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DANIEL AND THE HEBREW

YOUTHS.

ONG ago Babylon was a great and rich city, and Nebuchadnezzar its king, and all his people worshipped idols.

At the same time there lived in Jerusalem Jehoiakim the wicked king, who cut up with his pen-knife and burnt the roll that God sent to him by a prophet. To punish him for this insult to Himself, God put it into the mind of Nebuchadnezzar to go and attack Jerusalem with his army, and Jerusalem was taken. When the king of Babylon was at Jerusalem he was pleased with the bright looks of the Jewish children, and he ordered one of his officers to bring some of them to Babylon.

The officers did so, and he took a number of the noblest boys from their homes in Jerusalem, and when they were brought to Babylon Nebuchadnezzar gave orders that they should have a daily provision of the king's meat, and of the wine which he drank.' So that at the end of three years they might stand before him, and be wise and useful servants to him.

Among these children were four Jewish boys. Their names in Jerusalem were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah; but when they got to Babylon they had new names given to them, and were called Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

These four children had been well taught in their own

land of Israel, and they had learned to know the true God and to keep His commandments. In those times, six hundred years before Christ came into the world, God had given His people, the Jews, rules about what they should eat; and some kinds of food they were not allowed to use.

So Daniel, who was, perhaps, the oldest of these four Hebrew boys, 'purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's meat, nor with the wine which he drank,' for he feared that this food might be some kind of meat forbidden by God's law; or that it might have been first offered to the idols of Babylon.

But when Daniel spoke of this to the officer who had charge of these boys, he said that he would be in danger of losing his own head if they did not obey the king's orders. Then Daniel said to Melzar, who had been set over them, words like these: 'I pray thee try us for ten days, and give us only pulse (vegetables) to eat and water to drink, and then look on our faces and also on the faces of the other children who have been fed from the king's table, and as thou seest it to be, so deal with thy servants.'

Melzar agreed to make the trial, and at the end of ten days the faces of the four children were fairer and fatter in flesh than all the children which did eat of the king's meat. So Melzar no longer asked them to use the rich meats and wines, but he gave them the simple food and water that they wished.

Most likely their companions would laugh at these four, and say, 'What fools to eat pulse porridge when you might have dainty meats! what fools to drink water when you might have wine!' but if their companions thought them foolish God thought them wise. He was well pleased with

their faithfulness to Him, even in the strange land to which they had been carried prisoners, and so He gave them a reward. As for these four children GOD gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom.'

And when the time came for these captive youths to be brought into the palace of Nebuchadnezzar, among them all none were found like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, therefore they stood before the king;' and in all difficult matters Nebuchadnezzar found them ten times better than all the wise men that were in his whole kingdom.'

This old-world story teaches children that they should not care too much about what they are to eat. I fear there are many children who are so fond of nice things that they would never have done what Daniel did-they would have been tempted by Nebuchadnezzar's rich meats and sweet wines, and would have forgotten the law of their God.

The story shows us also, that though wine may be needed for the sick and aged, simple food and pure water are best for children, and perhaps this is one reason why we often see the little children of the poor with plump and rosy cheeks, while children of the rich are pale and white.

And the story teaches us one other truth--that God's eye is upon those who obey Him, and that even if they sometimes have to deny themselves things that they would like, yet He will reward them; and whether He gives them to be fair, and beautiful, and strong, and long-lived, or to be weak, and sickly, and early called away from earth, they shall surely in the end 'stand before the King,' yet not before a Nebuchadnezzar in any earthly Babylon, but before Christ the King of glory in the New Jerusalem that is above!