The Precious Stones of the Bible; or, God Among the Amethysts
Rev_21:19 : ’93The foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones.’94
Shall I be frank and tell you what are my designs on you today? They are to make you homesick for heaven; to console you concerning your departed Christian friends by giving you some idea 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. 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 it is impossible to understand the Bible’97I mean the precious stones; their crystallization, their powers of refraction, their cleavage, their fracture, their lustre, their phosphorescence, 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; ay, the positive revelation they make of God himself.
My text brings us into 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 you cannot understand 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, I propose, so far as the Lord may help me, to attempt 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 that is 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, where the wall begins.
The first layer of the foundation, reaching all around the city and for fifteen hundred miles is a layer of jasper. Indeed there is more of jasper in the wall of heaven than 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 striped with colors so 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, for it is so hard that 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 fragments are brought out and polished and transported and cut into cameos 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 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 stratum of the wall 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-yellow, 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’97colors of opinion, colors 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 sapphire, and it sweeps around 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 ’93The Place of Sapphires,’94 and God thought so much of this precious stone that he put it in the breastplate of the high priest, commanding: ’93The second row shall be an emerald, a sapphire, and a diamond.’94 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 burial of thousands of years it has been brought to light in Egyptian monuments and Assyrian cylinders. At Moscow and St. Petersburg and Constantinople, I have seen great masses of the sapphire, 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 the Revelation, and says: ’93The second, sapphire;’94 and this suggests to me that though our earth and all its furniture of mountains and seas 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 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, a thousand years after the world has gone to ashes, you or I want to recall how the 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. I am glad that St. John told us about it! ’93The second, sapphire!’94 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 some time we will be in converse about this earth when it was yet a-float and a-swing, and we shall want to tell them 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: ’93It looked like that stratum of foundation next to the lowest.’94 The Revelation , 21 st chapter and 19th verse: ’93The second, sapphire.’94
A step higher and you come to chalcedony, another layer in the foundation of the wall and running fifteen hundred miles around the heavenly city. Chalcedony! Translucent. A divine mixture of agates and opals and cornelians. Striped with white and gray. Dash of pallor blushing into red and darkening into purple. Iceland and Hebrides hold forth beautiful specimens of chalcedony.
But we must make a swift ascent to the top of the foundation wall, for we cannot 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’92s 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’92s continents’97the grass, the foliage, the every-day 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. Conquerors have considered it the greatest prize to capture. What ruthlessness, when the soldiers of Pizarro pounded it with their hammers. Emeralds 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 those 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 sceptres and outspread miracles of emerald. Ireland is called the Emerald Isle, not because of its verdure, but because it was presented to Henry the Second of England with an emerald ring. Nero had a magnifying glass of emerald through which he looked at the gladiatorial contests at Rome. But here are fifteen hundred miles of emerald, sweeping around the heavenly city in one layer.
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 Sardis. 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 it shone through whatever was put over to conceal it; and the Emperor of China has 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’92s sword was adorned with it. It glows in the imperial crown of Great Britain. Luther thought the beryl of the heavenly wall was turquoise. Kalisch thought it was chrysolite. Josephus thought it a golden-colored jewel. The wheels of Ezekiel’92s 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. You must not be tempted to stop here amid the brilliance, but 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 St. John cries out: ’93The twelfth, an amethyst!’94 This precious stone, when found in Australia or India or Europe, stands in columns and 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 preventive of drunkenness. The Hebrews thought it a source of pleasant dreams. For all lovers of gems, it is a subject of admiration and suggestiveness. 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 any such result of prevention. For 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 royal 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 result of the beverage. All around the world last night and today, 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’97the 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 apoplexy and dementia. The four hundred million 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 demijohns, the amethystine ale pitchers, the amethystine flagons, the amethystine wine cellars. O, Persians! O, Assyrians! O, Greeks! O, Egyptians! You were wrong in thinking that a cup of amethyst 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 amethyst was a producer of pleasant dreams. Just wear a piece of amethyst over your heart, or put it under your pillow, they said, 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, will not be troubled with bad dreams. Nebuchadnezzar, with eagle’92s 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 a 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 prefigured. Pilate’92s wife, amid clouds of richest upholstery, had a startling dream, because of which she sent a message in hot 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 ‘c6gean 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 one will say, ’93Why 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 intoxication, or if you are not willing to accept the theory of the ancient Hebrews that the amethyst was a producer of pleasant dreams?’94 My answer is, I have brought you to the top row, the twelfth layer of the foundation of the heavenly wall of fifteen hundred miles of circling amethyst, to 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 the 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 thrilling question that if all 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 is figurative, what must the reality be? Oh, this piled-up magnificence of the heavenly wall, this eternity of decoration, this opalescent, fluorescent, prismatic miracle of architecture! What enthronement of all colors! A mingling of the blue of the skies, and the surf of seas, and the green of 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.
