On that day when the unalterable decree was issued Daniel was in imminent and unescapable peril. Jealous officers already rejoiced in his anticipated death. The danger of weakening threatened his heart. He remembered that Abraham once in Egypt surrendered his principles and thereby saved his life; that the Gibeonites once falsified and so preserved themselves alive. He might have reasoned, "Why should not I, in this special matter, yield, and give up recognition of Jehovah until the storm of persecution is past?" He could easily say, "Perhaps I am making too much of this whole subject; what difference will there be if I, away off here in Babylon, hundreds of miles from home, call this a case of expediency, and temporarily relinquish my ideals?" The temptation was a fearful one. Many a man has gone down before it. Cranmer did, Pilate did; but not Daniel. He kept his eyes on God's commands--those commands that told him to do the right and scorn the consequences, those commands that told him that faithfulness to principle, though it ended in martyrdom, was essential to place in God's hero list. He remembered Joseph, who would not sin against God in doing evil. He remembered God, that bade him bear his testimony, sealing it if necessary with his life's blood. So remembering he kept the faith and proved invincible. Many a man, like Daniel, exposed to a peculiar temptation, has been made brave as he has remembered the standards set for him by another. He has thought of the wife perhaps, who charged him to meet his duties as a man of God, though godliness should involve them both in disgrace, and thus thinking he has stood firm before evil. Or as a youth, away from home, in a school or factory, with deteriorating influences all about him, and his feet well-nigh gone from the ways of uprightness, he has turned his heart toward that mother who would rather have him die than be false, and the remembrance of her has roused his self-assertion and made him master of the environment. The commands of God summon men to _principle_, to _fidelity_, to _serviceableness_, to _self-renunciation_, and to _holiness_. The man has never lived, nor ever will live, who can fulfil these commands of God unless his windows are continually open toward Jerusalem. We need, we always need, to have our ideals kept large and our standards kept high if we are to be noble souls.