Page 95 - The Prophet-statesman a Drama of Daniel

humiliation and execution, he rushed to a drug cabinet and took out a bottle whose
contents he poured down his throat. Soon his head began to whirl and he fell to the
floor, a victim of the lethal does administered by his own hand.

Those of his government and following, discerning the irresistible character of the
public demonstration, slunk out of the crowd as unobtrusively as possible, to make
their escape from the vengeful wrath that they felt sure would overtake them. So

absorbed were the people in gazing at their King, who was as one risen from the dead,
that they paid no attention to what went on around them, with the result that most of
the officials and subordinates of the Belgar regime slipped away unnoticed. When the
tumult of welcome to the returned King, Nebuchadnezzar redivivus, had subsided, he

motioned with his hand to indicate that he desired silence in order that he might speak
to them. When there was complete quiet, he thus addressed them: “People of Babylon,
I wish to tell you of the manner in which the Great God has dwelt with me, that you
may have full understanding of all things…” Where upon he proceeded to give them a

review of his life, from the time he was Crown Prince under his father, Nabopolassar,
and of the way in which his father had schooled him in military strategy and civil
administration, impressing upon him the necessity of demanding strict obedience and
exercising severe discipline. His father aggravated his natural willfulness by breeding

in him a consuming pride of position and power, but showed him that these could be
gratified only by reasonable justice and efficiency in government. He told of his pride
of conquest and accomplishment which gradually became such an obsession that it
would not brook the slightest opposition.

He set forth his early conviction, also derived from his father, that there was
something unique about the Jewish race and their God, and that he had early desired to
enlist the interest of Jahveh in Babylon after his conquest of Judah.

He reviewed his actions in bringing to Babylon a group of young Hebrews and his
transporting of the vessels of Temple from Jerusalem to his own capital. He went over
the experience of the first dream which he had forgotten and which was only

recovered by Daniel after he had wickedly threatened the death of all the Magi of
Chaldea.

He confessed his resistance to the full implication of the dream, that another
kingdom would arise after him and that ultimately the God of Heaven would establish
a Kingdom that would fill the whole earth after he had demolished all existing
kingdoms. To defy this revelation he had erected the image in the Plain of Dura of
himself, all of gold, to deny the thought that there would ever be a silver kingdom to

arise after him. He recalled to them his ruthless decree of death to all who would not
worship the image and his commitment of his three excellent ministers to the fiery