041. The Conchology of the Bible; or, God Among the Shells

The Conchology of the Bible; or, God Among the Shells

Exo_30:34 : ’93And the Lord said unto Moses, Take unto thee sweet spices, stacte, and onycha.’94

You may not have noticed the shells of the Bible, although in this early part of the sacred Book God calls you to consider and employ them, as he called Moses to consider and employ them. Behold and wonder and worship. The onycha of my text is a shell found on the banks of the Red Sea, and Moses and his army must have crushed many of them under foot as they crossed the bisected waters, onycha on the beach and onycha in the unfolded bed of the deep. I shall speak of this shell as a beautiful and practical revelation of God, and as true as the first chapter of Genesis and the last chapter of the Revelation or everything between. Not only is this shell, the onycha, found in the Red Sea, but in the waters of India. It not only delectates the eye with its convolutions of beauty, white and lustrous and seriate, but blesses the nostril with a pungent aroma. This shell-fish, accustomed to feed on spikenard, is redolent with that odorous plant, redolent when alive and redolent when dead. Its shells, when burnt, bewitch the air with fragrance. In my text, God commands Moses to mix this onycha with the perfumes of the altar in the ancient Tabernacle, and I propose to mix some of its perfumes at the altar of our own tabernacle, as I now come to speak of the Conchology of the Bible, or God among the Shells.

It is a secret that you may keep for me, for I have never before told it to any one, that in all the realms of the natural world there is nothing to me so fascinating, so completely absorbing, so full of suggestiveness, as a shell. What? More entertaining than a bird, which can sing, when a shell cannot sing? Well, there you have made a great mistake. Pick up the onycha from the banks of the Red Sea, or pick up a bivalve from the beach of the Atlantic Ocean, and listen, and you hear a whole choir of marine voices’97bass, alto, soprano’97in an unknown tongue, but seeming to chant, as I put them to my ear, ’93The sea is his and he made it;’94 others singing, ’93Thy way, O God, is in the sea;’94 others hymning, ’93He ruleth the raging of the sea.’94 ’93What,’94 says some one else, ’93does the shell impress you more than the star?’94 In some respects, yes, because I can handle the shell and closely study the shell, while I cannot handle the star, and if I study it I must study it at a distance of millions and millions of miles. ’93What,’94 says some one else, ’93are you more impressed by the shell than by the flower?’94 Yes, for it has far greater varieties and far greater richness of color, as I could show you in thousands of specimens, and because the shell does not fade, as does the rose leaf, but maintains its beauty century after century; so that the onycha which the hoof of Pharaoh’92s horse knocked aside in the chase of the Israelites across the Red Sea may have kept its lustre to this hour. Yes, they are so parti-colored and multicolored that you might pile them up until you would have a wall with all the colors of the wall of heaven, from the jasper at the bottom to the amethyst at the top. Oh, the shells! The petrified foam of the sea! The hardened bubbles of the deep! The diadems thrown by the ocean to the feet of the continent! How the shells are ribbed, grooved, cylindered, mottled, iridescent! They were used as coin by some nations, fastened in belts by others, made into handles of wooden implements by still others. Cowries are still used as coin in some parts of the world. Mollusks not only of the sea but mollusks of the land. Do you know how much they have had to do with the world’92s history? They saved the Church of God from extinguishment. The Israelites marched out of Egypt two million strong, besides flocks and herds. The Bible says ’93the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading troughs being bound up in the clothes on their shoulders…. They are thrust forth out of Egypt and could not tarry, neither had they prepared for themselves any victuals.’94 Just think of it! Forty years in the wilderness! Infidelity triumphantly asks: ’93How could they live forty years in the wilderness without food? You say manna fell. Oh, that was after a long while. They would have starved long before the manna fell.’94 The fact is they were chiefly kept alive by the mollusks of the land or shelled creatures. Mr. Fronton and Mr. Sicard took the same route from Egypt toward Canaan that the Israelites took, and they give this as their testimony:

’93Although the children of Israel must have consisted of about two million of souls, with baggage and innumerable flocks and herds, they were not likely to experience any inconvenience in their march. Several thousand persons might walk abreast with the greatest ease in the very narrowest part of the valley in which they first began to file off. It soon afterwards expands to above three leagues in width. With respect to forage, they would be at no loss. The ground is covered with tamarisk, broom, clover and sainfoin, of which latter, especially, camels are passionately fond, besides almost every variety of odoriferous plant and herb proper for pasturage. The whole sides of the valley through which the children of Israel marched are still tufted with brushwood, which doubtless afforded food for their beasts, together with many drier sorts for lighting fire, on which the Israelites could with the greatest ease bake the dough they brought with them on small iron plates, which form a constant appendage to the baggage of an oriental traveller. Lastly, the herbage underneath these trees and shrubs is completely covered with snails of a prodigious size and of the best sort, and however uninviting such a repast might appear to us, they are here esteemed a great delicacy. They are so plentiful in this valley that it may be literally said that it is difficult to take one step without treading on them.’94

