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the Levite's cry, "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning," is one for all to remember. Let the service of God and the Church be our first care. Let us never forget that in whatever talent or gift we have. And is not music a gift that may be specially made to serve Him, and of which He should have His first fruits?

The latter part of the Psalm is prophecy of denunciation against both the Edomites and Babylon itself. The Edomites had, it seems, joined the enemy, and shown their fierce hatred by cries of "Down with it; down with it!" rejoicing in the fall of the city of the younger brother who had the birthright.

The prophet Obadiah, though living long ago in the time of Uzziah, had exactly described the conduct of these Edomites, and pronounced their sentence.

The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee,

Thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, whose habitation is high;
That saith in his heart, Who shall bring me down to the ground?
Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle,

And though thou set thy nest among the stars,
Thence will I bring thee down, saith the LORD.

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Shall I not in that day, saith the LORD, even destroy the wise men out of Edom,

And understanding out of the mount of Esau?

And thy mighty men, O Teman, shall be dismayed,

To the end that every one of the mount of Esau may be cut off by
slaughter.

For thy violence against thy brother Jacob shame shall cover thee,
And thou shalt be cut off for ever.

In the day that thou stoodest on the other side,*

In the day that the strangers carried away captive his forces,

And foreigners entered into his gates, and cast lots upon Jerusalem,
Even thou wast as one of them.

But thou shouldest not have looked on the day of thy brother in the
day that he became a stranger:

Neither shouldest thou have rejoiced over the children of Judah in the day of their destruction;

Neither shouldest thou have spoken proudly in the day of distress. Thou shouldest not have entered into the gate of my people in the day of their calamity;

Yea, thou shouldest not have looked on their affliction in the day of their calamity,

Nor have laid hands on their substance in the day of their calamity;

* Our translation has the past tense, it really is the future.

Neither shouldest thou have stood in the crossway, to cut off those of his that did escape;

Neither shouldest thou have delivered up those of his that did remain in the day of distress.

For the day of the LORD is near upon all the heathen:

As thou hast done,

It shall be done unto thee:

Thy reward shall return upon thine own head.

Those wonderful rock-built cities of Edom, Petra, and Bozrahi, whose remnants cut in the solid rock are still the marvel of travellers, should not protect her. Isaiah, too, had spoken her doom of desolation. The fulfilment was long in coming, but it came, and at this moment Edom lies utterly silent and waste, uninhabited, save for the robber Arabs who prowl about and make it in general too perilous an exploit to visit those wondrous remnants of the sons of Esau. The Psalmist almost repeats Obadiah's words, "As thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee," and pronounces a blessing on him who should fulfil God's will.

Babylon, for all her magnificence, was under a like doom, which Isaiah had pronounced long ago, long before her greatness; and Ezekiel and Jeremiah were pouring forth fresh prophecies of her entire fall. The captive singer joins with them in blessing the man who should carry out this terrible decree. We must not take the words as expressing an actual desire to see infants dashed against the stones, but as a kind of saying to express that the city should be entirely conquered by an avenging foe, who should return on her the blood of the Jewish babes who had perished at the head of every street. This prophecy of the miseries of an assault was not fulfilled in the first taking of Babylon, which many of the present exiles lived to see, but in the second, after she had rebelled against Darius Hystaspes. When we say or chant the Psalm we should regard Babylon and Edom as meaning the wickedness of the world and the flesh, ever trying to triumph over the Church and her children. And the little ones who are to be dashed against the stones are the little enticements and temptations with which they would lead us away, and which will soon grow mighty if we are not happy enough to dash them against the stones at the very first.

LESSON CXXI.

THE THREE children in the FIRE.

ABOUT B.C. 585.—Dan. iii.

Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold, whose height was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof six cubits: he set it up in the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon.

Then Nebuchadnezzar the king sent to gather together the princes, the governors, and the captains, the judges, the treasurers, the counsellors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the provinces, to come to the dedication of the image which Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up.

Then an herald cried aloud, To you it is commanded, O people, nations, and languages,

That at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music, ye fall down and worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king hath set up :

And whoso falleth not down and worshippeth shall the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace.

Therefore at that time, when all the people heard the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and all kinds of music, all the people, the nations, and the languages, fell down and worshipped the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up.

