But I have heard about you, that you are able to give interpretations and solve difficult problems. Therefore, if you can read this inscription and give me its interpretation, you will be clothed in purple and have a gold chain placed around your neck, and you will be made the third highest ruler in the kingdom." Sermons
I. THE PREVALENCE OF DOUBT. The prevalence of doubt is exhibited and illustrated at considerable length. "Science puts everything in question, and literature distils the questions, making an atmosphere of them. II. CAUSES OF DOUBT. They never come of truth or high discovery, but always of the want of it." 1. All the truths of religion are inherently dub/table. They are the subjects of moral evidence, not of absolute demonstration. 2. We begin life as unknowing creatures that have everything to learn. 3. Our faculty is itself disorder; e.g. a bent telescope; a filthy window. III. THE DISSOLUTION OF DOUBT. 1. Counsel negative. Not "by inquiry, search, investigation, or any kind of speculative endeavour. Men must never go after the truth to merely find it, but to practise it and live by it." 2. Counsel positive. Bushnell asserts and illustrates at length that man has universally the absolute idea of right and its correlative wrong; and then enforces, with power and manifoldness of illumination, this: "Say nothing of investigation till you have made sure of being grounded everlastingly, and' with a completely whole intent, in the principle of right doing as a principle. (No condensation can give any idea of the grasp and fatness with which this is exhibited and applied.) IV. THE RESULT. A soul thus won to its integrity of thought and meaning will rapidly clear all tormenting questions and difficulties. They are not all gone, but they are going. The ship is launched; he is gone to sea, and has the needle on board. V. SUPPLEMENTARY DIRECTION. 1. Be never afraid of doubt. 2. Be afraid of all sophistries and tricks and strifes of disingenuous argument. 3. Getting into any scornful way is fatal. 4. Never settle upon any thing as true, because it is safer to hold it than not. 5. Have it as a law never to put force on the mind or try to make it believe. It spoils the mind's integrity. 6. Never be in a hurry to believe; never try to conquer doubts against time. One of the greatest talents in religious discovery is the finding how to hang up questions and let them hang without being at all anxious about them What seemed perfectly insoluble will clear itself in a wondrous revelation." And here is a thought: "It will not hurt you, nor hurt the truth, if you should have some few questions left to be carried on with you when you go hence, for in that more luminous state, most likely they will soon be cleared, only a thousand others will be springing up even there, and you will go on dissolving still your new sets of questions, and growing mightier and more deep-seeing for eternal ages." - R.
And dissolve doubts. Doubts and questions are not peculiar to Nebuchadnezzar, but they are the common lot and heritage of humanity. We live just now in a specially doubting age. Science puts everything in question, and literature distils the questions, making an atmosphere of them. The cultivated and mature have their doubts ingrown they know not how, and the younger minds encounter their public visitations when they do not seek them. Note that the three principles sources and causes whence our doubts arise, and from which they get force to make their assault1. All the truths of religion are inherently dubitable. They are only what are called probable, never necessary truths like the truths of geometry or of numbers. This field of probable truth is the whole field of religion, and of course it is competent for doubt to cover it in every part and item. 2. We begin life as unknowing creatures that have everything to learn. We grope, the groping is doubt; we handle, we question, we guess, we experiment, beginning in darkness and stumbling on towards intelligence. 3. It is a fact, disguise it as we can, or deny it as we may, that our faculty is itself in disorder. A broken or bent telescope will not see anything rightly. A filthy window will not bring in even the day as it is. As long as these three sources, or originating causes of doubt continue, doubts will continue, and will, in one form or another, be multiplied. I do not propose, therefore, to show how they may be stopped, for that is impossible, but only how they may be dissolved, or cleared away. The first thing to be said is negative, viz., that the doubters never can dissolve or extirpate their doubts by inquiry, search, investigation, or any kind of speculative endeavour. They must never go after the truth to merely find it, but to practice