I can imagine he prayed to God, falling low on his knees and with his face to the earth, and asked Him for guidance; and then he crawled into bed and slept like a child. We would hardly sleep well under such circumstances. And in his sleep God told him the meaning of the dream. There must have been joy among the wise men that one of their number had found it, and that the king would save their lives. And he is brought before the king, and cries out: “O king, while thou didst lie with thy head on thy pillow, thou didst dream, and in thy dream thou sawest a great image.” I can imagine, at these opening words, how the kings eyes flashed, and how he cried out with joy: “Yes, that is it--the whole thing comes back to me now.” And then Daniel, in a death-like stillness, unfolded all the interpretation, and told the king that the golden head of the great image represented his own government. I suppose Babylon was the biggest city ever in the world. It was sixty miles around. Some writers put the walls from sixty-five to eighty-five feet high and twenty-five feet wide. Four chariots could drive abreast on top of them. A street fifteen miles long divided the grand city, and hanging gardens in acres made the public parks. It was like Chicago--so flat that they had to resort to artificial mounds; and, again like Chicago, the products of vast regions flowed right into and through it. This great kingdom, Daniel told the king, was his own; but he said a destroying kingdom should come, and afterward a third and fourth kingdom, when, at the last, the God of Heaven should set up His kingdom. Daniel lived to see the first kingdom overthrown, when the Medes and Persians came in, and centuries after came Alexander, and then the Romans. I believe in the literal fulfillment, so far, of Daniel’s God given words and in the sure fulfillment of the final prophecy of the “stone cut out of the mountains without hands,” that by-and-by shall grind the kingdoms of this world into dust, and bring in the Kingdom of Peace. Then will be the Millennium, and Christ will sway His scepter over all the earth. Well, the king was very much pleased. He gave to Daniel a place near the throne, and he became one of the chief men of the world. His three friends were also put in high office. God had blessed them signally, and He blessed them still more--and that was, perhaps, a harder thing--in keeping them true to Him in their prosperity. Their faith and fortunes waxed strong together. Time went on, and now we reach a crisis indeed. “Nebuchadnezzar, the king,” we read, “made an image of gold, one hundred and ten feet high and nine feet wide.” It was not gilded, but was solid gold. When Babylon was pillaged the second time a single god was found in the temple that was worth more than two million pounds sterling. The king’s monstrous image was set up in the Plains of Dura, near to the city. I suppose he wanted to please his kingly vanity by inaugurating a universal religion.