Wherefore at that time certain Chaldeans came near, and accused the Jews.

They spake and said to the king Nebuchadnezzar, O king, live for ever. Thou, O king, hast made a decree, that every man that shall hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of music, shall fall down and worship the golden image:

And whoso falleth not down and worshippeth, that he should be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace.

There are certain Jews whom thou hast set over the affairs of the province of Babylon, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego; these men, O king, have not regarded thee: they serve not thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.

Then Nebuchadnezzar in his rage Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego. before the king

Nebuchadnezzar spake and said unto Meshach, and Abed-nego, do not ye golden image which I have set up?

and fury commanded to bring Then they brought these men

them, Is it true, O Shadrach, serve my gods, nor worship the

Now if ye fall down and worship the image which I have made; well: but if ye worship not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace; and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, answered, and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter.

If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.

But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.

Then was Nebuchadnezzar full of fury, and the form of his visage was changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego: therefore he spake, and commanded that they should heat the furnace one seven times more than it was wont to be heated.

And he commanded the most mighty men that were in his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, and to cast them into the burning fiery furnace.

Then these men were bound in their coats, their hosen, and their hats, and their other garments, and were cast into the midst of the burning fiery furnace.

Therefore because the king's commandment was urgent, and the furnace exceeding hot, the flame of the fire slew those men that took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego.

And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, fell down bound into the midst of the burning fiery furnace.

Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astonied, and rose up in haste, and spake, and said unto his counsellors, Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire? They answered, and said unto the king, True, O king.

He answered, and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.

Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the mouth of the burning fiery furnace, and spake, and said, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, ye servants of the most high God, come forth, and come hither. Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, came forth of the midst of the fire.

And the princes, governors, and captains, and the king's counsellors, being gathered together, saw these men, upon whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was an hair of their head singed, neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of fire had passed on them.

Then Nebuchadnezzar spake, and said, Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, who hath sent his angel, and delivered his servants that trusted in him, and have changed the king's word, and yielded their bodies, that they might not serve nor worship any god, except their own God.

Therefore I make a decree, That every people, nation, and language, which speak any thing amiss against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, shall be cut in pieces, and their houses shall be made a dunghill because there is no other God that can deliver after this sort.

Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, in the province of Babylon.

COMMENT.-We go back to Babylon, the magnificent city where Nebuchadnezzar had settled the noblest of his captives. What was

the exact year of what we are here told we do not know-whether before the captivity of Zedekiah or after-but it must have been after the four captive princes had reached man's estate, though they were probably still very young. If it were the year after Jerusalem was taken, they would have been a little over twenty. The King of Babylon, remembering perhaps his dream, raised this huge idol. It seems not to have been a human figure, but a column ninety feet high, with a head of gold at the top. There is a pedestal of brick on the table-land of Dura not far from Babylon, which may have been its base. It is likely that he meant it to represent himself, and that when he gathered officers of all kinds together to worship it, it was to gather up their homage to himself as an absolutely divine sovereign. The Babylonians were very fond of music in their feasts, and some of the instruments here mentioned seem to have come from the Greeks in Asia Minor. The horrible punishment of being thrown into a furnace was not uncommon at Babylon, where great kilns for tiles and other clay works were numerous. Daniel was probably employed in some distant province, for the three comrades he had led in their early self-denial bore the trial alone, without him, their prophet leader. And how steadily and simply they met the fierce words of the king--the man whom no one durst oppose ! "Our God," they said, "is able to deliver us from the fire and He will; but if not, still we will never serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up." What a difference between their steadiness and the king's rage and savage cruelty! What a wonderful scene—the flames bursting forth so far as to destroy the guards; the three youths bound fast in their wide Eastern trousers, tunics, mantles, perhaps turbans, thrown into the fire; the king starting up terrified, asking if there were not three bound men thrown in, while now he saw four men loose, walking unhurt in the fiery glow. "And the form of the fourth is like

the Son of God!"

When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee;
And through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee:
When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned;
Neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. -(ISAIAH xliii. 2.)

Such had been His promise. So He fulfilled it. So it was that
St. Stephen looked up to heaven and beheld Him standing at

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