p. 514 | THE RELIGION DANIEL HAD by Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 26, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 33.

THE RELIGION DANIEL HAD.

By Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

DANIEL must have been fully ninety years old when his jealous rivals concocted their diabolical plot against his life. Failing to find any flaw in his administration of public affairs, they attacked him through his religious convictions. The issue they made was a sharp one. Either renounce God or face the lions! The issue was as clean-cut as Martin Luther had to meet when he entered the Diet of Worms, and old General Von Froudsberg, tapping him on the shoulder, said: "My dear little monk, you are taking a step such as I or no other commander has had to encounter on the field of battle." If Daniel had been willing to play the coward, there were plenty of plausible pretexts and side-doors of escape. He might have said, "My life is of great value, and prudence requires that I should not throw it away to please my enemies." He might have refrained from prayer—as too many sleepy and tired-out Christians do—and relied on the efficacy of prayers already made. He might have closed the lattice and locked the door, and prayed to his heavenly Father in secret. When a man wants to dodge his duty, the devil will always show him a door of escape.

There are three things about Daniel's course that we wish young men to notice. First, the "Grand old man" did not send any apology to the king. Apologies are dangerous and belittling procedures; they take off the grace from the best actions; the fewer of them you have to make in life the better. Secondly, he did not bluster about what he was going to do. I am always rather distrustful of people who unite with the church with very loud professions; they remind me of poor Peter's boastful "Though all men forsake thee, yet will not I." Daniel neither apologized nor played the braggart. He knew all about the ferocious lions out in the royal park, and had made up his mind to face them when the time came. So he quietly went up to the chamber on the roof of his house, threw open his lattice and faced his God "just as he did aforetime." Actions speak louder than words. There the old hero is, on his knees, three times

in a day; and the very sight of him is as eloquent as Martin Luther's immortal "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise; God help me. Amen!" Daniel did not ask God to muzzle the lions, nor was there any intimation given him that such a miracle would be wrought. Martyrs, when they make up their minds to die for the right, expect that lions will bite and that fire will burn.

There are two roads for every young man in the journey of life. He must decide which he will take. The one is a smooth, easy path of connivance and compromise, with no lions to encounter. The other is by God's air-line of everlasting right; whoever treads that path must expect to be battered, and to have his name bespattered with ridicule and reproach. There are two kinds of church-membership. In the one case Brother "Facing-both-ways" stands with one foot over in the world, and the other in the church; he is secretly despised by both. The other type of religion is that of him who comes out squarely and "separate from sinners," not as pleasing men, but God—which trieth the heart. This latter sort of religion is at a premium in these days, for there is no superabundance of it.

—Rev. T. L. Cuyler, in Evangelist.