So the shelled creatures saved the host of Israelites on the march to the Promised Land, and the attack of infidelity at this point is defeated by the facts, as infidelity is always defeated by facts, since it is founded on ignorance. In writing and printing, our interrogation point has at the bottom a mark like a period and over it a flourish like the swing of a teamster’92s whip, and we put this interrogation point at the end of a question; but in the Spanish language, the interrogation point is twice used for each question. At the beginning of the question the interrogation point is presented upside down, and at the close of the question right side up. When infidelity puts a question about the Scriptures, as it always indicates ignorance, the question ought to be printed with two interrogation points, one at the beginning and one at the close, but both upside down.

Thank God for the wealth of mollusks all up and down the earth, whether feeding the Israelites on their way to the land flowing with milk and honey, or, as we are better acquainted with the mollusks, when flung to the beach of lake or sea. If I should ask you to name three of the great royal families of the earth, perhaps you would respond, the House of Stuart, the House of Hapsburg, the House of Bourbon, but the three royal families of mollusks are the Univalve, or shell in one part; the Bivalve, or shell in two parts, and the Multivalve, or shell in many parts; and I see God in their every hinge, in their every tooth, in their every cartilage, in their every ligament, in their every spiral ridge, and in their adaptation of thin shell for still ponds and thick coatings for boisterous seas. They all dash upon me the thought of the providential care of God. What is the use of all this architecture of the shell, and why is it pictured from the outside lip clear down into its labyrinths of construction? Why the infinity of skill and radiance in a shell? What is the use of the color and exquisite curve of a thing so insignificant as a shell-fish? Why, when the conchologist, by dredge or rake, fetches the crustaceous specimens to the shore, does he find at his feet whole Alhambras and Coliseums and Parthenons and Crystal Palaces of beauty in miniature, and these bring to light only an infinitesimal part of the opulence in the great subaqueous world. Linnaeus counted twenty-five hundred species of shells, but conchology had then only begun its achievements. While exploring the bed of the Atlantic Ocean in preparation for laying the cable, shelled creatures were brought up from the depths of nineteen hundred fathoms. When lifting the telegraph wire from the Mediterranean and Red seas, shelled creatures were brought up from depths of two thousand fathoms. The English Admiralty, exploring in behalf of science, found mollusks at a depth of twenty-four hundred and thirty-five fathoms. What a realm awful for vastness!

As the shell is only the house and the wardrobe of insignificant animals of the deep, why all that wonder and beauty of construction? God’92s care for them is the only reason. And if God provide so munificently for them, will he not see that you have wardrobe and shelter? Wardrobe and shelter for a periwinkle; shall there not be wardrobe and shelter for a man? Would God give a coat of mail for the defence of a Nautilus and leave you no defence against the storm? Does he build a stone house for a creature that lasts a season, and leave without home a soul that takes hold on centuries and aeons? Hugh Miller found ’93The Footprints of the Creator’94 in the Old Red Sandstone, and I hear the harmonies of God in the tinkle of the sea-shells when the tide comes in.

The same Christ who drew a lesson of providential care from the fact that God clothes the grass of the field instructs me to draw the same lesson from the shells.

In almost every man’92s life, however well born and prosperous for years, and in almost every woman’92s life there comes a very dark time, at least once. A conjunction of circumstances will threaten bankruptcy and homelessness and starvation. It may be that these words will meet the ear or the eye of those who are in such a state of foreboding. Come, then, and see how God gives an ivory palace to a water creature that you could cover with a ten-cent piece, and clothes in armor against all attack a coral no bigger than a snowflake. I do not think that God will take better care of a bivalve than of one of his own children. I rake to your feet with the Gospel rake the most thorough evidences of God’92s care for his creatures. I pile around you great mounds of shells, that they may teach you a most comforting theology. Oh, ye of little faith, walk along these arbors of coralline, and look at these bouquets of shell fit to be handed a queen on her coronation day, and see these fallen rainbows of color, and examine these lilies in stone, these primroses in stone, these heliotropes in stone, these cowslips in stone, these geraniums in stone, these japonicas in stone. Oh, ye who have your telescopes ready, looking out on clear nights, trying to see what is occurring in Mars, Jupiter, and Mercury, know that within a few hours’92 walk or ride of where you now are there are whole worlds that you might explore, but of which you are unconscious; and among the most beautiful and suggestive of these worlds is the conchological world. Take this lesson of a providential care. How does that old hymn go?’97

We may, like ships, by tempest be tossed

On perilous deeps, but cannot be lost;

Though Satan enrages the wind and the tide,

The promise assures us the Lord will provide.

