That is, the superstructure, all that part of the wall which rises above the foundation rows, was one great mass of brilliant jasper. There was jasper at the foundation and jasper at the summit; this stone is “the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega, of the heavenly building, clasping the intervening rows together by two perfect bands of light.” Now what this jasper was cannot be exactly ascertained; but it is perfectly certain that it was not the stone which bears that name now. The common jasper is of many kinds. Sometimes purple, sometimes cerulean, sometimes green, and more frequently a green stone streaked with veins of red. Moreover, it is not very precious, not distinguished by its brilliancy, and it is far surpassed both in beauty and worth by many others. These marks prove beyond question that our jasper is not the stone which was in the apostle’s mind. The descriptions which are given of it in the Apocalypse correspond exactly with the characters of the diamond, and unless the diamond was unknown to the ancients, which is hardly possible, the jasper must have been this stone. Butwhether the diamond or not, the jasper of John’s vision had all the characteristic features of the diamond. It was the most precious of stones, it shone like the sun, and, while showing no particular colour, contained all the colours in its pure, white light. Bear in mind, further, that the jasper throughout the Apocalypse is the type of Christ. “He that sat upon the throne was to look upon like a jasper,” says the inspired writer; and, further, “God Almighty and the Lamb are the light of the city,” and “this light is like unto a jasper.” The thought of our text, then, is this--that above the foundation rows, with their stones of various colours and of various price, is the stone most precious, most brilliant, shining with the pure, white glorious light of Christ. Christ is the top-stone as He is the chief corner-stone, the superstructure as He is the foundation.
I. The superstructure of this building contains in perfection and completeness all that the foundations save in imperfection and incompleteness. The sapphire, the chalcedony, the sardius, and the rest, are very beautiful; but they are stones of one or, at most, two colours, and these colours not clear, but flecked and stained with spots and dark lines; while the white light of the jasper, like the white light of the sun, contains all the colours, and contains them in unmixed purity. As all the hues of the rainbow are in the sun’s rays, so all the hues of the twelve foundation stones are combined in the splendid jasper band which crowns the summit. Or, putting it in other words, while the foundations have each their separate grace, and shine each with their distinct glory, the jasper superstructure holds all the graces, there all the glories unite. All the special qualities found separately in the stones below are found in splendid combination in the building above. And this means--
1. That Christ combines in Himself all actual and possible graces. The prophets and apostles and holy men of old were like the rows of foundation stones, men of one colour, of some one or two distinguishing graces. At their best they were still one-sided men; giants in one Christ-like virtue. God’s glory shone through them all, but they were imperfect mediums. They intercepted more than they transmitted of it: they showed only one or two hues of the jasper light in perfection. But Christ unites them all, and shows them all in their most complete and glorious form. It is this all-comprehending beauty and perfection of Christ that charms us, touches every fibre of our moral nature, and chains our wandering fancies to His feet. Everything that we have ever admired, or ever longed for in our best moods, meets us here. Here is perfect love and sinless anger; mighty self-assertion, and still mightier self-abnegation; a child’s humility, and a king’s dignity; a peasant’s simplicity, and a philosopher’s profundity; David’s fearlessness, Elijah’s zeal, Isaiah’s raptures, Jeremiah’s tears, a woman’s tenderness, and God’s almighty strength. Yes: in Him is all that the most aspiring souls everlonged for, and the most heroic hearts ever throbbed for. “He is the chief among ten thousand, and the altogether lovely.”
2. The ideal Church, the Church that is to be, combines in itself, like Christ, all the graces. It is growing up out of the parti-coloured stones into the white, all-embracing jasper. The Church, as we have known it in history and experience, has always been one-sided; the successive ages of the Church have been almost exactly like the foundation stones, showing each of them one prominent colour. Each period inthe Church’s history has been distinguished by one strongly marked Christian virtue. The first age was bold in confessing Christ, strong in its contempt for the world, full of the martyr’s zeal; yet strangely impatient, almost inviting martyrdom. That early Church was sublime in some of its moods, but altogether childish in others. Look at the early monastic age again. There also the Church is strong in its contempt for the world’s pleasures, in its power to trample on the lusts of the flesh and the pride of life; but there is no Christ-like sympathy, no concern for a guilty, sorrowing world. See again the Church of the Reformation. It has a giant’s strength and courage; faith mighty enough to remove mountains. It walks with God, but its sternness is not tempered by the gentleness of Christ. It has the Master’s hatred of sin without the Master’s mercy for the sinner. And the Church of to-day, while great in charity and humanitarianism, is in danger of becoming, if it has not already become, just as one-sided in another way. It is tempted to look only on the gentle side of Christian doctrine, to let charity enfeeble its robustness, and pity for the sinner engender shallow views of sin. But the Church is striving up, patiently, through the coloured rows, to the superstructure. When it has attained that it will no longer be a partial, one-sided Church, but beautiful, with all the graces of the Master. More faithful than the early Church, purer from the world’s stains than the Monastic Church, stronger in its zeal against sin than the Reformation Church, and more tender and charitable than the Church of to-day. Nothing will be lacking to its completeness.
