The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1893-02-03
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
The Precious Stones In the Foun-
dalton Walls Of Heaven.
The Most stupsndous Splendor OF the
Universe Within the WaIls-St.
Johns Description and
What IL Signifies.

the 1OuOWlng discourse In the Brooklyn
tabernacle in continuation Of his series
on "God Everywhere. The subject
was: THE Wall of Heaven" and the
text:
The foundations Of the wall of the city were
garnished with all manner Of precious stones.-
Revelation xxi. 10.
Shall 1 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 friends 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 go
ing to pass the most of the years of
their existence; and to set all the in
different and neglectful to quick and
immediate preparation, that they may
have it likewise. Yea, it is to induce
many of our young people to study
volume of God that few ever open, but,
without some acquaintance with which
it is impossible to understand the BIZ
ble-I mean the precious stones; their
capitalization, their power Of refrac-
ton, their cleavage, their fracture,
their luster, their phosphoresence, their
transparency, their infinity 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 manner of pre-
cious stones. All the ancient cities had
walls for safety, and Heaven has
wall for everlasting safety. You may
say that wall made up of all manner
of precious stones is figurative, but you
can not understand the force and sig
niicance of the figure unless you know
something about the real structure and
color and value of the precious stones
mentioned. Now, / propose this morn
ing, so far as the Lord may help me, to
climb, not the wall of Heaven but the
foundations of the wall, and / ask you
to join me in the attempt to scale some
of the heights. We shall only get part
of the way up, but better that then 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
one thousand Ave hundred miles is
layer of jasper. Indeed, there is more
of jasper in the wall of Heaven than of
any other brilliant, because it not only
composes part of the foundation, but
makes up the chief part of the super
structure. The jasper is congregation
of many colors. 1t Is brown, it is vel
low, it is green, it is vermilion, it is
red, 1t Is purple, it is black, and is so
striped with colors that much of il Ii
called ribbon-jaspcr. 1t Is found in ST.
IBERIA and Egypt, but 1t is rare in most
lands and of great value, but it is so
hard the ordinary processes can not
break it off from the places where il
has been deposited. The workmen bore
holes into the rock Of 1asperl 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 fragments are brought
out and polished and transported and
cut into canoes and put behind glass
doors of museums. The portraits of
Roman emperors were cut into it. The
finest intaglio ever seen is in the Vati-
can museum, the head of Minerva in
jasper. BY Divine arrangement, jasE
per adorned the breastplate of the high
priest in the ancient temple. But its
most significant position is where it
glows and burns and darkens and
brightens and breaches from the lowest
strata of the walls of Heaven. Glad
am that the very first row Of stones
in the wall of Heaven is jasper of many
eolors, and if you like purple it is paF.
pie, and if you like brown it Is brown,
and if you like green it is green, and if
you like ochre-yellow it is ochre-yel-
low, and if you like vermilion it is ver-
million, and If you like black Il Is black.
1t suggests to me that Heaven is place
of all colors--colors of opinion, colors
of creed, colors of skin, colors of taste.
But we must pass up in this inspec
ton of the foundations Of the great
wall Of Heaven, and after leaving the
jasper, the next precious stone reached
is sapphire, and it sweeps around the
city fifteen hundred miles All lapi-
daries agree in saying that the sapphire
of the Bible is what we now call lapis
lazuli. Job speaks with emotion of
''The Place of Sapphires," and God
thought so much of this precious stone
that He put it in the breastplate of the
high priest; commanding, THE second
row shall be an emerald, a sapphire
and a diamond" The sapphire is a
blue, but varies from faintest hue 10
deepest ultramarine. II 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 ex-
quisite specimens. It's blue eye Is seen
in the valley of the Rhine. After
burial of thousands of years it has been
brought to sight in Egyptian
monuments and Assyrian cylina
ders. At Moscow and ST. Peters
burg and Constantinople have seen
great masses of this SAPPHIRE commonly
called lapis lazuh This closer you study
its veins the more enchanting, and do
not wonder that the sapphire is called
into the foundation of the wall of
Heaven. 1t makes a strong stone for
the foundation, fof it is the hardest of
all minerals except the diamond.
Sapphire based On jasper; a blue sky
over fiery sunxet, st. John points to
1T in Revelation, and says: THE second,
sapphire" and this suggests to me that
though our earth and all its furniture
OF mountains and seas and atmospheres
Is 10 collapse and vanish, we will
through0y.t all eternity have in some