But while you get this pointed lesson of providential care from the shelled creatures of the deep, notice in their construction that God helps them to help themselves. This house of stone in which they live is not dropped on them and is not built around them. The material for it exudes from their own bodies and is adorned with a colored fluid from the pores of their own neck. It is a most interesting thing to see these crustaceans fashion their own homes out of carbonate of lime and membrane. And all of this is a mighty lesson to those who are waiting for others to build their fortunes, when they ought to go to work and, like the mollusks, build their own fortunes out of their own brain, out of their own sweat, out of their own industries. Not a mollusk on all the beaches of all the seas would have a house of shell if it had not itself built one. Do not wait for others to shelter you or prosper you. All the crustaceous creatures of the earth, from every flake of their covering and from every ridge of their tiny castles on Atlantic and Pacific and Mediterranean coasts, say: ’93Help yourself, while God helps you to help yourself.’94 Those people who are waiting for their father or rich old uncle to die and leave them a fortune are as silly as a mollusk would be to wait for some other mollusk to drop on it a shell-equipment. It would kill the mollusk, as, in most cases, it destroys a man. Not one person out of a hundred ever was strong enough to stand the possession of a large estate by inheritance dropped on him in a mass. Have great expectations from only two persons’97God and yourself. Let the onycha of my text become your preceptor.

But the more I examine the shells, the more I am impressed that God is a God of emotion. Many scoff at emotion, and seem to think that God is a God of cold geometry and iron laws and eternal apathy and enthroned stoicism. No! no! The shells with overpowering emphasis deny it. While law and order reign in the universe you have but to see the lavishness of color on the Crustacea, all shades of crimson from the faintest blush to blood of battlefield, all shades of blue, all shades of green, all shades of all colors from deepest black to whitest light, just poured out on the shells with no more order than a mother premeditates or calculates how many kisses and hugs she shall give her babe waking up in the morning sunlight. Yes! My God is an emotional God, and he says: ’93We must have colors, and let the sun paint all of them on the scroll of that shell; and we must have music, and here is a carol for the robin, and a psalm for the man, and a doxology for the seraphim, and a resurrection call for the archangel.’94 Ay, he showed himself a God of sublime emotion when he flung himself on this world in the personality of a Christ to save it, without regard to the tears it would take or the blood it would exhaust or the agonies it would involve. When I see the Louvres and the Luxembourgs and the Vaticans of Divine painting strewn along the eight thousand miles of coast; and I hear, in a forest, on a summer morning, musical academies and Handel societies of full orchestras, I say God is a God of emotion; and if he observes mathematics, it is mathematics set to music, and his figures are written, not in white chalk on blackboards, but by a finger of sunlight on walls of jasmine and trumpet-creeper.

In my study of the conchology of the Bible, this onycha of the text also impresses me with the fact that religion is perfume. What else could God have meant when he said to Moses: ’93Take unto thee sweet spices, stacte and onycha’94? Moses took that shell of the onycha, put it over the fire, and as it crumbled into ashes it exhaled an odor that hung in every curtain and filled the ancient Tabernacle, and its sweet smoke escaped from the sacred precincts and saturated the outside air. Perfume! That is what religion is. But, instead of that, some make it a malodor. They serve God in a rough and acerb way. They box their child’92s ears because he does not properly keep Sunday, instead of making Sunday so attractive the child could not help but keep it. They make him learn by heart a difficult chapter in the book of Exodus, with all the hard names, because he has been naughty. How many disagreeable good people there are! No one doubts their piety, and they will reach heaven, but they will have to get fixed up before they go there, or they will make trouble by calling out to us: ’93Keep off that grass!’94 ’93What do you mean by plucking that flower?’94 ’93Show your tickets!’94 Oh! how many Christian people need to obey my text, and take into their worship and their behavior and their consociations and presbyteries and general assemblies and conferences more onycha. I have sometimes gone in a very gale of spirit into the presence of some disagreeable Christians and in five minutes felt wretched, and at some other time I have gone depressed into the company of suave and genial souls, and in a few moments I felt exhilarant. What was the difference? It was the difference in what they burnt in their censers. The one burnt onycha; the other burnt asaf’9ctida.

