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STONES IN THE BIBLE.
How the power, the wonder, of gems makes itself felt in the
Bible ! It meets and mingles with the stern majesty of the truth like
a vital, living thing. Those strong men of God surrendered to the
enchantment of emerald or ruby as never to that of woman or wine.
The love of sparkle and color was a weakness of the flesh for which
they were not called by conscience to account.
Some of them did not know exactly what they were talking
about as when St. John, in his vision of the Holy Jerusalem, described
her light as "like unto a stone most precious, even like a jas-
per stone, clear as crystal."
Not only was jasper, even in those days, when gems were com-
paratively rare, far from "a stone most precious," but as it is always
opaque, an impure form of quartz, it could hardly, even in a vision,
seem clear.
But if you leave mineralogy for poetry, then indeed you are well
rewarded. There are few passages in all literature on precious
stones more beautiful than some in the Testaments, both Old and
New. The high art born of the sincere soul, the single purpose, penetrates
these deathless writings in every part.
Daniel sees in his vision "a certain man," who is the Lord, and
who fills him with both weakness and strength. Him, in all reverence,
as he suddenly appeared, after the prophet's long fast, he thus
describes :
His body also was like aJjeryl. and his face as the appearance of
lightning, and his eyes as lamps" oVfire, and his arms and his feet like
in color to polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice
of a multitude.
Again in "The Song of Solomon," the beryl illumines a passage
of similar import and beauty :
His hands are as gold rings set with the beryl; his belly
is as
bright ivory overlaid with sapphires.
This my beloved, and tm's my iriend, O daughters of Jerusalem !
Poor old patient long-suffering Job through all his trials held
tight to Wisdom and reckoned her above all earthly things, even
above the most precious of stones :
As for the earth, out of it cometh bread; and under it is turned
up as it were fire ;
The stones of it are the place ofjsapphires ; and it hath dust of
gold.
There is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's
eye hath not seen:
The lion's whelps have not trodden it, nor the fierce lion passed
by it.