s a foreigner, a more reliable
minister than in native officials. 'Envy doth merit as its shade
pursue,' and the crafty trick by which his subordinates tried to procure
his fall, was their answer to Darius's scheme of making him prime
minister. Our passage begins in the middle of the story, but the earlier
part will come into consideration in the course of our remarks.

I. We note, first, the steadfast, silent confessor and the weak king.
Darius is a great deal more conspicuous in the narrative than Daniel.
The victim of injustice is silent. He does not seem to have been called
on to deny or defend the indictment. His deed was patent, and the breach
of the law flagrant. He, too, was 'like a sheep before the shearers,'
dumb. His silence meant, among other things, a quiet, patient, fixed
resolve to bear all, and not to deny his God. Weak men bluster. Heroic
endurance has generally little to say. Without resistance, or a word,
the old man, an hour ago the foremost in the realm, is hauled off and
flung into the pit or den. It is useless and needless to ask its form.
The entrance was sealed with two seals, one the king's, one the
conspirators', that neither party might steal a march on the other.
Fellows in iniquity do not trust each other. So, down in the dark there,
with the glittering eyeballs of the brutes round him, and their growls
in his ears, the old man sits all night long, with peace in his heart,
and looking up trustfully, through the hole in the roof, to his
Protector's stars, shining their silent message of cheer.

The passage dwells on the pitiable weakness and consequent unrest of the
king. He had not yielded Daniel to his fate without a struggle, which
the previous narrative describes in strong language. 'Sore displeased,'
he 'set his heart' on delivering him, and 'laboured' to do so. The
curious obstacle, limiting even his power, is a rare specimen of
conservatism in its purest form. So wise were our ancestors, that
nothing of theirs shall ever be touched. Infallible legislators can make
immutable laws; the rest of us must be content to learn by blundering,
and to grow by changing. The man who says, 'I never alter my opinions,'
condemns himself as either too foolish or too proud to learn.

But probably, if the question had been about a law that was inconvenient
to Darius himself, or to these advocates of the constitution as it has
always been, some way of getting round it would have been found out. If
the