OUR party to-day will be somewhat larger than it was on our last visit to the museum; for when Harold told his cousins Grace and Clement that we had not yet visited the Babylonian and Assyrian rooms in the museum, they said that they had just finished reading the Book of Daniel, and would like to know a little more about that once great and wonderful city by whose proud king, Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel and his companions were carried away from Jerusalem as captives.
I can, I think, promise my young friends that our visit this morning will prove a pleasant and I hope a profitable one, for though as Christians we do not require any outside proofs to convince us that the Bible is just what it claims to be, "the living word of the living God, divine in authorship, human in penmanship," and though Babylon to-day is a mere heap of ruins, some very interesting discoveries have of late years been made among the mounds and heaps of rubbish with which it is so thickly strewn, and bricks bearing the names and signet of more than one king of Assyria are now in the museum and may help us to form some faint idea of what the city must have been when its haughty monarch looked upon it, and said, "Is not this great Babylon that I have built?" (Dan. 4:30.)
Let us turn for a moment in thought to Jerusalem. A distance of nearly one thousand miles lay between it and Babylon. We know that God after having had long patience with His earthly people Israel, allowed rule to pass into the hands of the Gentiles, and so punished them for their sins and idol worship. Nebuchadnezzar was, we are told, represented by the "head of gold." Bold, courageous and war-loving, he seems to have been appointed by his father, who was growing old and too feeble for fighting, as second governor or ruler over the vast empire of which Babylon formed the capital.
He had fought and won many battles before he besieged Jerusalem. We read, "And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand." (Dan. 1:2.) He did not at that time attempt to destroy or even plunder the city of Jerusalem, but carried away part of the vessels from the temple to place them in the house of his favorite idol Marduk. He also wanted some of the bright, clever Jewish youths to serve as slaves in his palace.
People have sometimes asked why Marduk should be called in the Bible "his god," when we know that the people of Babylon were heathen, and worshipped many idol gods. This is quite true, but Nebuchadnezzar appears to have chosen Marduk as his special friend and protector. The king's own words are a proof of this, for on broken fragments of brick and stone, in the strange letter signs of ancient Babylon, may still be read what he thought and said about his god, "Marduk, the great lord, has appointed to me the empire of the world; has given into my care the people of the earth. May he protect the king." Nebuchadnezzar was a great builder; nine out of every ten bricks found among the ruins of Babylon are stamped with his name or signet, some of these very bricks are in the museum.
Though we are not distinctly told, it is quite probable that Daniel and his three companions, whose names our Bibles have made so familiar to us, were princes of the royal line of Judah, and might one day have been rulers in their own land. Well was it for them that they knew and served the God of their fathers, the true and living God! How weary and footsore they must often have been during that long, toilsome journey, every step taking them farther from Jerusalem, the beautiful city so dear to every Jewish heart; the city where David had reigned, and where the temple built by his son Solomon stood in all its solemn glory; farther too from the homes of their childhood, and from the loved ones who had made those homes so dear to them.
At last the high walls and lofty towers of Babylon came in sight. The city, which was of great size, was surrounded by an outer, a middle and an inner wall. Entering by one of its hundred gates the captives found themselves in the midst of crowds whose dress and language were alike strange to them. People of all ranks filled the broad streets of the city, to welcome the return of their king, and to look with curiosity, perhaps not unmixed with pity, upon the Jewish youths who formed part of the train of the conqueror.
The Hebrew youths were given into the care of one of the palace officers of high rank to be trained and fitted for future service to the king. We remember how faithfully they kept the laws of the God of Israel, and refused to defile themselves by eating food or drinking wine that had been offered to the idols of Babylon. And we know, too, when the fiery trial of their faith came and they refused to bow the knee to the great image the king had set up on the plain of Dura, how true God was to His own word, "Them that honor me, I will honor.”
Clement says that it was Nebuchadnezzar who saw One like the Son of God walking in the midst of the fiery furnace with the three faithful young men who had dared to obey the law of their God, and were walking unharmed in the fire, and adds that he has wondered sometimes why Daniel is not mentioned in the chapter that tells of their trials and God-given victory.
As the empire over which the heathen king ruled was very large, it is not unlikely that Daniel was at the time in some far-distant province, where he had been sent on important business.
Three years was the time usually allowed for the higher education of the youths of Babylon, and we may be sure that during the time of their training Daniel and his companions would have to work at their studies much harder than those of English schoolboys. Two new and difficult languages, one the spoken, the other the written language of Babylon, must be thoroughly learned. School hours were long, and I do not think that there were many if any holidays.
Elsie wonders what their school books were like. There are quite a number of books or parts of books that were found among the ruins of Babylon in the British Museum. But these are not printed books, but tablets of clay, on which strange-looking letters we now call cuniform writing were impressed with a style while the clay was damp, and afterward baked. That all the scholars were required to rise early and work hard we learn from a very old copybook now in the museum, which, we are told by those who can read the strange writing, reads, "He that would excel in the school of the scribes must rise like the dawn." Daniel and his three friends must have had many trials and temptations, but the God in whom they trusted did not fail or forsake them, and though our trials and temptations may be of a totally different kind, we may be encouraged to go quietly on "LOOKING UNTO JESUS," and seeking in humble, believing prayer "the daily strength, to none who ask denied.”