Page 100 - The Prophet-statesman a Drama of Daniel

and out among the tillers of the soil, he reported to the authorities their condition and
their needs. This work, wisely and faithfully carried out by Bigthan, created a fine
state of satisfaction among the farmers and mutual co-operation between the ruled and

the rulers, which was highly constructive.

The king ruled again in supreme power and unquestioned authority, but with
consideration, fairness and honesty, and his justice was always tempered with mercy.

He carried out his promise to remove the image in the Plain of Dura, and the immense
amount of gold derived from it devoted to the relief of the poor. The burden of
taxation was greatly lightened and the people began to enjoy a period of freedom and
prosperity that they had never before known. The king let it be known throughout the

empire that he was no longer a worshipper of Bel, and he would not enter the doors of
one of the temples of the traditional Babylonian deity. He did not, however, destroy
the temples or allow any persecution of those who continued to worship at the shrines
of Bel. He caused selected portions of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Books of Moses

to be translated into the various languages of the empire and decreed the study as part
of the curriculum of the schools.

There were great gatherings in the city of Babylon attended by the king and queen

and the high officials of government, at which the character and being of Jehovah
were expounded and extolled from the Hebrew Scriptures, and a great altar was
erected upon which animal sacrifices were periodically offered.

Numbers of the high officials of Babylon openly renounced the worship of Bel
and declared themselves converts to the worship of Jahveh. But this turning away
from the worship of the old Babylonian deities was anything but universally popular,
and while none dared to offer open opposition, the old and conservative Chaldeans

regarded this large-scale conversion to the worship of Jehovah as a great apostasy. The
priests of Bel also surreptitiously kept alive this spirit of opposition.

So although the governmental administration had never been so good or equitable

and though there was surface approval throughout the realm, the personal popularity
of the king was not as it had been even in the ruthless old days. Such is the reproach
that any will bear, be he king or commoner, if he is a forthright follower of the truth

and a consistent worshipper of the one true God, in the midst of a world of sin.

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A decade passed. There was peace throughout the realm. The subject nations
which were on the point of revolt when Nebuchadnezzar returned to power, soon