access to the book, we give a brief outline, for the most part in Bushnell's words. I. 'l'HE PREVALENCE OF DOUDT. The prevalence of doubt is exhibited ancl illu,;- trnted nt considerable length. " Science puts everything in question, and literature distils the questions, malcin,q an atmosphere of them." II. OAUBEB OF DOUBT. "They never come of truth or high discovery, lrtit al ways of the want of it." 1. .dll the truths of religion are inherently dubitable. They are the subjects of moral evidence, not of absolute demonstration. 2. We begin lije as unlmowing creatures that lv1,ve everything to learn. 3. Our faculty is itself disorder; e.g. a bent telescope; a filthy window. Ill. THE DISSOLUTION OF DOUBT, 1. Counsel negative. Not "by inquiry, search, investigation, or any kind of speculative endeavour. Men must never go after the truth to merely find it, but to practise it and live by it." 2. Counsel positive, Bushnell asserts and illustrates at length that man has universally the absolute idea. of right and its correlative wrong; and then enforces, with power and mauil"oldness of illumination, this : "Say nothing of investigation till you have made sure of being grounded everlastingly, and with a. completely whole intent, in the principle of right- doing as a principle." (No condensation can give any idea. of the grasp and fulness with which this is exhibited and applied.) IV. THE RESULT, "A soul thus won to its integrity of thought and meaning will rapidly clear all tormenting questions aad difficulties. They are not all gone, but they are going.'' "The ship is launched; he is gone to sea, and has the needle on board." V. SUPPLEIIENTARY DIBEOTION. 1. Be never afraid of doubt. 2. Be afraid of all sophistries and tricks and strifes of disingenuous argument. 3. Getting into any scornful way is fatal. 4. Never settle upon any thing as true, because it is safer to hold it than not. 6. Have it as a law never to p'Ut force on the mind or try to make ii believe. It spoils the mind's integrity. 6. Never be in a hurry to believe; never try to conquer doubts against time. "One of the greatest talents in religious discovery is the finding how to hang up questions and let them hang without being at all anxious about them. . . • What seemed perfectly insoluble will clear itself in a. wondrous revelation." ~nd here is a thought: "It will not hurt you, nor hurt the truth, if you should have some few questions left to be carried on with yon when you go hence, for in that more luminous state, most likely they will soon be cleared. only a thousand others will be springing vp even there, and you will go on dissolving still your new sets of questions, and growing mightier and more deep-seeing for eternal ages."-R. Vers. 17-31.-..dt the bar of God. "The God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified" (ver. 23). In this tremendous scene Daniel may be regarded as counsel for the crown-for the everlasting crown, for the throne of eternal righteousness, against the unhappy prisoner placed by these awful events at the bar, As such he is the representative of all earnest preachers of righteousness. He was marked by zeal for the right of the crown; fidelity to the position; Bympathy for the arraigned (this may be argued from what we know and have seen of Daniel); fearlessness; and absolute disinterestedness (ver. 17, any honours given and received might have been recognized by any new king). All these should make every one that pleads with man or against man (ultimately to win the man to the right side) for God. I. THE INDICTMENT, In order to make forcible modern applications, it will be better to formulate the indictment in the most general way. llelshazzar's particular sins may not be just ours; but he and we both ccmmit sins that fall under like categories. 1. Infidelity to accorded revelations. (Ver. 22.) 2. Substituting shadows for God. (Ver. 23.) In the king's case there had been inflation of himself ai?;ainst God; sacrilege; indecency ; drunkenness ; prostration before idols, which are "nothing in the world." 'l'he inflations, profanities, improprieties, sensualisms, and idolatries of the nineteenth century differ in form, but are quite as real~ those 180 THE BOOK OF DANIEL. [oe, v. 1-81.