Daniel 2:3

Daniel 2:3

We may feel that this ancient story is not wholly untrue, nor the effects of it wholly lost to it, when we cast our mind upon our own lives, and remember how much we, too, have been haunted by some magnificent dream. When the vision of what life really was, with its deep and solemn significance, was granted to us, we, awaking with the impression of all life's business, lost the vivid force of that dream we could not recall it, and we turned to the seers about us to revive those impressoins which we felt must be for good. They are plentiful to seek, the wise and the unwise, the weak and the strong, the false and the true; and we, haunted by the remembrance of that vision of what life's deep significance is, turn in vain to these. And yet the conditions may teach us what are the real features and the real capacities of the true prophet. The story suggests that there are two great elements which are essential, in order that a man may be a real helper of his fellow-men, the true prophet of his age. These two were just those that were vouchsafed to Daniel.

I. The first is knowledge of human nature. The king says, "You profess to be able to interpret my dreams. How do I know that your interpretations are true? Tell me what the dream was, and I can verify your accuracy; vindicate your pretensions in a sphere where I can test them, and then I will be able to give you my faith in the sphere where I cannot test them. Show first that you understand me, and then I will believe that you can understand my destiny." Daniel tracks the movement of the man's mind, he shows himself master of the play of his thoughts. That splendid vision, that noble and colossal figure, represented what had passed through the king's mind not that night only but every night. It had been the dream of his life, the splendour and the magnificence of his position; the glorious headship which he held over the empire, which he thought his own, from the high vantage-ground of which he looked down in proud contempt upon human kind. His thoughts were read. And whatever men have been in the position of prophets of their age, their strength and power has depended upon their capacity to read the minds and the play of thought of the men of their age.

II. The second condition is the knowledge of a Divine order. That splendid dream, and that magnificent figure which appeared in the king's dream, is the dream of man in all ages; it is the dream of self-realisation. But while this colossal figure is shown in its splendour, it is also shown in its weakness. This little stone, without hands, should demolish the whole; man's best and noblest dreams, man's most brilliant ambitions, are destined to be overthrown. And why? This stone represents precisely that unseen, that handless power which has not its origin in the conceptions of man, but in the nature of things. This little stone takes the place of this overthrown image; it grows; it is the empire of heart, the kingdom which cannot be shaken; and therefore there has never passed through human mind a dream, a noble and a true dream, that God does not see the way to realise. He breaks down our little efforts to realise it, that He may substitute His own. We look upon the things seen, and because the glittering image stands no more upon the plain of the world, we wring our hands and say, "The vision is dead, and there is no hope for humanity." But those laws which are the work of the spiritual kingdom, and of the moral kingdom, are building up that which we cannot see, but which we may know by the creation of its strength within the citadel of our hearts that eternal kingdom of the living God which shall never be overthrown.

Bishop Boyd Carpenter, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxvi., p. 8.