Living for the Best

by James G. K. McClure

Daniel kept his windows open to the best commands of the best religion. His daily surroundings from the hour as a youth he entered the king's palace at Babylon were demoralizing. The ideals of his associates were low. The religious life of his fellow-students was a mere form. Domestic life all about him was unsound. Public life was dishonest. Looseness of character everywhere prevailed. Impurity was alluring. Bribery was considered a necessary feature of authority. The weak were crushed by the mighty. Selfishness characterized both king and people.

The difficulty of his position was great: to breathe malaria and not be affected by it. He was in the whirl of worldliness and still he must not be made dizzy thereby. His one resource for safety was his daily consideration of the commands of God. Those commands charged men to be upright, to be clean, to do duty faithfully, even though it was duty to a heathen master, and to make life serviceable to the welfare of others. Again and again all through the years of his exile it was necessary for his soul's welfare that he should ponder these commands of God and not let the atmosphere that surrounded him lower and destroy his ideals.

On that day when the unalterable decree was issued Daniel was in imminent and unescapable peril. Jealous officers already rejoiced in his anticipated death. The danger of weakening threatened his heart. He remembered that Abraham once in Egypt surrendered his principles and thereby saved his life; that the Gibeonites once falsified and so preserved themselves alive. He might have reasoned, "Why should not I, in this special matter, yield, and give up recognition of Jehovah until the storm of persecution is past?" He could easily say, "Perhaps I am making too much of this whole subject; what difference will there be if I, away off here in Babylon, hundreds of miles from home, call this a case of expediency, and temporarily relinquish my ideals?" The temptation was a fearful one. Many a man has gone down before it. Cranmer did, Pilate did; but not Daniel. He kept his eyes on God's commands—those commands that told him to do the right and scorn the consequences, those commands that told him that faithfulness to principle, though it ended in martyrdom, was essential to place in God's hero list. He remembered Joseph, who would not sin against God in doing evil. He remembered God, that bade him bear his testimony, sealing it if necessary with his life's blood. So remembering he kept the faith and proved invincible.

Many a man, like Daniel, exposed to a peculiar temptation, has been made brave as he has remembered the standards set for him by another. He has thought of the wife perhaps, who charged him to meet his duties as a man of God, though godliness should involve them both in disgrace, and thus thinking he has stood firm before evil. Or as a youth, away from home, in a school or factory, with deteriorating influences all about him, and his feet well-nigh gone from the ways of uprightness, he has turned his heart toward that mother who would rather have him die than be false, and the remembrance of her has roused his self-assertion and made him master of the environment.

The commands of God summon men to principle, to fidelity, to serviceableness, to self-renunciation, and to holiness. The man has never lived, nor ever will live, who can fulfil these commands of God unless his windows are continually open toward Jerusalem. We need, we always need, to have our ideals kept large and our standards kept high if we are to be noble souls.

Daniel kept the windows of his soul open, too, to the best promises of the best religion. Even though the prince of the eunuchs was kind to the home-sick captive, and a king was gracious to the interpreter of dreams, Daniel was always exposed to discouragement. Like the missionary of to-day, alone in a foreign land, he was surrounded by the depressing influences of heathenism. As he advanced in power there was no one to whom he could go for religious fellowship. The aids of comradeship and the aids of public worship were wanting. There were no audible voices summoning him to trust, and there was no tangible evidence of the existence of a people of God. He therefore needed every day to go to God Himself, and find in Him a refuge for his heart; needed to hear God's reassuring voice telling him that God was with him, was watching over him in love, and would provide for him as occasion might require. How often Daniel must have been comforted and heartened as he opened his soul to the promises of God!

But what an hour of need that was when he was tracked to his upper room! Every power in the great Medo-Persian Empire was arrayed against him. No friend, no helper, was at hand. He stood alone before his fearful crisis. Brave and determined as his spirit might be, he was still a man—a man of flesh and blood. He needed strength: needed, as Christ afterward in Gethsemane needed, supporting and encouraging sympathy. He turned his soul toward the promises of God's protection and help. He let those promises flood his heart. Those promises made his will like adamant.

We do well when we front our hearts to God's promises. Every earnest soul, trying to make this world better, meets severe discouragements. Then let the soul open itself to God's assurance that the ends of the earth are given to Christ and that good shall indeed come off victorious. Every weak soul struggling to subdue its sin comes to hours of weariness. Then let the soul open itself to God's assurance that He giveth power to the faint and to them that have no might He increaseth strength. Every sorrowing soul, sighing for the loved and the lost, has days of loneliness. Then let the soul open itself to God's assurance that life and immortality are brought to light in Jesus Christ. Only as the needy world of humanity opens its heart to God's promises can it walk in light and possess the peace that passeth understanding.

There is always danger lest men let the windows of their souls be shut toward God. Our particular sins cause us to shut these windows. We do not like to look into God's face when we are conscious of cherished evil. Adam and Eve hid themselves from God when they knew they had done wrong. Those who condemned the reformers to death, often put wax in their ears so that they might not hear the testimony given by those reformers at the stake. Cares, too, cause us to shut these windows. We have so much responsibility to absorb us that we have "no time to look out to any distant tower of a sanctifying thought." All sorts of sights are before our windows—society, business, pleasure, study—but not God. Our life seems to open in every other direction than toward the holy city. We do not go alone into a private place and expose ourselves to the influences God stands ready to send to our hearts. It would be far better if we did. We should find that almost as gently as comes the sunlight, ideas, inspirations, and aspirations would be suggested to our hearts. They would enter our hearts, we would not know how; and if we cherished them, they would correct our false estimates of life, would re-mint our courage, would clarify the vision of our faith, and would prepare us, as they prepared Daniel, to discharge all life's duties with integrity, humanity, and composure.

It is a blessed, very blessed, way to live, this way of keeping our hearts open to the best. We all can so live. We can have a secret chamber—a very closet of the soul—into which we can go, whether we are with the multitude or are alone; and if through the broadly opened windows of that closet we look out toward the best—distant as that best may seem—back from the best will come the light that never fails and the strength that never breaks.