beasts in the grass of the earth. Let his heart be changed from man's,
and let a beast's heart be given unto him; and let seven times pass over
him."

What a strange dream for a king to have! And how troubled his
countenance was when he rose from his bed! His eyes moved restlessly
from one object to another, telling of a mind ill at ease. His limbs
shook; and he seemed many years older than on the previous day. His
grandly-arrayed lords came round him as before, with pleasant smiles and
flattering speeches. But he could heed none of them. Whatever he did, he
could not give his mind to affairs of state. Try to control them as he
would, his thoughts would wander back to the towering majestic tree, to
its great thick trunk, its leafy branches, its rich profusion of
delicious fruit affording sustenance to all the world, and to that
bright but awful being who had come from heaven and pronounced over the
tree that dread sentence.

What if the tree should mean himself? Who in all the wide world but
himself could be compared to it for strength and majesty? Who but
himself had attained to such power and magnificence? And oh! what if all
should be taken away from him? What if the widely-spreading tree should
indeed be cut down, its glory and its beauty and its strength alike
gone?

How he wished he knew the meaning of his dream! And how anxiously he
consulted the wise men who were summoned to his presence! Magicians,
astrologers, Chaldeans, and soothsayers, all the wise men of Babylon
came to his palace to hear his dream, and to try to tell the meaning of
it.

But the effort was in vain. The dream was from heaven, and not all the
vaunted wisdom of this world could interpret it. The meaning of it could
only be told by one inspired by the Spirit of God who had sent it.

Then Daniel, the Jewish captive, to whom Nebuchadnezzar had given the
name of Belteshazzar, or _a layer up of things in secret_, was brought.
Not long before he had not only told the king the meaning of a most
mysterious dream that he had had, but he had also recalled the dream
itself, which Nebuchadnezzar had forgotten. And as an interpreter of
dreams and the wisest of mortals, his fame had spread far and wide; and
Nebuchadnezzar could see that the Jewish prophet had a wisdom far
surpassing that of his wisest and most skilled magicians.

So the strange dream of the mighty tree cut down was told to the Jewish
captive, and the usually calm face of the prophet