220 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 



with things unspeakably higher and more precious. 

 The vision discovered to him the principle and mean- 

 ing of the earthly facts that had been familiar to him 

 from his earliest years, led him away from the transitory 

 and the accidental to the fixed and enduring, and 

 comforted him with a deep sense of the harmony and 

 permanence of the Divine plan amid all the varying 

 dispensations of Providence. 



It was no fantastic vision separated from all earthly 

 associations that the seer of Patmos beheld. On the 

 contrary, it was linked to all that was dear and sacred 

 to himself and to his race. The forms were the same, 

 but the materials were changed. The old walls of 

 the earthly city stained with the russet hues of time 

 and battered by the fierce assaults of war now ap- 

 peared as a glorious cincture composed of twelve mas- 

 sive courses or tiers of burnished jewels, clasping the 

 heavenly city round and round as with a marriage ring 

 of inviolable sanctity and incorruptible unity. It was a 

 rainbow of precious stones ; a solid and enduring rain- 

 bow, confirming and establishing for evermore what the 

 sign of the earthly covenant, imprinted upon a fleeting 

 vapour by a passing sunbeam, intimated to the genera- 

 tions of perishing men. The toil-worn streets, defiled 

 by sordid traffic and trodden by weary human feet, 

 appeared paved with gold, clear and transparent as 

 glass, pure for the tread of feet which the Saviour's 

 hands had washed, and the sweep of robes which His 

 blood had made white. The materials of the earthly 

 city were substances that faded and decayed, for they 



