There are two aspects of life: one, the common, the ordinary, the prosaic aspect; and the other, the Divine, the glorified, the Christian aspect; and that which alone can give you this second aspect of life is the presence of the Son of God.
I. It is a very remarkable thing that in this Book of the Prophet Daniel, the fourth and last of the four great prophets, we have such an extraordinary foretaste of the coming Gospel of Jesus Christ. We have here the expression and it is the only place in the Old Testament "The Son of God." It is impossible that the king can mean one of these persons who are called by a figure of speech "sons of God." He must mean theSon of God, the one who is made in God's image and God's likeness, who is of God and from God, and who stands in the exact relation to God that a child stands to his father. The form of the fourth is like the Son of God; and wheresoever that form comes, wheresoever that presence of the Son of God is felt, there the three become four; there the bound become loosened, and there those who are exposed to temptation or peril may walk in safety, because they have One with them who is none other than the God of gods and Lord of lords.
II. Such then is the glorification which is offered to every Christian for the trials of life. Life no doubt, for every one under the most advantageous circumstances, has its dull aspect. What we want is not to have those circumstances altered, but something which will make us proof against their dulness and monotony; something which will give us strength to cope with them; something which out of our weakness will make us strong; something which will shed the sunlight of eternal day over the darkness and gloominess of the morning spread upon the mountains, and will kindle for us by it a glorious day in which and through which we may walk from hour to hour with the presence of Him whose form is like that of the Son of God.
S. Leathes, Christian World Pulpit,vol. iv., p. 289.
References: Daniel 3:24; Daniel 3:25. J. E. Vaux, Sermon Notes,2nd series, p. 42.Daniel 3:24-30. R. Payne-Smith, Homiletic Magazine,vol. ix., p. 350.