And I would advise all of you who wish to understand God’s dealings with mankind, to study this book of Daniel, and especially at this present time. I do not wish you to study it merely on account of those prophecies in it, which many wise and good men think foretell the dates of our Lord’s first and second comings, and of the end of the world. I am not skilled, my friends, in that kind of wisdom. I cannot tell you what God will do hereafter. But I think that the book of Daniel like the other prophets, tells us what God is always doing on earth, and so gives us certain and eternal rules by which we may understand strange and terrible events, wars, distress of nations, the fall of great men, and the suffering of innocent men, when we see them happen, as we may see any day—perhaps very soon indeed. The great lesson, I think, that this book of Daniel teaches us is, that God is not the Lord of the Jews only, or of Christians only, but of the whole earth; that the heathens are under His moral law and government, as well as we; and that, as St. Peter says, God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation, he that feareth God, and worketh righteousness, is accepted of him. For the history of Nebuchadnezzar seems to me to be the history of God’s educating a heathen and an idolater to know Him. And we must always remember, that as far as we can see, it was because Nebuchadnezzar was faithful to the light which he had, that God gave him more. Of course he had his sins; the Bible tells us what they were; just the sins which one would expect of a man brought up a heathen and an idolater; of one who was a great conqueror, and had gained many bloody battles, and learned to hold men’s lives very cheap; of one who was an absolute emperor, with no law but his own will, furious at any contradiction; of a man of wonderful power of mind—confident in himself, his own power, his own cunning. But he seems not to have been a bad man, considering his advantages. The Bible never speaks harshly of him, though he carried away the Jews captive to Babylon. In all that fearful war, Nebuchadnezzar was in the right, and the Jews in the wrong; so at least Jeremiah the prophet declared. Nebuchadnezzar saved and respected Jeremiah; and Daniel seems to have regarded the great conqueror with real respect and affection. When Daniel says to him, “O king, live for ever,” and tells him that he is the head of gold, and prays that his fearful dream may come true of his enemies and not of him, I cannot believe that the prophet was using mere empty phrases of court-flattery. He really felt, I doubt not, that Nebuchadnezzar was a great and good king, as kings went then, and his government a gain (as it easily might be) to the nations whom he had conquered, and that it was good that he should reign as long as possible.