Do you not see that it was impossible that you could understand a hundredth part of the suggestiveness of that twenty-first chapter of the Revelation without going 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 the wondrous crystallizations, 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 its beryl, and studying the fifteen hundred miles of emerald without a flaw? Yet all this only the outside of heaven, and the poorest part of the outside; not the wall itself, but only the foot of the wall, for my text says: ’93The foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones.’94 Oh, get down your harp, if you can play one. Get down a palm branch, if you can reach one. Why, it makes us all feel like crying out with James Montgomery:
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 one summer, a few years ago, through the emperor’92s park near St. Petersburg, Russia, I was captivated with the groves, transplanted from all zones, and the flowerbeds, miles this way and miles that way, incarnadined with beauty, and the fountains bounding in such revels with the sunlight as nowhere else is seen. I said: ’93This is beautiful. I never saw anything like this before.’94 But when I entered the palace and saw the pictured walls and the long line of statuary, and aquariums afloat with all bright scales, and aviaries a-chant with bird voices, and the inner doors of the palace were swung back by the chamberlain, and I saw the emperor and empress and princes and princesses, and they greeted me with a cordiality as of old acquaintanceship, I forgot all the groves and floral bewitchment I had seen outside before entrance. And now I ask, if the outside of heaven attracts our souls today, how much more will be the uplifting, when we get inside and see the King in his beauty and all the princes and princesses of the palaces of amethyst? Are you not glad that we did not stop in our ascent until we got to the top round of the foundation wall of heaven, the twelfth row, the amethyst?
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 the touch of it this hour gives me a very pleasant dream. Standing on this amethyst, I dream a dream. I close my eyes and I see it all. We are there. This is heaven! Not the outside, but the inside of heaven. With what warmth of welcome our long-ago departed loved ones have kissed us. How they have changed in looks. They were so sick when they went away, and now they are so well. Look! Yonder is the palace of our Lord the King. Not kept a moment outside, we are ushered into the throne-room. Stretching out his scarred hand, he says: ’93I have loved thee with an everlasting love,’94 and we respond: ’93Whom have I in heaven but thee?’94 But, look! Yonder is the playground of the children. Children do not want a throne. A throne would not fit a child. There they are on the playgrounds of heaven’97the children. Out of the sick cradle of earth, they came into this romping mirth of the eternal playgrounds. I clap my hands to cheer them in their glee. Yonder are the palaces of the martyrs, and before their doorway the flowers crimson as the bloody martyrdoms through which they waded up into glory. Yonder is Apostolic Row, and the highest turret is over the home of Paul. Here is Evangelist Place. Yonder are the concert halls in which the musicians of earth and heaven are taking part’97Handel with organ and David with harp and Gabriel with trumpet and four and twenty elders with voices. And an angel of God says to me: ’93Where shall I take you? On what street of heaven would you like to live? What celestial habitation would you like to occupy?’94 And I answer: ’93Now that I have got inside the wall made up of all manner of precious stones, I do not care where you put me. Just show me where my departed loved ones are. I have seen the Lord, and next I want to see them. But here are those with whom I toiled in the Kingdom of God on earth. They are from my old parishes at Belleville and Syracuse and Philadelphia and Brooklyn and Washington and from many places on both sides the sea where I have been permitted to work with them and for them. Give them the best places you can find. I will help steady them as they mount the thrones. I will help you burnish their coronets. Take these, my old friends, to as good rooms as you can get for them in the House of Many Mansions, and with windows looking out upon the Palace of the Great King. As for myself, anywhere in heaven is good enough for me. Hallelujah to the Lamb that was slain!’94 But I awake. In the ecstasy of the moment my foot slipped from the layer of amethyst’97that so-called producer of dreams’97and in the effort to catch myself, the vision vanished. And lo! it was but a dream!
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage