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came, and went up to the first two and just put her arms round them both. I went over to see what it was, and found that, although they had been sitting in different parts of the building, the sure arrow of conviction went down to their souls, and brought them to the inquiry room. Another young lady came down from the gallery, and said: "Mr. Moody, I want to become a Christian." I asked a young Christian to talk to her; and when she went home that night about ten o'clock-her mother was sitting up for her-she said: "Mother, I have accepted the invitation to be present at the marriage supper of the Lamb." Her mother and father laid awake that night talking about the salvation of the child. That was Friday night, and next day (Saturday) she was unwell, and before long her sickness developed into scarlet fever, and a few days after I got this letter:

"MR. MOODY-Dear Sir: It is now my painful duty to intimate to you that the dear girl concerning whom I wrote to you on Monday, has been taken away from us by death. Her departure, however, has been signally softened to us, for she told us yesterday she was 'going home to be with Jesus;' and after giving messages to many, told us to let Mr. Moody and Sankey know that she died a happy Christian.

"My dear sir, let us have your prayer that consolation and needed resignation and strength may be continued to us, and that our two dear remaining little ones may be kept in health if the Lord wills. I repeated a line of the hymn,

In the Christian's home in glory,

There remains a land of rest.

when she took it up at once, and tried to sing 'When the Saviour's gone before to fulfill my soul's request.' This was the last conscious thing she said. I should say that my dear girl also expressed a wish that the lady she conversed with on Friday evening, should also know that she died a happy Christian."

When I heard this, I said to Mr. Sankey, "If we do nothing else we have been paid for coming across the Atlantic. There is one soul we have saved, whom we will meet on the resurrection morn."

Oh, my dear friends, are there not some here to night who will decide this question? Do accept this invitation; let the sickness come, let sorrow come, you will be sure of meeting at the marriage supper of the Lamb. Blessed is he who shall be found at that marriage feast.

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The Prophet Daniel, I.

WANT to talk about the life of the prophet Daniel. The word means "God with him," not the public with him; not his fellow men, but God. Therefore, he had to report himself to God, and hold himself responsible to Him. I do not know just what time Daniel went down to Babylon. I know that in the third year of King Jehoakim, Nebuchadnezzar took 10,000 of the chief men of Jerusalem, and carried them captive down to Babylon. I am glad these chief men who stirred on the war, were given into the great king's hands. Unlike too many of the ringleaders in our great war, they got the punishment on their own heads. Among the captives were four young men. They had been converted doubtless under Jeremiah, the "weeping prophet" that God had sent to the children of Israel. Many had mocked at him when he lifted up his voice against their sins. They had laughed at his tears and told him to his face, as many say of us, that he was getting up a false excitement. But these four young men listened, and had the backbone to come out for God.

And now, after they were come to Babylon, the king said a number of the children should be educated, and ordered the same kind of meat and wine set before them that were used in his own palace, and that at the end of a year they should be brought before him. Daniel and his three friends were among these. Now no young man ever comes to the city but has great temptation cross his path as he enters it. And just at this turning-point in his life, as in Daniel's, must lie the secret of his success. If you see success in statesmen, in lawyers, or men in any walk in life, you ask the secret of it, and you find it in this same time of youth. Jacob turned away from God, and David turned away from God, but only just in proportion as they had not fully and entirely given themselves up to Him when they were young men. Yes, that was the secret of this young man Daniel's success; he took his stand with God right on his entering the gate of Babylon, and cried to God to keep him steadfast. And he needed to cry hard. A law of his and his nation's God, was that no man should eat meat offered to idols; but now comes the king's first edict, that this young man should eat the meat he himself did. I do not think it took young Daniel long to make up his mind. The law of God forbade it, and he

would not do it. "He purposed in his heart ”- -in his heart, mark that-that he would not defile himself. He did not do it in his head, but love in his heart prompted him. If some Chicago Christians could have advised Daniel, they'd have said, "Don't you do it; don't set aside the meat; that would be a species of Phariseeism. The moment you take your stand and say you won't eat it, you say in effect you are better than other people." That is the kind of talk too often to be heard now. Oh, yes, "When you are in Rome do as the Romans do; they would have insisted to the poor young captive that he might, and ought to, carry out the commandments of his God when he was in his own country, but not there where he was a poor slave; he could not possibly carry along his religion down there to Babylon. Thank God, this young man said he would not eat, and ordering the meat taken away, got the ennuch to bring him pulse. And behold, when he came before the king, the eunuch's fears were gone, for the faces of Daniel and the rest of the dear boys were fairer and fatter than any that the king looked down upon. They hadn't noses, like too many in our streets, as red as if they were just going to blossom. It is God's truth, and Daniel tested it, that cold water, with a clear conscience, is better than wine.

