‘AN INTERPRETER, ONE AMONG A THOUSAND’
‘I have dreamed a dream.’
I. For most dreams, whether dark or pleasant, there is a basis in the waking world.—And I think that the date of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream may afford us a clue as to that point of contact. It came to him in the second year of his reign—perhaps in our reckoning we should say the third. It was a time when all his hopes were crowned, as a massive image might be crowned with gold. Yet marvellous as his prosperity has been, consolidated as his empire looked, there was many an anxious thought in the king’s heart, for ‘uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.’ On the east of his empire there lay Persia, and Persia was defiant and aggressive. Among his mercenaries were there not Grecian soldiers, who would sing the praise and prowess of their land? And so the king, in the midst of all his splendour, and strong in the might of his victorious army, would have many a dark thought about the future, when he had gone to his rest and his reward. In such a mood he laid him down to sleep, and was visited by a dream. Not all the reading of pleasant tales to him, nor the playing of restful music in his chamber, could banish the distracting cares of kingship, or win for him the slumber of sweet peace. For as he slept there broke on him a vision, so clear, so terrible, so full of portent that he was ready to slaughter all his soothsayers, if they could not resolve for him what he had seen. What was it, then, that he had seen? It was the colossal image of a man. The head was of gold, the breast and arms of silver, the body and the thighs of brass, and the legs were of iron, and they rested upon feet that were partly made of iron, and partly of clay. Was this a comfortable or cheering dream? It was the very opposite of that. The whole impression was that of instability. It was big with the thought of insecure foundation. And then, as across the slumbers of the king there passed this terrible sense of insecurity, he saw a stone, cut by no human hand, crashing upon the feet of the colossus. The image fell, like chaff on the threshing-floor, shattered and shivered into a thousand fragments. The stone grew till it became a mountain, and at last seemed to cover the whole earth. And the king awoke in the horror of it all, with the cry of another dreamer, ‘I will sleep no more’; and the reader was still reading by his bed, and the gentle music breathing through the palace.
II. Now what was the meaning that Daniel found in that?—God showed him in that the history of the ages. It was a picture, upon the screen of night, of that which was, and what was yet to be. The head of gold was Nebuchadnezzar himself. Had not Isaiah called Babylon the golden city? And when John saw Babylon the Great in his Apocalypse, had she not in her hand a golden cup? The breast and the arms were the Medo-Persian empire, larger and broader than the head of gold, yet in its division, and its want of unity, inferior to it as silver is to gold. The lower parts were the empire of the Greeks, with Alexander as the subduer of the nations (Daniel 2:39). And the legs and feet, of iron and of clay, were the empire of Rome in its mingled strength and weakness. So in the vision was there revealed to Daniel the outline of the history of ages. And does any one need to be told what the stone was? It was, and is, the Kingdom of Christ Jesus. For it began not in the might of men, but in the wisdom and the love of God. And it has proved itself far mightier than the empires that seemed to tower above it in the past. And amid their ruins it has continued growing, by the very power that called it into being, and so it shall grow till the kingdoms of this world become the Kingdom of our Lord and Saviour. May that Kingdom be to none of us a rock, against which, if we fall, we shall be crushed! May it be what God intended it to be, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. ‘Rock of ages, cleft for me! Let me hide myself in thee.’
Illustration
‘The Bible nowhere encourages us to attach much importance to our dreams, or to think that there must be something of significance in the fantastic medley of our sleep. Probably the ancient Hebrew looked on dreams very much as sensible people do to-day. Unless dreams were extraordinarily impressive, he was not inclined to regard them very seriously. Indeed, as we read the prophets and the psalmists, we find that the dream is a type of what is transient; a figure not of what is profoundly true, but of what is most provokingly unreal (Isaiah 29:8). It was in pagan religions, and not in that of Israel, that dreams were exalted to a proud pre-eminence. It was in them, and them alone, that every dream was looked upon as ominous. We have no trace in Israel of a ‘house of dreams,’ or of a cult of ‘examiners of dreams,’ such as we meet with in other ancient empires, and in the loveless worship of their gods. But while that is true, it must also be remembered that God does not disdain the use of dreams. Unquestionably He may employ them still, as unquestionably He employed them long ago.’