And the arms of his hands were made strong
By the hands of the mighty God of Jacob; ...
Even by the God of thy father, who shall help thee;
And by the Almighty, who shall bless thee
With blessings of heaven above,
Blessings of the deep that lieth under: ...
The blessings of thy father have prevailed
Above the blessings of my progenitors
Unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills:
They shall be on the head of Joseph,
And on the crown of the head of him that was separate
from his brethren.”
Genesis 49:22-26.
[54]
Loyalty to God, faith in the Unseen, was Joseph’s anchor. In this
lay the hiding of his power.
“The arms of his hands were made strong By the hands of the
mighty God of Jacob.”
Daniel, an Ambassador of Heaven
Daniel and his companions in Babylon were, in their youth,
apparently more favored of fortune than was Joseph in the earlier
years of his life in Egypt; yet they were subjected to tests of character
scarcely less severe. From the comparative simplicity of their
Judean home these youth of royal line were transported to the most
magnificent of cities, to the court of its greatest monarch, and were
singled out to be trained for the king’s special service. Strong were
the temptations surrounding them in that corrupt and luxurious court.
The fact that they, the worshipers of Jehovah, were captives to Babylon;
that the vessels of God’s house had been placed in the temple of
the gods of Babylon; that the king of Israel was himself a prisoner in
the hands of the Babylonians, was boastfully cited by the victors as
evidence that their religion and customs were superior to the religion
and customs of the Hebrews. Under such circumstances, through the
very humiliations that Israel’s departure from His commandments
had invited, God gave to Babylon evidence of His supremacy, of the
Chapter 7—Lives of Great Men 41
holiness of His requirements, and of the sure result of obedience.
And this testimony He gave, as alone it could be given, through
those who still held fast their loyalty.
To Daniel and his companions, at the very outset of their career,
there came a decisive test. The direction that their food should be
supplied from the royal table was an expression both of the king’s [55]
favor and of his solicitude for their welfare. But a portion having
been offered to idols, the food from the king’s table was consecrated
to idolatry; and in partaking of the king’s bounty these youth would
be regarded as uniting in his homage to false gods. In such homage
loyalty to Jehovah forbade them to participate. Nor dared they risk
the enervating effect of luxury and dissipation on physical, mental,
and spiritual development.
Daniel and his companions had been faithfully instructed in the
principles of the word of God. They had learned to sacrifice the
earthly to the spiritual, to seek the highest good. And they reaped
the reward. Their habits of temperance and their sense of responsibility
as representatives of God called to noblest development the
powers of body, mind, and soul. At the end of their training, in their
examination with other candidates for the honors of the kingdom,
there was “found none like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah.”
Daniel 1:19.
At the court of Babylon were gathered representatives from all
lands, men of the choicest talents, men the most richly endowed with
natural gifts, and possessed of the highest culture this world could