And the king one day had a dream, and all the wise men were called. But they all said, We cannot interpret it; it is too hard. The king in wrath, threatened them, and, still getting no answer, made an edict that all the wise men should be put to death. And the officers came to Daniel with the rest of the wise men, but Daniel was not afraid. I can imagine he prayed to God, falling low on his knees with his face to the earth, and asked him what to do; and then he crawled into bed and slept like a child. We would hardly sleep well under such circumstances. And in his sleep God told him the meaning of the dream. There must have been joy among the wise men that one of their number had found it, and that the king would save their lives. And he is brought before the king, and cries out, "O king, while thou did'st lie with thy head on thy pillow, thou did'st dream, and in thy dream thou sawest a great image." I can imagine at these opening words how the king's eyes flashed, and how he cried out with joy, "Yes, that is it, the whole thing comes back to me now." And then Daniel, in a deathlike stillness, unfolded all the interpretation, and told the king that the golden head of the great image represented his own government. I suppose Babylon was the biggest city ever in the world. It was sixty miles around. Some writers put the walls from sixtyfive to eighty-five feet high, and twenty-five feet wide: four chariots could ride abreast on top of them. A street fifteen

miles long divided the grand city, and hanging gardens in acres made the public parks. It was like Chicago-so flat that they had to resort to artificial mounds; and, again like Chicago, the products of vast regions flowed right into and through it. This great kingdom Daniel told the king was his own; but he said a destroying kingdom should come, and afterward a third and fourth kingdom, when at the last, the God of Heaven should set up His kingdom. And Daniel himself lived to see the first overthrown, when the Medes and Persians came in, and centuries after came Alexander, and then the Romans. I believe in the literal fulfilment, so far, of Daniel's God-given words, and in the sure fulfilment of the final prophecy of the "stone cut out of the I mountains without hands," that by and by shall grind the kingdoms of this world into dust, and bring in the kingdom of peace. Then will be the millennium, and Christ will sway His sceptre over all the earth. Well, the king was very much pleased. He gave him a place near the throne, and he became one of the chief men of the world, and all his three friends were put in high office. God had blessed them signally, and he blessed them still more, and that was perhaps a harder thing— in keeping them true to Him in their prosperity. Their faith and fortunes waxed strong together.

Time went on, and now we reach a crisis indeed. "Nebuchadnezzar, the king," we read, "made an image of gold, one hundred and ten feet high and nine feet wide." It was not gilded, but solid gold. When Babylon was pillaged the second `time a single god was found in the temple that was worth between two and three million pounds sterling. The king's monstrous image was set up in the plains of Dura, near to the city. I suppose he wanted to please his kingly vanity by inaugurating a universal religion. When the time came for the dedication, I do not suppose Daniel was there. He was perhaps in Egypt or some other province, on affairs of the empire. Counsellors, satraps, high secretaries, and the princes of the people, were ordered to hasten to the dedication, and when they should hear the sound of the cornet, flute, and psaltery announce that the great idol was consecrated, they were to bow down and worship it. Perhaps they called the ceremony the unveiling of the monument, as we should say, but one command is certain, that at the given signal all the people were to fall to the earth in worship. But in the law of God there is something against that Thou shalt have none other gods but Me. God's law went right against the king's. Oh, would all of us have Daniel's three friends to do the right thing at any hazard! Would none of us, without back-bone, have advised him to just bow down a little so that no one would notice it, or to merely bow down but

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not worship it! The hour came, and Daniel's friends refused to bow down. They refused utterly to bend the knee to a god of gold. How many cry out in this city, "Give me gold, give me money, and I will do anything." Such may think that men in Nebuchadnezzar's time should not bow down to a golden idol, but they themselves are every day doing just that very thing. Money is their golden image, or position, or golden ambition. Well, the informers came to the king, and told him that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had stood with unbended knee, and straightway they were hurried before him, the old king speechless with rage, and gesturing his commands. I can imagine that one last chance was given them, after the king finally regained his voice, and that one of them, probably Meschach, spoke up in respectful but firm voice, that they must obey God rather than man. At once the raging king cried out : "What is your God that He can deliver you out of our hands;" And in the same breath screamed a command to bind them hand and foot and cast them into the fiery furnace, and make it seven times hotter than ever. The command was instantly executed, and the flames leaped out from the door and consumed the officers who cast them in. But Jesus was with His servants as the flames wreathed about them, and soon word was brought to the king that four men walked about in the flames. Yes, they walked there with Jesus-they didn't run-as in a green pasture and beside still waters. And directly the King rushed up and cried, "Ye sons of the living God, come forth." And behold, even the hair of their heads was not singed. Then made the King a royal edict, that all in his realm should reverence the God of Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego.

These glorious heroes braved even death because God was with them. Oh, friends, we want to be Christians with the same backbone, men and women who stand up for the right, and never mind what the world may say. I believe, before God, there would be ten thousand conversions in Chicago in the next twenty-four hours had we only a perfect consecration. God grant it us out of the abundance of His grace. I cannot go on now, but will finish about Daniel next Sunday morning. Let us pray.

DARE to be a Daniel,

Dare to stand alone!
Dare to have a purpose firm!

Dare to make it known!

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