Page 135 - The Prophet-statesman a Drama of Daniel

the direct appointees of King Cyrus.
But the assignments were carried out and each of the presidents was allowed to
make his own appointments for the satrapies under his control.

Parmashta and Adalia retained some of those officials who ruled under the
Babylonian regime and imported others from Media and Persia to fill out their quota
of forty. Of the holdovers from the former government, there were none who dated

back to the days before the Nabonidus and Neriglissar governments came into power,
and none had any attachment to Daniel. Rather did they share the antipathy against the
Jewish officials that were gendered by the priests of Bel, as a result of their influence
in turning so many to the worship of Jehovah.

The satraps of the inner circle came often to the city to consult with Parmashta and
it was not long before they discovered his thinly veiled jealousy toward Daniel. If the
latter knew of it, he ignored it and applied himself faithfully to his own duties. But as

Parmashta and Adalia grew to hate and resent Daniel’s authority over them, King
Darius’ admiration and esteem for the patriarch-statesman proportionately increased,
and he came to defer to his wisdom in all public decisions, and would request him to
tell him of this Jehovah – this God of the Hebrews that he trusted so implicitly and

obeyed so faithfully. Darius was impressed but unyielded, interested yet detached.

Daniel’s great kindred spirit was the aged Queen Rhea, and more and more he
would repair to her apartments in the palace for long conversation and fellowship. She

alone shared his vital faith. She alone harked back with him in memory to people and
events that to others, had receded into the mists of the past or disappeared over the
horizon. They both rejoiced that with her passing years and the discipline of sorrows,
Queen Hanniel had also come to a saving faith in Jehovah.

“I am happy for one reason to be back in the palace of the Prime Minister, Queen
Rhea, the house I have occupied twice before for extended periods,” remarked Daniel.
“Pray tell me what is the particular reason for your being back there in that large
house. I would think that its cavernous bigness and sepulchral silence would pall upon

you.”
“The reason is that there is a great window with a low sill that faces directly
westward, and from the hill on which the house stands, allows a view right over the

walls of Babylon and across the plains as far as the eye can reach. Under the distant
horizon lie the ruins of the city of the great King David and the remains, wasted these
fifty years, of the glorious temple of Solomon atop Mount Moriah, where Jehovah
once placed His Name. But I seem to see the Holy City, not as lying waste, as I know
it to be at present, but with walls rebuilt and the temple restored. To this end I

supplicate Jehovah three times a day, kneeling before the open window in the morning
hour, at high noon and as the sun sets into the low hills at eventide. I was never wont