People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 January 1893 — THE WALL OF HEAVEN. [ARTICLE]

THE WALL OF HEAVEN.

Dr. Talmage Continues to Discourse on “God Everywhere." He Telle His Hearer. He Desires to Make Them Homesick for Heaven And Froeee*. to Draw an Entrancing Picture. The following discourse, in continuation of his series on “God Everywhere,’* was delivered by Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage in the Brooklyn tabernacle, the Immediate subject being “The Wall of Heaven,” and the text: The foundation, of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones. — Revelation XXL, 19. Shall Ibe 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 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 neglectful 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 aquaintance with which it is impossible to understand the Bible—l mean the precious stones; their crystalization, their power of refraction, 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 precious stones. All the ancient cities had walls for safety, and Heaven has a wall for everlasting safety. You may say that a wall made up of all manner of precious stones is figurative, but yon, can not understand the force and nificance of the figure unless you know something about the real structure and color and value of the precious stones mentioned. Now, I propose this morning, so far as the Lord may help me, to climb, not the wall of Heaven but the foundations of the wall, and I 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 five hundred miles, is a layer of jasper. Indeed, there is more of jasper in the wall of Heaven than of any other brilliant, because it not only composes a part of the foundation, but makes up the chief part of the superstructure. The jasper is a congregation of many colors. It is brown, it is yellow, it is green, it is vermilion, it is red, it is purple, it is black, and is so striped with colors that much of it is called ribbon-jasper. It is found in Siberia and Egypt, but it 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 it has been deposited. The workmen bore holes into the rock of 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 cameos and put behind 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 in jasper. By Divine arrangement, 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 preaches from the lowest strati of the walls of Heaven. Glad am I 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 ochre-yellow it is ochre-yel-low, and if you like vermilion it is vermilion, and if you like black it is black. It suggests to me that Heaven is a place of all colors —colors of opinion, colors of creed, colors of skin, colors of taste. But we must pass up in this inspec tion of the foundations of the great wall of Heaven, and after leaving the jasper, the next precious stone reached is sapphire, and it sweeps arourfd the city fifteen hundred miles. All lapidaries 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 to deepest ultramarine. It is found a pebble in the rivers of Ceylon. It 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 buriakof thousands of years it has been brought to sight in Egyptian monuments arid Assyrian cylinders. At Moscow and St. Petersburg and Constantinople I have seen great masses of thissaphhire commonly called lapis lazuli The closer you study its veins the more enchanting, and I do not wonder that the sapphire is called into the foundation of the wall of Heaven. It makes a strong stone for the foundation, for it is the hardest of all minerals except the diamond. Sapphire based on jasper; a blue sky over a 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 Maa and atmospheres