it and live by it. To be simply curious is only a way to multiply doubts; for in doing it their are, in fact, postponing all the practical rights of truth. They imagine, it may be, that they are going first to settle their questions, and then at their leisure to act. As if they were going to get the perfect system and complete knowledge of truth before they move an inch in doing what they know! And they come out wondering at the discovery, that the more they investigate the less they believe! Their very endeavour mocks them — just as it really ought. For truth is something to be lived. How shall a mind get on finding more truth, save as it takes direction from what it gets? There is no fit search after truth which does not, first of all, begin to live the truth it knows. To come to positive matter. There is a way for dissolving any and all doubts — a way that opens at a very small gate, but widens wonderfully after you pass. Every human soul, at a certain first point of its religious outfit, has a key given to it which is to be the "open sesame" of all right discovery. Every man acknowledges the distinction of right and wrong, feels the reality of that distinction, knows it by immediate consciousness even as he knows himself. He would not be a man without that distinction. It is even this which distinguishes him from the mere animals. Here is the key that opens everything. The only reason why we fall into so many doubts, and get unsettled in our inquiries, instead of being settled by them, as we undertake to be, is that we do not begin at the beginning. A right mind has a right polarity, and discovers right things by feeling after them. The true way, then, of dissolving doubts, is to begin at the beginning, and do the first thing first. Say nothing of investigation till you have made sure of being grounded everlastingly, and with a completely whole intent in the principle of right doing as a principle. Unreligious men are right only so far as they can be, they may not be at all right in principle. Lessons: 1. Be never afraid of doubt. 2. Be afraid of all sophistries, and tricks, and strifes. 3. Getting into a scornful way is fatal. 4. Never put force on the mind to make it believe. 5. Never be in a hurry to believe. (Horace Bushnell, D. D.) People Babylonians, Belshazzar, Belteshazzar, Daniel, Darius, Micah, Nebuchadnezzar, PersiansPlaces Babylon, JerusalemTopics Able, Answering, Authority, Bracelet, Canst, Cause, Chain, Clear, Clothed, Difficult, Dissolve, Doubts, Gold, Highest, Inscription, Interpretation, Interpretations, Kingdom, Knots, Loose, Making, Neck, Necklace, News, Personally, Placed, Power, Problems, Purple, Questions, Round, Rule, Ruler, Scarlet, Sense, Solve, Thereof, Third, Wear, WritingOutline 1. Belshazzar's impious feast.5. A hand-writing unknown to the magicians, troubles the king. 10. At the commendation of the queen Daniel is brought. 17. He, reproving the king of pride and idolatry, 25. reads and interprets the writing. 30. The monarchy is translated to the Medes Dictionary of Bible Themes Daniel 5:168130 guidance, from godly people Library Mene, Tekel, Peres'Then Daniel answered and said before the king, Let thy gifts be to thyself, and give thy rewards to another: yet I will read the writing unto the king, and make known to him the interpretation. 18. O thou king, the most high God gave Nebuchadnezzar thy father a kingdom, and majesty, and glory, and honour: 19. And for the majesty that he gave him, all people, nations, and languages, trembled and feared before him: whom he would he slew; and whom he would he kept alive; and whom he would he set up; … Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture The Scales of Judgment "So Then they that are in the Flesh Cannot Please God. " Human Government. Eastern Wise-Men, or Magi, visit Jesus, the New-Born King. Messiah Unpitied, and Without a Comforter Sovereignty of God in Administration Jesus Sets Out from Judæa for Galilee. The Eternity of God That Upon the Conquest and Slaughter of vitellius Vespasian Hastened his Journey to Rome; but Titus his Son Returned to Jerusalem. Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners Or, a Brief Relation of the Exceeding Mercy of God in Christ, to his Poor Servant, John Bunyan There is a Blessedness in Reversion The Life and Death of Mr. Badman, The Harbinger The Greater Prophets. Meditations Before Dinner and Supper. The Chorus of Angels Daniel Links Daniel 5:16 NIVDaniel 5:16 NLT Daniel 5:16 ESV Daniel 5:16 NASB Daniel 5:16 KJV Daniel 5:16 Bible Apps Daniel 5:16 Parallel Daniel 5:16 Biblia Paralela Daniel 5:16 Chinese Bible Daniel 5:16 French Bible Daniel 5:16 German Bible Daniel 5:16 Commentaries Bible Hub |
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