Bible Commentaries

NEBUCHADNEZZAR’S DREAM

‘I saw a dream.’

Daniel 4:5

I. An alarming dream which God sent to Nebuchadnezzar, and which his soothsayers were unable to interpret, greatly startled the king, whose empire at that time was enjoying a settled peace.—How often when men are at rest in their houses, and flourishing in their palaces, they are nearer the blow of the axe than in hours of stress and storm. See to it that in seasons of prosperity you walk humbly with God, and bear fruit, that the axe may not be laid to the root of the tree. What a remarkable description that is of God’s angels given us in Daniel 4:13! They are watchers and also holy ones. God’s angels watch over the saints, and it is in their interests that His chastisements fall upon their oppressors, O suffering saint!

II. The sentence which Daniel announced, that the king should become deranged in his mind, imagining himself a beast, and ranging with animals in the royal demesne, was a terrible one.—But he did not hesitate in his duty to warn the proud monarch of the imminence of the worst, adding words of entreaty (Daniel 4:27). Men may secure a lengthening of their tranquillity, and a mitigation of their sentence if they will forsake the sin with which God has a controversy. O proud boast! How apt we are to speak of our fortunes, our prestige, our influence amongst men, as the great Babylon which we have built (Daniel 4:30). We are apt at attributing the success of our life to ourselves, and forgetting that after all there is only one Agent and Arbiter of events, to Whom we must give praise and honour for ever (Daniel 4:35-36).

Illustration

‘Pride leads to madness. In Nebuchadnezzar we see its ultimate result—that to which it tends in all men. Pride unbalances the reason. As a scale may need only the addition of another ounce to weigh it down, so a proud man may need only one more strong emotion of pride to sink him into grovelling idiocy. While Nebuchadnezzar’s insanity may have been a judicial infliction, like Miriam’s leprosy (Numbers 12:10), it was more probably the natural result of a long course of mentally disturbing worship of self.’

CHRIST’S LAW FOR A NATION AND ITS NEIGHBOURS

‘The king spake, and said, Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?’

Daniel 4:30

Nations are in many respects like individuals. They are made up of individuals, and the character of the nation is the general product of the character of the individuals. ‘Nationality,’ said Kossuth, ‘is the aggregate individuality of the greatest men of the nation.’ Perhaps it would be nearer the truth if we put most influential instead of greatest. But, at any rate, the character of the individual counts for the character of the nation; some more, some less. And there is another point that makes nations like single human beings. Each has a past history which influences the present. ‘A nation’s character,’ it has been said, ‘is the sum of its splendid deeds; they constitute one common patrimony, the nation’s inheritance; they awe foreign powers, and arouse and animate our own people.’ I am afraid the bad acts of a nation in the past help to make up its identity as a whole as much as the good; but, at any rate, you see that a nation has a continuous character, like an individual, for which it is responsible. A nation can be hated or loved, feared or despised, esteemed or distrusted. It has been said, indeed, that ‘all nations, great and small, having having any distinctive character of their own, may be said to hate one another, not with a deadly but a lively hatred.’ But that is not always necessarily true. Nations have at different times entered into warm and friendly alliance with each other, and been on terms of real cordiality and friendship.

Our own people, the British nation, has lately waked up to the same unflattering discovery that I was imagining in your case or in mine. We have found ourselves quite distinctly unpopular. Not necessarily more so than other nations, but still in a way that was both unflattering and unpleasant. We thought we were going on admirably; that all our conduct and motives were quite beyond criticism; that we were a most praiseworthy, benevolent, and honourable nation; that we were on the best terms with all other nations, or ought to be, and that if we were not it was their fault and not ours. The pictures of John Bull and Britannia in the comic journals express the flattering unction that we lay to our souls: the one eminently virtuous, respectable, and amiable, the ideal of an admirable paterfamilias; the other noble, generous, courageous, high-souled, almost a demi-goddess. And then suddenly we are brought face to face with unmistakable evidences of downright dislike. Lest my own words should be misunderstood, I will quote a short paragraph from a thoughtful and unexcited review: ‘We look around and see many foes, while for real friends we look in vain. This, then, is the fate of Great Britain in the last years of the nineteenth century. She has had a glorious history, the parallel to which no other nation of modern times can offer. She has carried her flag to all the quarters of the world, and holds an Empire which in its vastness and its magnificence surpasses anything known to history. She is conscious of no wilful wrong-doing towards her neighbours. She believes, indeed, that in extending the wide limits of her rule she has at the same time extended the area of civilisation. She knows that wherever her flag waves there freedom is to be found, and along with freedom an asylum which is open to men of every tribe and tongue. Alone among the Great Powers of the earth she has kept an open door for the alien as well as for men of her own blood, and has decreed that no accident of birth shall debar any man who seeks shelter under her sway from the full privileges of citizenship. Yet as the end of it all she sees herself pursued by ill-will and jealousy, and confronted at every point by eager and envious rivals. This is the phenomenon which presents itself to us to-day, and which we are bound to consider as dispassionately as may be, if we are to profit by the lessons which it ought to teach us.’

