CHAPTER I.
Open to the Best.
"If every morning we would fling open our windows and look out on the wide reaches of God's love and goodness, we could not help singing." So it has been written. So Luther thought. When he was at Wartburg Castle, in the perilous times of the Reformation, he went every morning to his window, threw it open, looked up to the skies, and veritable prisoner though he was, cheerily sang, "God is our Refuge and Strength, a very present Help." Then he carried a buoyant heart to the labor of the day.
The joy of a glad outlook was well understood by Ruskin. His guests at Brantwood were often awakened early in the morning by a knocking at their doors and the call, "Are you looking out?" When in response to this summons they pushed back the window-blinds a scene of beauty greeted their eyes. The glory of sunlight and the grandeur of forest dispelled care, quieted fret, and animated hope.
Scarce anything in life more determines a soul's welfare than the nature of its outlook. If spiritual frontage is toward the shadow, the soul sees all things in the gloom of the shadow; if spiritual frontage is toward the sunlight, the soul sees all things in the brightness of the sunlight.
The preliminary question of character is, What is the outlook? Let that outlook be wrong, and opinion and conduct in due time will be wrong; let it be right, and whatever the temporary mistakes of opinion and conduct, the permanent tendency of character will be toward the right.
"From a small window one may see the infinite," Carlyle wrote. This was Daniel's belief. He acted upon his belief. The windows of his soul were always open to the infinite. In that fact lies the explanation of his character—a character of which every child hears with interest, every youth with admiration, and every mature man with reverence.
To-day in eastern lands the Mohammedan, wherever he may be, turns his face toward Mecca when, seeking help, he worships God. To him Mecca is the central spot of Mohammedan revelation, and is the focus of all Mohammedan brotherhood. So in olden times the Israelite, wherever he might be, thought of Jerusalem as the place where God's worship was worthiest and where Israelitish fellowship was heartiest. The name "Jerusalem" strengthened his religious faith and stirred his national patriotism. To open the windows of his soul toward Jerusalem was to open the soul to the best thoughts and impressions that the world provided.
As the premier of the great Medo-Persian empire Daniel had his own palatial residence. The windows of the different rooms fronted in their special directions. There was one room that was his particular and private room. It was an "upper room" or "loft," somewhere apart by itself. The distinctive feature of this room was that its windows opened toward Jerusalem. Into this room Daniel was accustomed to go three times a day, throw open the lattice windows, look toward Jerusalem, and then in the thought of all that Jerusalem represented, kneel and talk with God.
Such was his custom. If the matters of his life were comparatively comfortable, he did this; and if those matters were seriously unpleasant, he did the same. Should, then, an occasion much out of the ordinary arise, an occasion involving a crisis in his life, it would be perfectly natural that he should, as he had invariably done, go into his retired chamber and open the windows.