is to collapse and vanish, we will throughout all eternity have in some way kept the most beautiful of earthly appearances, whether you take the 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 a thousand years after the world has gone to ashes, you or I want to recall how thq earthly skies looked in a summer noon, or the mid-ocean in a calm, we will have only to look at the second row of the foundation of the wall of Heaven. Oh, I am so glad that St. John told us about it. “The second, sapphire!” While we are living in sight of that wall, spirits ‘who have come from other worlds, and who never saw our earth, will visit us, and we will visit them, and sometime we will be in converse about this earth when itwasyet afloat and as wing, and we shall want to tell them about how it looked at certain times, and then it will be a great object lesson for all eternity, and we will say to our visitor from some other world, as we point toward the wall of Heaven: “It looked like that stratum of foundation next to the lowest” John, 21 xix: “The second, sapphire. A step higher and yon come to chalcedony, another layer in the foundation wall and running one thousand five hundred miles around the Heavenly city. Chalcedony! Translucent A Divine mixture of agates and opals and cornelians. Striped with white and gray. Dashes of palor blushing into red and darkening into purple. Iceland and the Hebrides hold forth beautiful specimens of chalcedony. But now we must make a swift ascent to the top of the foundation wall, for we can not minutely examine all the layers, and so putting one foot on the chalcedony, of which we have been speaking, we spring to the emerald, and we are one-third of the way to the top of the foundation, for the fourth row is emerald. That I would judge is God s favorite among gems, because it holds what seems evident is His favorite color on earth, the green, since that is the color most widely diffused across all the earth’s continents—the grass, the foliage, the everyday dress of nature. The emerald! Kings used it as a seal to stamp pronunciamentos. The rainbow around the throne of God is by St John compared to it Conquerers have considered it the greatest prize to capture. What ruthlessness when the soldiers of Pizarro pounded it with their hammers. Emerals have had much to do with the destiny of Mexico. Five of them were presented by Cortez to his bride, one of them cut into the shape of a rose, another into the shape of a trumpet, another into the shape of a bell, with tongue of pearl, and this presentation aroused the jealousy of the throne and caused the consequent downfall of Cortez. But the depths of the sea were decorated with these emeralds, for in a shipwreck they went down off the coast of Barbary. Napoleon wore an emerald at Austerlitz. In the Kremlin museum at Moscow there are crowns and scepters and outspread miracles of emerald. Ireland is called the Emerald Isle, not because of its verdure, but because it was presented to Henry 11. of England with an emerald ring. Nero had a magnifying glass of emerald through which he looked at the gladiatorial contests of Rome. But here are one thousand five hundred miles of emerald sweeping around the Heavenly city in one layer. But upward still, and you put your foot on a stratum of sardonyx, white and red, a seeming commingling of snow and fire; the snow cooling the fire; the fire melting the snow. Another climb and you reach the sardius, named after the City of Sardius. Another climb and you reach the chrysolite. A specimen of this, belonging to Epiphanus, in the fourth century, was said to be so brilliant that whatever was put over to conceal it was shone through, and the emperor of China had a specimen that is described as having such penetrating radiance that it makes* the night as bright as the day. A higher climb, and you reach the beryl. Two thousand years ago the Greeks used this precious stone for engraving purposes. It was accounted among the royal treasures of Tyre. The hilt of Murat's sword was adorned with it. It glows in the imperial crown of Great. Britian Luther thought the beryl of the Heavenly wall was turquoise. Kalisch thought it was chrysolite. Josephus thought it a goldencolored jewel. The wheels of Ezekiel’s vision flamed with beryl, and were a revolving fire. The beryl appears in six-sided prisms, and is set in seals and intaglios, in necklaces and coronets. It was the joy of ancient jewelry. It ornamented the affluent with ear drops. Charlemagne presented it to his favorites. Beautiful beryl! Exquisitely shaped beryl! Divinely colored beryl! It seems like congealed color. It looks like frozen fire.

But stop not here. Climb higher and you come to topaz, a bewilderment of beauty, and named after an island of the Red sea. Climb higher and you come to chrysoprasus, of greenish-golden hue and hard as flint. Climb higher and you reach the jacinth, named after the flower hyacinth and of reddish-blue. Take one more step and you reach the top, not of the wall, but the top of the foundations of the wall, and StJohn cries out: “The twelfth, an amethyst!” This precious stone, when found in Australia or India or Europe, stands in columns or pyramids.* For color it is a violet blooming in stone. For its play of light, for its deep mysteries of color, for its uses in Egyptian, in Etruscan, in Roman art, it has been honored. The Greeks thought this stone a preventative of drunkenness. The Hebrews thought it a source of pleasant dreams. For all lovers of gems it is a subject of admiration and su ßgestiveness. Yes, the word amethyst means a prevention of drunkenness. Long before the New Testament made reference to the amethyst in the wall of Heaven, the Persians thought that cups made out of amethyst would hinder any kind of liquor contained therein from becoming Intoxicating.