I would remind my readers of the four ways of meeting personal unfriendliness: defiance, or the way of the fool; indifference, or the way of the proud; cringing, or the way of the mean; self-scrutiny and amendment, or the way of the wise. I ask you, with the help of God’s grace, to try with me at this time to see whether we can make anything of the latter plan. Of course, the fault is not all on our side; other countries have their faults as well as ourselves; but we cannot expect them to amend whatever share they have had in the present want of cordiality unless we begin to amend our own share amongst ourselves at home.

My brothers, there cannot be the least doubt that whatever may be our national virtues—and I trust that they are many—there are four moral dangers which a busy, mercantile, prosaic people like ours is sure to encounter in its dealings with other countries; and these are Self-conceit, Selfish Ambition, Insincerity, and Discourtesy.

I. Self-conceit.—There is certainly much to make the British race self-satisfied. The British Empire has grown to be seventy times as large as the British Islands. This fact we ought to regard with thankfulness, but we may be tempted to survey it with self-satisfaction. Self-conceit is as morally poisonous to a nation as it is to an individual.

II. The next moral risk we run is that of selfish ambition.—There is the risk that, having become so vast and world-wide an Empire, we may be afflicted with the lust of becoming even vaster and greater.

III. Thirdly, let me speak very briefly of the risk of insincerity.—Just as a man of honour will fulfil his word without any hesitation whatsoever, even if it is to be at the cost of personal loss or sacrifice, so will it be with an honourable nation. If it has once pledged its credit, no consideration of expediency will prevail on it to recede. From our system of government we have necessarily a succession of parties in office with different views. It is of the most momentous importance that they should observe each other’s promises and fulfil each other’s pledges.

IV. Lastly, there is the risk of discourtesy.—We ought always to speak of a foreign nation with the same delicacy and self-restraint which we should use in regard to a friend, whether we always approved of his conduct or not. Let us reserve our caricatures for our own people who understand them; they do not help the comity of our intercourse with other countries.

Archdeacon Sinclair.

PRIDE’S PUNISHMENT

‘Those that walk in pride He is able to abase.’

Daniel 4:37

These are the words of King Nebuchadnezzar on his restoration from the deepest fall, from the most fearful exile that ever befell one of the children of men.

I. Let us hear that word to-day in one of its most searching and humbling utterances: ‘Those that walk in pride God is able to abase.’ In one of our famous English universities an annual sermon is preached on pride. No one will say that once a year is too often for a congregation, young or old, to be bidden to meditate on that thesis. I propose it to you to-day, not being so presumptuous as to think of treating it in a formal manner by definitions and divisions more suitable to the lecture-room, but proposing to draw one or two reflections upon it from the history here opened before us, and to ask of you that spirit of self-application, without which on such a subject we speak and we hear in vain. We see introduced abruptly, and yet it seems to be the turning-point of the whole, that appearance of the great king walking in his palace of Babylon, and saying, whether to himself or in the hearing of his courtiers does not appear, ‘Is not this great Babylon, that I have builded by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?’ Many learned things have been said and written upon the nature and essence of pride. Probably none of them could equal in depth of impressiveness this account of pride speaking, with this repeated pronoun, the personal and the impressive: ‘Great Babylon, that I have builded by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty.’ Whatever other definitions of pride may be given, certainly this is true of it, that it is the contemplation of self, the concentration on self, the having self on the throne of the being as the one object of attention, of observance, of consideration, always, everywhere, and in all things. It is often assumed that this attention given to self is of necessity the contemplation of supposed excellence, and that it is, therefore, so far as it is characteristic of pride, of the nature of self-complacency or self-admiration; and yet some of the proudest of men have been at the very antipodes of self-satisfaction. It is the very consciousness of their own deformity—moral or physical—of their own inferiority in some prized and coveted particular of birth, gift, or grace, which has driven them in upon themselves in an unlovely, unloving isolation. Self-complacency is not the only form of pride. It is doubtful whether to self-complacency does not rather belong the very different title of vanity. A beggar may be proud, a cripple may be proud; failure takes refuge in pride, even moral failure, the experience of perpetual defeat in that life-battle with which no stranger intermeddles. Pride is self-contemplation, but not necessarily self-admiration—self-absorption, but not necessarily self-adoration. It is not quite evident from the words of King Nebuchadnezzar whether his besetting sin was pride or vanity. Something may turn upon an unanswerable question, whether he thought or spoke the ‘Is not this great Babylon?’ I think that vanity always speaks. I doubt if the vain man ever keeps his vanity to himself. I am sure that pride can be silent. I am not sure that pride, as pride, ever speaks. If I had to ascertain which of the two was Nebuchadnezzar’s failing, I should look rather to the hints dropped first in the judgment and then in the account of the recovery. From the one I learn that he then first praised and honoured Him that liveth for ever. This decides me that, however pride and vanity may have mingled (if they ever do mingle) in his composition, pride was the differentia, that pride which contemplates self as the all in all of life and being, not necessarily as beautiful, or perfect, or happy, not necessarily as satisfactory, either in circumstance or in character, but as practically independent of all above and all below it—the one object of importance, and interest, and devotion, knowing neither a superior to reverence nor an inferior to regard. Vanity though, or perhaps because, a poorer and meaner thing, is also a shallower thing, and less vital. Vanity may still be kind and charitable. Vanity may still love and be loved. Vanity I had almost said, and I will say it, vanity may still worship. Vanity does not absolutely need to be taught the great lesson that the Most High rules in the kingdom of man, or does according to His will in the army of heaven. Pride and vanity both ask, ‘Is not this great Babylon?’ but vanity asks it for applause from below, pride asks it in disdain of One above.

