CHAPTER XIII. 

 THE GATES OF PEARL. 



' ' And the twelve gates were twelve pearls ; every several gate was 

 of one pearl." REV. xxi. 21. 



THE earthly Jerusalem and its temple had fallen. 

 To the lonely exile of Patmos the event was 

 one of awful significance. The foundations of the 

 universe seemed to be removed, and a vast void 

 created which nothing could fill. In the deep des- 

 pondency created by the knowledge of the fallen 

 Jewish commonwealth, the apostle was permitted to 

 gaze with tearful eyes, through the door opened in 

 heaven, upon the archetypal vision. Like Moses on the 

 Mount who saw the pattern of the tabernacle . in the 

 wilderness before it was constructed the seer of Pat- 

 mos, on his solitary rock in the sea, saw the pattern 

 of the earthly Jerusalem after it was destroyed. When 

 the real vanished, the ideal, of which the real was but 

 a mere passing shadow, was revealed in all its glory. 

 All that was essential in the old polity, with its visible 



accompaniments, re-appeared in the new, associated 

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