But of all the amethystine cups from ■ which the ancients drank not one had j any such result of prevention. Five | thousands of years the world has been looking in vain for such a preventive amethystine cup. Staggering Noah could not find it- Convivial Ahasuerus driving Vashti from the gates could not find it Nabal breaking the heart of beautiful Abigail could not find it Belshazzar, the kingly reveler, on the night that the Chaldeans took Babylon, could not find it Not one of the millions of inebriates whose skulls pave the continents and pave the depths of the sea could find it There is no such cup. Strong drink from hollowed amethyst imbrutes the same as strong drink from pewter mug. It is not the style of cup we drink out of, but that which the cup contains which decides the helpful or damning results of the beverage. All around the world last night and to-day, out of cups costlier than amethyst, men and women have been drinking their own doom and the doom of their children for this life and the next. Ah, it is the amethystine cups that do the wildest and worst slaughter. The smash of the filthy goblets of the rummeries would long ago have taken place by law, but the amethystine chalices prevent—the chalices out of which legislatures and congresses drink before and after they make the laws. Amethystine chalices have been the friends of intoxication instead of its foes. Over the fiery lips of the amethystine chalices is thrust the tongue of that which biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder. Drunkenness is a combination of appoplexy and dementia. The four hundred millions victims of opium come out to meet the one hundred and fifty million victims of alcohol, and the two agents take the contract for tumbling the human race into perdition; but whether they will succeed in fulfilling the contract depends on the action of the amethystine cups, the amethystine demijohs, the amethystine ale pitchers, the amethystine flagons, the amethystine wine cellars. Oh, Persians! Oh, Assyrians! Oh, Greeks! Oh, Egyptians! you were wrong in thinking that a cup of eamethyst would prevent inebriation! But standing on the top of this amethystine layer of the foundation of the wall of Heaven, I bethink myself of the mistake that many of the ancient Hebrews made when they thought that the amethyist was a producer of pleasant dreams. Just wear a piece of amethyst over your heart, or put it under your pillow, and you would have your dreams filled with everything beautiful and entrancing. No, 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 physical disease may give a good man a nightmare, but a man physically well, if he behave himself aright, with not be troubled with bad dreams. Nebuchadnezzer, with eagle’s down under his head and Tyrian purple over it, struggled with a 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 afiream in which lean cows ate up the fat cows and the small ears of corn devoured the several large ones, and awful famine was prefigured. Plate’s wife, amid clouds of richest had a startling dream, because of which she sent a message in not haste to a court room to keep her husband from enacting a judicial outrage. But Jacob, at Bethel, with a pillow of mountain rock, had a 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 barrenest island of the Aegean sea, in his dream heard trumpets and saw cavalrymen on white horses and a new Heaven and a new earth. No amount of rough pillow can disturb the night vision of a 'saint, and no amount of amethystine charm can delectate the dream of a miscreant.

But, some will say, why have you brought us to this amethyst, the top row of the foundation of the Heavenly wall, if yon are not able to accept the theory of the ancient Greeks, who said that the amethyst was a charm against intoxication, 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 one thousand five hundred miles of circling amethyst, U put you in a position where you can get a new idea of Heaven; to let you see that after you have climbed up twelve strata of glory you are only at ths base of the eternal grandeurs; to let you, with enchantment of soul, look far down and look far up, and to force upon you the conclusion that if our climbing has only shown us the foundation 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 be figurative, what must the reality be? Oh, this piled-up magnificence of the heavenly wall! Oh, thia eternity of decoration; Oh, this opalescent, florescent, prismatic miracle of architecture! What enthronement of all colors! A mingling of blue skies, and the surf of seas, and the green ol meadows, and the upholstery 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 spiritual glories that roll over Heaven like the Atlantic and Pacific oceans swung in one billow.

—Arthur T. Pierson quotes the saying of Dr. Holmes that the Romans conquered the world with the short sword and lost it when they adopted the long sword, and adds: That is to say, they were invincible when they went to meet their enemy and closed with him hand to hand; they were vanquished when they stayed behind fixed defenses and awaited their foe's assault.

—Nothing pays a poorer interest on the investment than wearing a long face.—Ram’s Horn.