3. The same thing is true of the individual believer. Our growth in Christ is like that of the Church--each stage characterised by some prominent grace, but not one of them uniting all the graces. In the early stages of the Christian life there is much faith and courage, but little patience; in the later stages, great patience, but often diminished zeal. The average Christian is never eminently Christ-like at more than one or two points. It is as if he had to starve one grace to feed another. When our lives are fairest and our faith strongest we still show only one or two sides of the beauty of our Lord. We have His tenderness without His strength, or His gentleness without His stern hatred of sin, or His boldness without His forbearance. But this is because the building has not yet risen above the foundation rows. The superstructure of it is of jasper. We shall be “complete in Christ.” When He has finished the work in us there will be nothing wanting. No partial colouring there, but the white jasper light which combines all the hues. For each believer, then, as well as for the Church, “the building of the wall is of jasper.”
II. The beauty and glory of the superstructure are made up in great part of the elements which composethe foundation. If you could take the twelve rows of stones, bring all their varied colours into combination, concentrate their diffused radiance, and remove allimpurity, the result would be just such a brilliant diamond belt as the wall of jasper. As you trace the foundation stones from the base to the summit, you see them becoming continually more glorious and ethereal, nearer to the perfect white, the higher bands taking in all the colours of the underlying ones until the jasper completes and embraces all. And the thought is this, that the glory of the perfected Church will be made up, as it were, of all that it has been and done and suffered through all the ages of its history. In spite of all evidences to the contrary, the Church of to-day is stronger and more faithful and more able to wrestle and endure, more like her Master than she has ever been before. For she has learnt something, and won something, from every one of her past experiences. The fervour of the first centuries, the purity and contempt for the world of the monastic age, the strong warrior-like faith and courage of the Reformation period, have influenced her, moulded her, bequeathed their best features to her. And all her waiting, all her labours, all her conflicts, are still helping to supply the colours which are wanted for her perfect beauty, so that the jasper wall may be at last complete. And this truth holds of individual believers just as fully as of the Church. The superstructure of our lives, the glory to which we are growing in Christ, is made up in large measure of the trials and struggles and patience, the faith and hope and love, of our present changeful experience. If you look at the solar spectrum--that is, sunlight divided into its component rays by passage through a prism--you will see all the colours of the rainbow there; and not only these colours, but dark lines, thousands and thousands of them--dark lines, and quite mysterious, for scientists cannot explain them, or say what purpose they serve. Yet they are necessary parts of the ray, they join with the colours to make the light complete. And so it is with our lives when they are fashioned into Christ’s perfect beauty, made up of many colours bright and sombre, from sorrowful blood-red to triumphant purple, and crossed with dark lines innumerable, incomprehensible. We would leave some of these colours out if we could, we should like to erase all the dark lines. We would have no red, especially--no passion, no tears, no sorrow. But the result would be miserably disappointing. For the royal purple is made up of blue and red, and the golden has red for its base, and the perfect white light needs all the colours and all the dark lines to make it complete. We cannot reach the jasper superstructure without passing through the trial and patience which are symbolised by the stones below. But all these things are helping to form the perfect Christ in us. The foundation-stones are beautiful because Christ is in them, but they are not like the top-stone which knows no darkness, no lines of sin, no incompleteness, and where joy and peace are stamped in perfect and eternal characters. We are reaching up to that, Christ’s strong hand holding ours to make the ascent secure. And the superstructure is of jasper. (J. G. Greenhough, M. A.)
The jasper wall
The picture of the measurement of the city has a colour and tone of triumph in it. Heaven rejoices in its divinely perfect proportions. Goal marks with the exactness of love the holy city that mirrors heaven’s own beauty, and would proclaim its lineaments and proportions of glory to all the world. There are some things that are not worth measuring. Heaven will take no copy of some lives, that they may die the sooner. The measurement also symbolises heaven’s inexorable demand for ideal perfection in human life. In the city of God there must be no defect or redundancy. The vessels of God’s glory must be without flaw and without alloy. No column in His temple shall be broken or deficient. God will not stop half-way, or be content with rough approximations to His ideal. Hence it is that the best human structures must fail and be condemned. This measuring is, therefore, further, a symbol of eternal preservation. To “measure off” implies a selection for some purpose or other, and here it is clearly for the purpose of honour and preservation. In the first verse of the eleventh chapter we find “the temple of God and the altar, and them that worship therein,” measured in the same way, while “the court without the temple” is left unmeasured. In that passage the symbol is explained by the assertion that the” outer court” is so far left unprotected that it has been given unto the nations for forty and two months.
