sin and punishment, as cause and effect, shall then be more closely united than ever before in the history of mankind.

The stone cut from the mountain without human hands, is, of course, the Messianic kingdom for which Jesus taught his disciples to pray, and over which he shall reign as crowned King of Kings and Lord of Lords. This kingdom has not yet been made manifest. All else of good work is but Our comments on verse 45 are reserved until ing not already well known to Bible students. preparatory. Thus far we have outlined nothcertain facts have been brought to light in these pages.

In conclusion: the head, breasts, arms, belly, thighs, legs, and feet of the image caused it to be of twelve parts. These indicated the kingdoms of the whole world. The stone from the mountain, which symbolized the heavens, was the thirteenth, and a kingdom above and apart from the twelve. The feet and the ten toes also were twelve.

DURING

CHAPTER III

URING recent years much detrimental criticism of the Book of Daniel has come from high sources. This criticism is occasioned largely by the miraculous element in certain of its chapters; an element almost without parallel elsewhere in

Holy Writ. Taken literally, the miracles of the Fiery Furnace, the Den of Lions, and the Handwriting on the Wall, easily overtax the credulity of all save those who never question whatever seems based on authority; but if, as we contend, these miracles symbolize certain experiences and fiery trials which the righteous in every age may undergo, the Danielic narrative becomes reasonable, and, in fact, a picture true to life.

In Chapter iii, the Golden Image, abhorrent to the faithful Israelites, was said to be of the absurd height of one hundred and ten feet, or, by the ancient standard, it was sixty cubits high, and six broad. The author conveys the idea that its square surface was three hundred and sixty cubits. The number three hundred and sixty, pertaining to the Babylonian year, is a clue to the time standard rejected by Daniel in the prophetic periods found in later chapters. We argue that Daniel adheres to the Jewish lunar year of three hundred and fifty-four and one-half days, the true prophetic year, and makes it the base of his reckoning. In verse 1, the plain of Dura, where stood the image, symbolizes the world, or rather the Babylonian world, whose peoples henceforth must conform to local customs, especially in the matter of worship. The different orders of rulers named as assembled by command of the king were seven. The kinds of

musical instruments mentioned as incident to the idolatrous worship were six. Together they make

thirteen, the number rejected by the prophets in their forecasts.

In the miracles recorded in certain chapters, the author of the Book of Daniel regards man as a composite being; thus in Chapter iii, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, represent man's eternal part, his triad of spiritual mind, desire, and will, while in Chapter i, Daniel represents the purified physical man, the container of these. As for Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar, they stand for the carnal, worldly-minded man.

In the story of the Fiery Furnace, heated seven times more than it was wont to be heated, that is to its utmost, Daniel is not mentioned, since the ordeal is for the spiritual man tested in the matter of worship of any God save Jehovah. Because idolatry was the besetting sin of the Jews, that story is made intensely dramatic.

Meshach, Shadrach, and Abed-nego will not bow the knee to a golden idol, especially when it typifies Babylon, the corrupt city denounced by the Hebrew Prophets; and, because the Lord is mindful of his own, we see the three unharmed amid the fierce fires of persecution, for the angel of the Lord is there, rendering them immune, not from crude physical fire, but from that which, on the superphysical plane, corresponds with it. The three were cast into the furnace bound, not with cords, but with the obstacles thrown around them. They came forth free, and no part of their garments

that is no part of themselves as men in the outer world-was burned (contaminated), nor had it the odor of the fire.

To emphasize the fierceness of the ordeal endured by the spiritual man, it is said that those who approached the furnace, to make an end of the three, were themselves slain by the fire. Moreover, to give to the narrative another touch of nature, we find Nebuchadnezzar so wrought upon by what he had witnessed, that he experiences a superficial and transient change of heart. Therefore his decree that, on pain of death, the God of Meshach, Shadrach, and Abed-nego, should not be lightly spoken of throughout his entire kingdom.

CHAPTER IV

THE Babylonian records contain no hint of

Nebuchadnezzar's insanity. As for the Bible narrative, really it is a terrible satire on the carnal man who, as the king, in verse 27 of Chapter iv, is warned that, to insure peace of mind, he should break from his sins and iniquities, and act righteously, and show mercy. At the summit of his ambition, and at the height of his worldly power and place, the king looks forth from his palace and exclaims: "Is not this great Babylon that I have built for the royal dwelling-place by the might of my power, and for the glory of my majesty?"

Then at once upon the man who thus vaunts himself and his work, the judgment falls, and he is driven forth a beast in his eating and manner of life, a mere animal in all but outward form. As seen by Heaven and the holy angels, Nebuchadnezzar had sunk, morally and spiritually, to the lowest deep, and was as one insane with the lust of power and possession. Literally, the king never left his throne; nor is it probable that the kingdom would be made sure to one who had been driven from the abode of men. The narrative is, we repeat, a terrible satire on that type of man.

Solomon has well said: "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall;" but the inner truth is that, in the sight of God, the proud and the haughty are already destroyed or fallen, though their outward appearance and condition are as yet unchanged.

For the purpose of antithesis, Nebuchadnezzar is pictured first as an ideal monarch, a benign king; one likened to a tree reaching high as heaven, and visible to all the known earth, of which Babylon was nearly the geographical center. He is pictured as a bountiful tree whose fruitage feeds the entire kingdom; a tree offering shade and shelter to all men, here symbolized as the fowls upon the branches, and the cattle feeding in the cool shadows beneath.

Then "a watcher and a holy one came down from heaven." The quotation, and also verse 17,