in profound
slumber. But a lion, more easily awakened, advances, and, with hot
breath blown through the crevice, seems angrily to demand the cause of
this interruption, and then another wild beast lifts his mane from
under Daniel's head, and the prophet, waking up, comes forth to report
himself all unhurt and well.

But our text stands us at Daniel's window, open toward Jerusalem. Why
in that direction open? Jerusalem was his native land, and all the
pomp of his Babylonish successes could not make him forget it. He
came there from Jerusalem at eighteen years of age, and he never
visited it, though he lived to be eighty-five years. Yet, when he
wanted to arouse the deepest emotions and grandest aspirations of his
heart, he had his window open toward his native Jerusalem. There are
many of you to-day who understand that without any exposition. This is
getting to be a nation of foreigners. They have come into all
occupations and professions. They sit in all churches. It may be
twenty years ago since you got your naturalization papers, and you may
be thoroughly Americanized, but you can't forget the land of your
birth, and your warmest sympathies go out toward it. Your windows are
open toward Jerusalem. Your father and mother are buried there. It may
have been a very humble home in which you were born, but your memory
often plays around it, and you hope some day to go and see it--the
hill, the tree, the brook, the house, the place so sacred, the door
from which you started off with parental blessing to make your own way
in the world; and God only knows how sometimes you have longed to see
the familiar places of your childhood, and how in awful crises of life
you would like to have caught a glimpse of the old, wrinkled face that
bent over you as you lay on the gentle lap twenty or forty or fifty
years ago. You may have on this side of the sea risen in fortune, and,
like Daniel, have become great, and may have come into prosperities
which you never could have reached if you had stayed there, and you
may have many windows to your house--bay-windows, and
sky-light-windows, and windows of conservatory, and windows on all
sides--but you have at least one window open toward Jerusalem.

When the foreign steamer comes to the wharf, you see the long line of
sailors, with shouldered mail-bags, coming down the planks, carrying
as many letters as you might suppose would be enough for a year's
correspondence, and this repeated again a