e towards God? Is
not the will prostituted from its high vocation when it is used to drive
the wheels of a God-ignoring life?

The coin bears the image and superscription of the true king. It is
treason to God to render it to any paltry 'Caesar' of our own coronation.
Belshazzar was an avowed idolater, but many of us are worshipping gods
'which see not, nor hear, nor know' as really as he did. We cannot but
do so, if we are not worshipping God; for men must have some person or
thing which they regard as their supreme good, to which the current of
their being sets, which, possessed, makes them blessed; and that is our
god, whether we call it so or not.

Further, Belshazzar was carousing while the Medes and Persians were
ringing Babylon round, and his hand should have been grasping a sword,
not a wine-cup. Drunkenness and lust, which sap manhood, are notoriously
stimulated by peril, as many a shipwreck tells when desperate men break
open the spirit casks, and go down to their death intoxicated, and as
many an epidemic shows when morality is flung aside, and mad vice rules
and reels in the streets before it sinks down to die. A nation or a man
that has shaken off God will not long keep sobriety or purity.

II. After the stern catalogue of sins comes the tremendous sentence.
Daniel speaks like an embodied conscience, or like an avenging angel,
with no word of pity, and no effort to soften or dilute the awful truth.
The day for wrapping up grim facts in muffled words was past. Now the
only thing to be done was to bare the sword, and let its sharp edge cut.
The inscription, as given in verse 25, is simply 'Numbered, numbered,
weighed and breakings.' The variation in verse 28 (Peres) is the
singular of the noun used in the plural in verse 25, with the omission
of 'U,' which is merely the copulative 'and.' The disjointed brevity
adds to the force of the words. Apparently, they were not written in a
character which 'the king's wise men' could read, and probably were in
Aramaic letters as well as language, which would be familiar to Daniel.
Of course, a play on the word 'Peres' suggests the _Persian_ as the
agent of the _breaking_. Daniel simply supplied the personal application
of the oracular writing. He fits the cap on the king's head. 'God hath
numbered _thy_ kingdom ... _thou_ art weighed ... _thy_ kingdom is
divided' (broken).

These three fatal words carry in them the summing up of all divine
judgment, and will be rung