Daniel 2:31-33 You, O king, saw, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before you… "Behold this dreamer cometh" to us then, and says, "I saw in my dream" an image of a man, in which, whilst the head was of fine gold, the farther each part was from the head, the more inferior it appeared. And the least gifted of the wise men among us replies with modest demureness, for he has read the interpretation within himself a thousand times: Man's knowledge may oft seem like fine gold, but his action is at best but silver, and often but iron and clay. It may even be that, in desire, he is of the noblest metal, yet in will and deed but of the baser sorts. The youth is fired by the electric spark of heroic emulation from the recital or vision of another's glorious achievement, hope and noble ambition stir within him till he burns to be a hero in the strife; and in the absence of some great thing, he fails to fling his force so richly accumulated into the duty that is nearest to hand, and so to irradiate it as to make drudgery Divine. And as, at the day's close, he recalls the longing that leaped that morning within his breast, and contrasts with it the cold commonplace achievement, life seems to him like a mocking travesty of a true man, with a head of fine gold, but its feet part of iron and part of clay; golden desires but deeds of clay. And the old. man reads within himself the messages that tell of the coming dissolution. It is time, he says, that autumn touched my life to mellowness and maturity. Should not some of that excellent glory begin to be reflected from me, if so soon I am to enter those Everlasting Gates? And so there comes home to him the sense of space between his desire and his attainment, his ideal and his actual. What artist before his most finished work, what reformer after telling out all his scheme, what minister as he reviews his ministry, what child of God as he surveys his life, does not say to himself, softly and sorrowfully, "If the head was fine gold, the arms were but silver, the foot part of iron and part of clay?" Yes, and if any man rejoins that in his case achievement equalled, if it did not surpass, intention — the feet were equal to the head — we have no hesitation in replying, "Then the head was by no means 'of fine gold.'" Full attainment means small attainments. Better a golden conception carried out by silver arms, incomplete as that must appear, than that both conception and execution be of no higher order than iron or clay, though it be then symmetrical. Better lofty standards and ideals imperfectly carried into action but honestly attempted, than low standards, though completely realised. Let nothing, then, delude us into debasing the "head." Though it make our ears tingle and our cheeks flame scarlet daily, ever above us and beyond us must be the prize of our high calling. To be satisfied, to stop, is to perish at the core. We are saved by honestly hoping, and we can only hope for the uuattained. Let him only who is honestly striving to make his life of one substance throughout, and that "fine gold," take to himself the encouragement we have educed from the image. Let all others beware' lest their baser metal, or incongruous compound, melt utterly in that day when the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. But can we think long of the spiritual life under the figure of a body, with its head and members, without St. Paul's vivid and effectively practical use of the metaphor coming before our view? "Jesus Christ the head," and "Know ye not that your bodies are members of Christ?" And then as if some such grotesque and inconsistent image as this of Nebuchadnezzar's dream loomed before his vision as more than a possibility, with a keen sense of unfitness amounting to horror that neither the King of Babylon nor the inspired seer of old ever felt, he asked: "Shall I, then, take the members of Christ and make them members of the clay and mire of lust and sin?" "As He is, so are we in this world," so be "conformed in all things to our Head." This, then, is the unending royal road along which the saints are called to journey. Our "Head" is "of fine gold." All the choice virtues and fair excellences of the Divine human nature dwell in Him. Lovely beyond comparison, the sum of all perfections, the essence of all that is flagrant and fair, is our Head. And one thing only is wanting, that the Church which is His body becomes as its Head, having attained "unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness" of its Head; a glorious body, "not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish." And "because we are members of His body," to us is this word sent. "Ye are the body of Christ, and severally members thereof," or "members each in his part." (Marg. R.V.) What is our contribution to the visible Body? "Ye are My witnesses." Do they who see our works glorify our Head which is in Heaven. Or is there a shocking incongruity, as in this image? Do not multitudes to-day honestly think — yes, honestly believe — that Jesus' day is over, that He was not the imperishable fine gold, but if not simply "clay" that served its passing purpose, at the best "iron" or "brass," because they have seen His "members," and have concluded (and how shall we blame them in many instances?) that since the "members," the "feet" and the "legs" and the "hands," were so palpably baser metal, the "head" must be also? Shall our Divine Head be thus baffled in us His members! Let us labour and pray so to be , "changed into the same image" that as His feet we may run swiftly at His bidding; as His arms and hands we may work out fully His will, and our whole being show itself a "vessel unto honour, meet for the Master's use." (R. B. Shepherd, M.A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. |
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