ous
self-restraint with success. The lessons which it contains are best
gathered by following the narrative.

I. The heroic determination of the boyish confessor is first set forth.
The plan of taking leading young men from the newly captured nation and
turning them into Babylonians was a stroke of policy as heartless and
high-handed as might be expected from a great conqueror. In some
measure, the same thing has been done by all nations who have built up a
world-wide dominion. The new names given to the youths, the attaching of
them to the court, their education in Babylonish fashion, all were meant
for the same purpose,--to denationalise them, and strip them of their
religion, and thus to make them tools for more easily governing their
countrymen.

Most men would yield to the influences, and be so lapped in the
comforts of their new position as to become pliable as wax in the
conqueror's hands; but here and there he would come across a bit of
stiffer stuff, which would break rather than bend. Such an obstinate
piece of humanity was found in the Hebrew youth, of some fifteen years,
whose Hebrew name ('God is my judge') expressed a truth that ruled him,
when the name was exchanged for one that invoked Bel. It took some
firmness for a captive lad, without friends or influence, to take
Daniel's stand; for the motive of his desire to be excused from taking
the fare provided can only have been religious. He was determined, in
his brave young heart, not to 'defile' himself with the king's meat. The
phrase points to the pollution incurred by eating things offered to
idols, and does not imply scrupulousness like that of Pharisaic times,
nor necessarily suggest a late date for the book. Probably there had
been some kind of religious consecration of the food to Babylonian gods,
and Daniel, in his solitary faithfulness, was carrying out the same
principles which Paul afterwards laid down for Corinthian Christians as
to partaking of things offered to idols. Similar difficulties are sure
to emerge in analogous cases, and do so, on many mission fields.

The motive here, then, is distinctly religious. Common life was so woven
in with idolatrous worship that every meal was in some sense a
sacrifice. Therefore 'Touch not, taste not, handle not,' was the
inevitable dictate for a devout heart. Daniel seems to have been the
moving spirit; but as is generally the case, he was able to infuse his
own strong convictions into his companions