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152
Temperance
life? or should he disregard the commandment of the Lord, and retain
the favor of the king, thus 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.”
Not Narrow or Bigoted
—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.
A Faultless Character
—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
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life.
Daniel possessed the grace of genuine meekness. He was true,
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