Daniel’s Integrity Under Test
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securing great intellectual advantages and the most flattering worldly
prospects?
Daniel did not long hesitate. He decided to stand firm in his
integrity, let the result be what it might. He “purposed in his heart that
he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s meat, nor
with the wine which he drank.”
There are many among professed Christians today who would
decide that Daniel was too particular, and would pronounce him narrow
and bigoted. They consider the matter of eating and drinking as of too
little consequence to require such a decided stand,—one involving the
probable sacrifice of every earthly advantage. But those who reason
thus will find in the day of judgment that they turned from God’s
express requirements, and set up their own opinion as a standard of
right and wrong. They will find that what seemed to them unimportant
was not so regarded of God. His requirements should be sacredly
obeyed. Those who accept and obey one of His precepts because it is
convenient to do so, while they reject another because its observance
would require a sacrifice, lower the standard of right, and by their
example lead others to lightly regard the holy law of God. “Thus saith
the Lord” is to be our rule in all things.
Daniel was subjected to the severest temptations that can assail the
youth of today; yet he was true to the religious instruction received
in early life. He was surrounded with influences calculated to subvert
those who would vacillate between principle and inclination; yet the
word of God presents him as a faultless character. Daniel dared not
trust to his own moral power. Prayer was to him a necessity. He made
God his strength, and the fear of God was continually before him in
all the transactions of his life.
Daniel possessed the grace of genuine meekness. He was true,
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firm, and noble. He sought to live in peace with all, while he was
unbending as the lofty cedar wherever principle was involved. In
everything that did not come in collision with his allegiance to God,
he was respectful and obedient to those who had authority over him;
but he had so high a sense of the claims of God that the requirements
of earthly rulers were held subordinate. He would not be induced by
any selfish consideration to swerve from his duty.
The character of Daniel is presented to the world as a striking
example of what God’s grace can make of men fallen by nature and