ldish moanings over wickedness that might still have been mended,
and the incapacity to take in the grave, personal consequences of his
crime.

II. We next note the great deliverance. The king does not see Daniel,
and waits in sickening doubt whether any sound but the brutes' snarl at
the disturber of their feast will be heard. There must have been a sigh
of relief when the calm accents were audible from the unseen depth. And
what dignity, respect, faith, and innocence are in them! Even in such
circumstances the usual form of reverential salutation to the king is
remembered. That night's work might have made a sullen rebel of Daniel,
and small blame to him if he had had no very amiable feelings to Darius;
but he had learned faithfulness in a good school, and no trace of
returning evil for evil was in his words or tones.

The formal greeting was much more than a form, when it came up from
among the lions. It heaped coals of fire on the king's head, let us
hope, and taught him, if he needed the lesson, that Daniel's
disobedience had not been disloyalty. The more religion compels us to
disregard the authority and practices of others, the more scrupulously
attentive should we be to demonstrate that we cherish all due regard to
them, and wish them well. How simply, and as if he saw nothing in it to
wonder at, he tells the fact of his deliverance! 'My God has sent His
angel, and hath shut the lions' mouths.' He had not been able to say, as
the king did before the den was opened, 'Thy God will deliver thee'; but
he had gone down into it, knowing that He was able, and leaving himself
in God's care. So it was no surprise to him that he was safe.
Thankfulness, but not astonishment, filled his heart. So faith takes
God's gifts, however great and beyond natural possibility they may be;
for the greatest of them are less than the Love which faith knows to
move all things, and whatsoever faith receives is just like Him.

Daniel did not say, as Darius did, that he served God continually, but
he did declare his own innocency in God's sight and unimpeachable
fidelity to the king. His reference is probably mainly to his official
conduct; but the characteristic tone of the Old Testament saint is
audible, which ventured on professions of uprightness, accordant with
an earlier stage of revelation and religious consciousness, but scarcely
congruous with the deeper and more inward sense of sin produced by the
full revelation in Christ. But i