News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1893-01-25
THE WALL OF HEAVEN
DR.. TALMAGE INTERPRETS THE SUB
LIME IMAGERY OF THE APOCALYPSE.

The Foundations and the Twelve W onder
full Stones-Ancient Superstitions About
TIE Amethyst-And This Is but the Out
side of Heaven.
BROOKLYN, Jan. 22.-Dr. Talmage re
turned from his southern tour of preach
| ing and lecturing for ten days in Ken
tr.cky, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgis
| and South Carolina, and resumed his
course of sermons on God everywhere
| Having preached on FThe Astronomy OF
the Bible; or, God Among the Stars
1.-THE Chronology of the Bible; or, Goo
Among the Centuries;' "The Ornithology
of the Bible; or, God Among the Birds,
he today speaks of 1.-THE Precious Stones
of the Bible; or, God Among the Anne
thysts." Subject, ''The Wall of Heaven. >
Text, Revelation xxi, 10, ''The founda.
tons of the wall of the city were gar
nished with all manner of precious
stones"
Shall be frank and tel you what are
my designs on you today? They are tc
make you homesick for heaven; to con.
sole you concerning your departed
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 going to pass the
most of the years of their existence, and
to set all the Indifferent 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 volume of God that
few. ever open, but without some ac-
quaintance with which it is impossible
to understand the Bible-I mean the
precious stones, their capitalization,
their powers of refraction, their cleavage,
their fracture, their luster, their phos-
phoresence, their transparency, their in
fnity 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 uni
verse, and that is the wall of heaven,
and says of its foundations that they
are garnished with all manner of pre-
CIOuS SbOuSS. AL I1l6 dl1Cl6uG CLUES IdOl
walls for safety, and heaven has a wall
for everlasting safety. You may say
that wall made up of all manner Ct
precious stones is figurative, but you
cannot understand the force and signifi-
canoe of the figure unless you know
something about the real structure and
color and value of the precious stones
mentioned.
Now, propose this morning, so far as
the Lord may help me, to attempt to
climb not the wall of heaven, but the
foundations of the wall, and l 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 than to
stay down on the stupid level where the
most of us have all our lives been stand
ing. We begin clear down at the bot
tom and where the wall begins.
THE JASPER WALL.
The first layer of the foundation,
reaching all around the city and for
1900 miles, is layer of jasper. Indeed
there is more of jasper in the wall Of
heaven than of any other brilliant, be-
cause it 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 YER
million, it is red, it is purple, it is black,
and is so 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 proc
esses cannot break it off from the places
where it has been deposited. The work
men 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
cut into it. The finest intaglio ever seen
is in the Vatican museum, the head Of
Minerva il jasper. By divine arrange
ment jasper 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
stratum 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 if you like purple it is purple, and
if you like brown it is brown, and if
you like green it is green, and if you
like ocher yellow it is ocher yellow, and
if you like vermilion it is vermilion, and
if you like black it is black. 1t suggests
to me that heaven is place of all colors
-colors of opinion, colors of creed, col
ors of skin, colors of taste.
THE BLUE SAPPHIRE.
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 sapphire,
and it sweeps around the city 800 miles.
All lapidaries agree in saying thai the
sapphire of the Bible is what we now call
lapis lazuE 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, sapphire and
diamond"
The sapphire is blue, but varies from
faintest hr:S to deepest ultramarine. 1t
is found pebble in the rivers of Cey-
Ion. 1t is elsewhere in compact masses.
Persia and Thibet and Burmah and New
South Wales and North Carolina yield
exquisite specimens. It's blue eye is seen
in the valley of the Rhine. After a
burial of thousands of years it has been
brought to sight in Egyptian monuments
and Assyriau cylinders.
At Moscow and st. Petersburg and
Constantinople 1 have seen great masses
of. this sapphire, commonly called lapis
lazul. The closer you study its veins
the more enchanting, and do not won
der that the sapphire is called into the
foundation of the wall of heaven. 1t
makes a strong stone for the foundation,
for it is the hardest of all minerals ex-
cept the diamond.
Sapphire based on jasper, blue sky
over fiery sunset. st. John points to
it 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 are
to collapse and vanish we will through
out all eternity have in some way kept
the most beautiful Of earthly appear
Gnces, whether you take this sapphire of
the second layer as literal or figurative.
The deep blue of our skies and the deep
blue of our seas must not, will not, be
| forgotten. If thousand years after the
world has gone to ashes you or | want
| to recall how the earthly skies looked in
a summer noon or the midocean in a
calm, we will have only. to look at the