Connecticut western news., 1893-01-26
a'nethyst wnnld prevent inehriat1on.
 THE HEBREW SUPERSTITION.


 2:4. Standing J4 t,.c ::1p Of q. t.l.s s.c- thystine layer of the foundation of the wall of heaven I bethink myself of the mistake that many of the ancient He brews made when they thought that the amethyst was a producer of pleasant dreams. Just wear piece of amethyst over your heart or put it under your pillow, and you would have your dreams filled with everything beautiful and en- trancing. Mo- no. The style of pillow will not decide the character of the dream. The only recipe for pleasant dreams is to do right and think right when you are wide awake. Conditions of phys ical disease may give good man night mare, but man physically well, if he behave himself aright, will not be trou- bled with bad dreams.
 Nebuchadnezzar, with eagles down under his head and Tyrian purple over it, struggled with bad dream that made him shriek out for the soothsayers and astrologers to come and interpret it. Pharaoh, amid the marble palaces of Memphis, was confounded by dream in which lean COWS ate up the fat COWS and the small ears of corn devoured the seven large ears, and awful famine was prefgured. Pilates wife, amid clouds of richest upholstery, had startling dream, because of which she sent a mes sage in hot haste to 8 courtroom to keep her husband from enacting a judicial outrage. But Jacob, at Bethel, with pillow of mountain rock, had blissful dream of the ladder angel blossoming.
 Bunyan, with his head on a hard plank of Bedford jail, saw the gates of the celestial city. St. John, on the bar renest island of the Hgean sea, in his dream heard trumpets and saw cavalry men on white horses and 8 new heaven and new earth. No amount of rough pillow can disturb the night vision of saint, and no amount of amethystine charm can delectate the dream of mis- creant.
 But, some one will say, why have you brought us to this amethyst, the top row of the foundation of the heavenly wall, if you are not able to accept the theory of the ancient Greeks, who said that the amethyst was a charm against intodca- tion, or if you are not willing to accept the theory of the ancient Hebrews that the amethyst was a producer of pleasant dreams? My answer is, I have brought you to the top row, the twelfth layer of the foundation of the heavenly wall of 1,5O0 miles of circling amethyst, to put you in position where you can get new idea of heaven; to let you see that after you have climbed up twelve strata of glory you are only at the base of the eternal grandeurs; to let you, with en- chantment of soul, look far down and look far up, and to force upon you the conclusion that if all our climbing has only shown us the foundations of the wall, what must the wall itself be; and if this is the outside of heaven, what must the inside be; and if all this is fig urative, what must the reality be? Oh, this piled up magnifcence of the heav- enly wall! Oh, this eternity of decora- ! tionl Oh, this opalescent, forescent, prismatic miracle of architectural What enthronement of all colorsl A mingling of the blue of skies, and the surf of seas, and the green of meadows, and the up holstery of autumnal forests, and the fire of August sunsets. All the splendors of earth and heaven dashed into those twelve rows of foundation wall. All that, mark you, only typical of the spir- itual glories that roll over heaven like the Atlantic and Pacific oceans swung in one pillow.
 Do you not see that it was impossible that you understand a hundredth part of the suggestiveness of that twenty first chapter of Revelation without go- ing into some of the particulars of the wall of heaven and dipping up some of its dripping colors, and running your eye along some of its wondrous crystal lizations, and examining some of the frozen light in its turquoise, and feeling with your own finger the hardness of its sapphire, and shielding your eyes against | the shimmering brilliance in It's beryl, ] and studying the 1,500 miles of emerald without flaw? Yet all this only the out side of heaven, and the poorest part of the outside; not the wall itself, but only the foot of the wall, for my text says, ''The foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones." Oh, get down your harp if you can play one! Get down palm branch if you can reach onel Why, it makes us all feel like cxying out with James Mont | gomery:
 | When shall these eyes thy heaven built walls | And pearly gates behold?
 | Oh, my soul! If my text shows us only the outside, what must the inside be? While riding last summer through the emperor's park, near St. Petersburg, was captivated with the groves, trans planted from all zones, and the flower beds-miles this way and miles that way | r,1 hn fountains bounding in such revel with the sunlight as nowhere else is seen, l said: "This Is beautiful. I never saw anything like this before"
 But when I entered the palace and saw the pictured walls, and the long line of statuary, and aquariums afoat with all bright scales, and aviaries a-chant with bird voices, and the inner doors of the palace were swung back by the cham berlain, and I saw the emperor and en- press and princes and princesses, and they greeted me with cordiality of old acquaintanceship I forget all the groves and floral bewitchment I had seen out side before entrance. And now I ask, ii the outside of heaven attracts our souls today, how much more will be the up. lifting when we get inside and see the
 King in his beauty and all the princes
 and princesses of the palaces of anne
 thyst?
 Are you not glad that we did not stoI
 in our ascent this morning until we got
 to the top round of the foundation wal
 of heaven, the twelfth row, the anne
 thyst? Perhaps the ancient Hebrews
 were not, after all, so far out of the way
 when they thought that the touch of the
 amethyst gave pleasant dreams, for tht
 touch of it this hour gives me a very
 pleasant dream. Standing on this anne
 thyst dream dream. I close my eye'
 and I see it all. We are there. This ii