II. But in all this we may not as yet have found our own likeness.—There may be some, there may be many here present, who are not by natural temperament either proud or vain, and yet, when I think once again what pride is, I doubt whether any one is born without it. We may not dwell complacently upon our merits. Certainly we may not be guilty of the weakness and the bad taste which would parade those supposed merits before others. Pride itself often casts out vanity, and refuses to make itself ridiculous by saying aloud, ‘Is not this great Babylon?’ But the question is not whether we are so situated in our estimate of gifts or graces, in our retrospect of attainments or successes, in our consciousness of power, or our supposition of greatness, but whether, on the contrary, we have constantly in our remembrance the derivation and the responsibility and the accountableness of all that we have and are—whether there is a higher presence and a diviner being always in our being, making it impossible to admire or to adore that self which is so feeble and so contemptible in comparison—whether we are so in the habit of asking ourselves the two questions, ‘What hast thou which thou hast not received?’ and ‘What hast thou for which thou hast given account?’ as to maintain always the attitude of worship and the attitude of devotion within, and this superscription ever upon the doors and gates of the spiritual being, ‘Whose I am and Whom I serve.’ We have formed now from the history, perhaps, some idea of pride. We have heard what pride says to itself in the secrecy of its solitude.

III. The same history shall suggest another thought or two about it, and the first of these is its penal, its judicial isolation.—‘They shall drive thee from men.’ We are not going to explain away the literal, or at least the substantial fulfilment of this prophecy. Though it would be untrue to say that medical history furnishes a complete illustration of the judgment threatened and executed upon King Nebuchadnezzar, yet medical history does afford a sufficient likeness of it to render the fact, not credible only, for that its being written in the Bible would make it, but approximately intelligible. Some grievous forms of insanity in which the sufferer finds himself transfigured, in imagination at least, into an irrational creature, of which he adopts the actions and gestures, the tones and the habits, under which, in that harsh and cruel treatment of madness, from which even kings down to our own age were not exempt, the dweller in a palace might find himself exiled from the society and companionship of men. Something of this kind may seem to be indicated in this touching and thrilling description, and the use now to be made of it requires no more than this brief and general recognition of the particulars of the history from which it is drawn. He was driven from men; the Nemesis of pride is isolation. The proud man is placed alone in the universe, even while he dwells in a home. This is a terrible feature; this is the condemning brand of that self-contemplation, that self-concentration, that self-absorption, which we have thought to be the essence of pride. The proud man is driven by his own act, even before judgment speaks, if not from the presence, if not from the companionship, at least from the sympathy of his fellows. This isolation of heart and soul is the Cain-like mark set upon the unnaturalness of the spirit which it punishes. No sooner is self made the idol than it shuts the windows of the inner being alike against God above and man below. ‘They shall drive thee from men.’ Thou hast driven thyself from God!

IV. Another thought comes to us out of the history.—Mark the words describing the recovery, ‘Mine understanding returned unto me; my reason returned unto me.’ What was the first use of it? ‘I blessed the Most High; I praised and honoured Him that liveth for ever.’ It is deeply interesting to notice, and it fully accords with the observations of medical men, that the return of reason is here prefaced by a lifting up of the eyes to heaven as though in quest of reconciliation and recognition. Yes, prayer is no stranger to the hospitals and asylums of the insane. Very pathetic is the worship offered within the walls of those chapels, which modern humanity and modern science have combined to append everywhere to the once disconsolate homes of the disordered and deranged intellect. ‘I lifted up mine eyes unto heaven, and then mine understanding returned unto me.’ Our moral is, the pride which will not worship is of itself an insanity. Worship is the rational attitude of the creature towards the Creator. Pride, dreaming of independence; pride, placing self where God ought to be; pride, telling of the Babylon which it has builded; refusing to recognise any being above or below external to it, yet possessing claims upon it, is a non-natural condition. Before it can recover intellect it must look upward. The first sign of that recovery will be the acknowledgment of the Eternal.

—Dean Vaughan.