In this conchological study of the Bible I also notice that the mollusks or shelled animals furnish the purple that you see richly darkening so many Scripture chapters. The purple stuff in the ancient Tabernacle, the purple girdle of the priests, the purple mantle of Roman emperors, the apparel of Dives in purple and fine linen, ay, the purple robe which, in mockery, was thrown upon Christ, were colored by the purple of the shells on the shores of the Mediterranean. It was discovered by a shepherd’92s dog having stained his mouth by breaking one of the shells, and the purple aroused admiration. Costly purple! Six pounds of the purple liquor extracted from the shell-fishes was used to prepare one pound of wool. Purple was also used on the pages of books. Bibles and prayer-books appeared in purple vellum, and may still be found in some of the national libraries of Europe. Plutarch speaks of some purple which kept its beauty for one hundred and ninety years. But, after a while, the purple became easier to get, and that which had been a sign of imperial authority when worn in robes, was adopted by many people, and so an Emperor, jealous of this appropriation of the purple, made a law that any one except royalty wearing purple should be put to death. Then, as if to punish the world for that outrage of exclusiveness, God obliterated the color from the earth, as much as to say: ’93If all cannot have it, none shall have it.’94 But, though God has deprived the race of that shell-fish which afforded the purple, there are shells enough to make us glad and worshipful. Oh, the entrancement of hue and shape still left all up and down the beaches of all the continents! These creatures of the sea have what roofs of enameled porcelain! They dwell under what pavilions, blue as the sky and fiery as a sunset and mysterious as an aurora! And am I not right in leading you, for a few moments, through this mighty realm of God so neglected by human eye and human footstep? It is said that the invention of the harp and lute was suggested by the fact that in Egypt the Nile overflowed its banks, and when the waters retreated, tortoises were left by the million on all the lands, and these tortoises died, and soon nothing was left but the cartilages and gristle of these creatures, which tightened under the heat into musical strings that, when swept by the wind or touched by the foot of man, vibrated, making sweet sounds, and so the world took the hint and fashioned the harp. And am I not right in trying to make music out of the shells, and lifting them as a harp, from which to thrum the jubilant praises of the Lord and the pathetic strains of human condolence?

But I find the climax of this conchology of the Bible in the pearl, which has this distinction above all other gems, that it requires no human hand to bring out its beauties. Job speaks of it; and its sheen is in Christ’92s sermon; and the Bible, which, opening with the onycha of my text, closes with the pearl. Of such value is this crustaceous product, I do not wonder that for the exclusive right of fishing for it on the shores of Ceylon a man paid to the English government six hundred thousand dollars for one season. So exquisite is the pearl, I do not wonder that Pliny thought it was made out of a drop of dew, the creature rising to the surface to take it, and the chemistry of nature turning the liquid into a solid. You will comprehend why the Bible makes so much of the pearl in its similitudes if you know how much it costs to get it. Boats with divers sail out from the island of Ceylon, ten divers to each boat. Thirteen men guide and manage the boat. Down into the dangerous depths, amid sharks that swirl around them, plunge the divers, while sixty thousand people anxiously gaze on. After three or four minutes’92 absence from the air, the diver ascends, nine-tenths strangulated and blood rushing from ears and nostrils, and, flinging his pearly treasure on the deck, falls into unconsciousness. Oh, it is an awful exposure and strain and peril to fish for pearls, and yet they do so, and is it not a wonder that to get that which the Bible calls the Pearl of Great Price, worth more than all other pearls put together, there should be so little anxiety, so little struggle, so little enthusiasm. Would to God that we were all as wise as the merchantman Christ commended, ’93who, when he had found one Pearl of Great Price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.’94

But what thrills me with suggestiveness is the material out of which all pearls are made. They are fashioned from the wound of the shell-fish. The exudation from that wound is fixed and hardened and enlarged into a pearl. The ruptured vessels of the water-animal fashioned the gem that now adorns the finger or earring or sword hilt or king’92s crown. So, out of the wounds of earth will come the pearls of heaven. Out of the wound of conviction, the pearl of pardon. Out of the wound of bereavement, the pearl of solace. Out of the wound of loss, the pearl of gain. Out of the deep wound of the grave, the pearl of resurrection joy. Out of the wounds of a Saviour’92s life and a Saviour’92s death, the rich, radiant, the everlasting pearl of heavenly gladness. ’93And the twelve gates were twelve pearls.’94 Take the consolation, all ye who have been hurt, whether hurt in body or hurt in mind or hurt in soul. Get your trouble sanctified. If you suffer with Christ on earth, you will reign with him in glory. The tears of earth are the crystals of heaven ’93Every several gate was of one pearl.’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage