Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1893-01-27
THE WALL OF HEAVEN
TALMAoE ON PRECIOUS STONES
OF THE GOOD BOOK.
The Foundations Of the wall Of the
City Were 0arnishsd with All Man
nor of Precious stones-A Glimpse Of
Eternity.

Alabama. Georgia and South Carol ma, anu re-
where" Having preached on ''rhe Astronomy
Of the Bible, or God Among the stars Tine
Chronology q The BieleS or Coo Among the
God Among The Birds" he to-day speaks Of
The Precious St0aes OF the Bible, or God
Among the Amsthvsis. Subject: "rhe
Wall OF Heaven" Text: Revelation II: W.
! ~1he foundations OF the wall OF the city were
garnished with all manner OF precious stones. !"
Shall be frank and tell you what
are my designs on you to-day? They
are to make you homesick for heaven;
to console you concerning your de-
parted Christian f ends by giving you
some idea of the brilliancy of the
scenes in which they now commingle;
to give all who love the Lord a more
elevated idea as to where they are
going to pass the most of the years of
their existence; and to set all the in
different and neglected. to quick
and immediate preparation that
they may have it likewise.
Yea, it is to induce many of
our young people to study a volume of
God that few ever open, but, without
some acquaintance with which il is i'm
possible to understand the Bible-I
mean the precious stones; their crys-
talization, their powers of refraction,
their cleavage, their fracture, their
lustre, their phosphorescence, their
| transparency, their intinity of color
and shape, and what they had to do
with the welfare and doom of families
and the destiny of nations; aye, the
positive revelation they make of God
himself.
My text stands US in the presence of
the most stupendous splendor of the
universe, and that is the wall Of
heaven, and says of its foundations
that they are garnished with all man
ner of precious stones. All the an
cient cities had walls for safety, aud
heaven has a wall for everlasting
safety. You may say that a wall made
up OF all manner of precious stones is
hgurative, but you cannot under
stand the force and significance of the
| figure unless you know something
about the real structure and color and
value of the precious stones mentioned.
Now, propose this morning, 30 far as
the Lord may help me, to attempt to
climb, not the wall of heaven but the
foundations of the wall, and ! ask you
70 join me in the attempt to scale some
of the heights. We shall only get part
of the way up, but better than to stay
down on the stupid level where the
most of us have all our lives been
standing. We begin clear down at the
bottom and where the wall begins
The first layer of the foundation,
reaching all around the city and for
1900 miles, is layer of jasper. In
deed there is more of jasper in the wall
of heaven than of any other brilliant,
because 1t not only composes part of
the foundation but makes up the chief
part of the superstructure The jasper
is a congregation of many colors. 1t
is brown; it is yellow; it is green; it is
vermillion; it is red; it is purple; it is
black; and SO is striped with colors
that much of it is called ribbon
jasper. 1t is found in Siberia
and Egypt, but it is rare in most lands
and of great value, for it is SO hard
the ordinary processes cannot break it
off from the places where it has been
deposited. The workmen bore holes
into the rock of jasper; then drive into
these holes sticks of dry birch wood,
and then saturate the sticks and keep
them saturated until they swell
enough to split the rock, and the frag-
ments are brought out and polished
and transported and cut into canoes
and put behind the glass doors of
museums. The portraits of Roman
Emperors were cnt into il. The finest
intaglio ever seen is in the Vatican mus
cum, the head of Minerva in jasper.
By divine arrangement. jasper adorned
the breastplate of the high priest in
the ancient temple. But its most sig
nifcant position is whei it CLOVIS and
burns and darkens and brightens and
breaches from the lowest strata of the
wall of heaven. Glad am that the
very first row OF stones in the wall of
heaven is jasper of many colors, and II
you like purple it is purple. and II you
like brown it is brown, and IL you like
green it is green, and il you like ochre-
yellow it is ochre-yellow, and if you
like vermillion it is verInillion, and il
you like black IL is black. 1t suggests
TO me that heaven is a place of all
colors-colors of opinion, colnrs Of
creed, colors of skin, colors of taste.
But we must pass up in this inspection
of the foundations of the great wall of
heaven, and after leaving the jasper,
the next precious stone reached is sap
phire, and 1t sweeps around the city
1900 mics. All lapidaries agree in say
ing that the sapphire of the Bible is
Whab We my CuAh AaPAb OOU
speaks with emotion of 1.-THE Place of
Sapphires, and God thought SO much
of this precious stone that be put
il in the breast-plate of the
high priest, commanding, "The
second row shall be an emerald, a
sapphire, and diamond" The sap.
phire is blue, but varies from faint.st
hue to deepest ultramarine. 1t is
found a pebble in the rivers of Ceylon.
1t is elsewhere in compact masses.
Persia and Thibet and Burmah and
New South Wales and North Carolina
yield exquisite specimens. Its blue
eye is seen in the valley of the Rhine
After a burial of thousands of years il
has been brought to sight in Egyptian
monuments and Assyrian cylinders.
At Moscow and St Petersburg and
Constantinople, / have seen great
masses of this sapphire commonly
called lapis lazuli. The closer you
study its veins, the more enchanting,
and not wonder that the sapphire is
called into the foundation of the wall
of heaven. 1t makes strong stone for
the foundation, for 1t is the hardest of
all minerals except the diamond. Sap
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