Daniel 3:28

Then the king blessed the God of Shadrach, etc.

Offered him adoration. It is what we might have expected. He was. religious king. There was no doubt, now that Jehovah was. powerful God. Hence he worshiped him, along with his own gods and decreed that no one should speak against him.

PRACTICAL AND SUGGESTIVE.

1. Worship, to be effectual, must be heartfelt and voluntary. Decrees to make men worship have always failed to accomplish their object.

2. Men cannot be made to worship alike by any human law. It has been tried many times by Popes, Inquisitions, Catholic kings, and other rulers who had the same spirit. The rack, the wheel, the thumbscrew and the flames of Auto de Fes have never made all bow to the same image.

3. It is right to obey rulers, but the highest of all rulers is God. He is the King of kings. When earthly kings command us to disobey him they must be disobeyed. It is right to obey God rather than men.

4. Earthly rulers, or earthly companions, may frown if we obey God. "All who live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution." We may not be sent to prison, or burned, or even fined, but if we are devout and apostolic we will be sneered at and called fanatics. Whatever we may have to suffer, even should it be as in the days of martyrs, we should be as firm as. rock for the right.

5. God will suffer his children to sometimes fall into the fiery furnace, it may be of persecution, or of affliction, but if they trust fully in him not. hair of their head shall be harmed. He will walk with them and deliver them. He encourages us, when we are called to suffer, by declaring:

The flame shall not harm you;. only design, Your dross to consume; your gold to refine. 6. The triumph of the faith calls for witnesses. The triumphant death of Stephen was followed by. great growth of the church. The age of godly martyrs has always been an age of growth. The heroic trial of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego, had much to do with the formation of the inflexible hatred of idolatry in the exiled Hebrew race.

7. The Church is like the burning bush which Moses saw, all aflame, but unconsumed. It is like the three men in Nebuchadnezzar's furnace, all unharmed because the Son of God was with them. Like Venus, it born from the foam of an ocean of opposition; like Hercules, it had to strangle the serpents which assailed it even in its cradle.-- P.