I. The first question that presses for an answer in any attempt to interpret this symbol is, What relation does the jasper wall hold to the general structure and constitution of that city?
1. In the first place, the “jasper wall” gives unity to the varied expanse of the city. In the ancient conception, a city without a surrounding wall scarcely found a place in the mind at all, except as a picture of desolation and ruin. The myriad-sided life of the city and State can never be gathered into perfect harmony except within the wall of jasper, except by being pervaded by the Divine life in its profoundest manifestation of love. Men will of a certainty remain scattered, in spite of all human devices, until they are united by that transcendent love which comes through faith in Jesus Christ. Through this, and through this alone, are those strong conflicting interests overcome that separate men from one another.
2. Further, this wall of jasper marks the extent of the city. With the encompassing wall the city ends. The description which John gives, therefore, represents the ideal city as being of vast and magnificent extent. It is bounded by the “jasper wall”--that is, by nothing of narrower dimensions than the vast thought, purpose, and power of redeeming love. At this point John adds symbol to symbol, in order that there may be no mistake as to his meaning, and that the meaning may be emphasised in the strongest way. The length and breadth and height of the city are given in symbolic numbers. The three are equal, and their measurement is twelve thousand furlongs. That is, we are informed by a new symbol that this city is as vast as the energies of the Divine kingdom of redeeming love. Of course, it is now clear that the length and the breadth and the height of it cannot be other than equal. In every direction of its life it must reach the full measurement of redeeming power. As far as the love of Calvary can transform the lives of men, as far as it can lift the thoughts and purposes and attainments of men towards the lofty heavens, so great is the length, the breadth, and the height of the holy city.
3. It is instructive to note, further, that the wall of a city was its great watch-tower. Upon its summit the watchman stood to take observation of the country around, to warn the city of danger, and to instruct it concerning the outer world. The walls of the ideal city are not only ramparts, but also watch-towers, the place of furthest vision. The blind children of this world make the mistake of supposing that the city of redemption is a narrow enclosure, which hides from us the wide and varied prospect which they imagine lies before themselves. They pity us, and invite us to leave the narrowness of the Cross, and the fetters of redeeming love, that our vision may become as free as theirs. It is they that are enclosed around, and cannot see afar off. The Cross is the true watch-tower of the mind, as well as of the spirit. It is not only the centre of power, but also of wisdom and knowledge. It is the light of God in which “we also shall see light.” In proportion as we rise to the knowledge of the revelation of God in Christ, all the vast realm of thought will appear in its true character and proportions before us; for the God-man is, in every sense, the light of the world.
4. The jasper wall is, further, representative of the defence of the city. The need of defence against attack was probably the earliest reason for the construction of the ancient city walls, the other ideas of which we have spoken having afterwards grown upon this underlying one. So the ideal city is safe for ever, guarded by this wall of jasper, which is great and high. No battering ram can beat down these walls, for they are constructed out of the mightiest forces of omnipotence, the forces of eternal grace and infinite love.
II. A few words will suffice to show the relation of the jasper wall to the foundations of the city. The first thing that strikes us as impressively suggestive is the fact that the deepest base of the city and its towering walls are composed of the same material. When we begin to search for the strength of the twelve foundations, John meets us with the assertion: “The foundation is jasper.” When we raise our eyes to behold its lofty ramparts, and would fain know what its topmost glory is that mingles with the skies, John again says: “The building of the wall thereof was jasper.” It is the symbolic representation of the utterance of the Divine Saviour, who says: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” In Christ, the effulgence of the Father’s glory, the first foundations are laid of the city of a glorified human life, and in Him its final splendour will be realised. The name of Jesus is the all-potent source of new life for the fallen sons of earth, and it shall be the eternal boast and wonder of the glorified. As is the lowest foundation of the holy city, so shall be its supremest splendour. The Cross can never be superseded. The wall of jasper is a living growth out of the foundations of precious stones. This living relation in the growth of the ideal city is determined by eternal and inexorable law. The city’s jasper wall cannot be built unless the foundations are set in precious stones, and the deepest of these is jasper. Passing from symbolic language to plainer speech, the quality of a city’s life cannot rise higher than its deepest foundations. The nature of the principles and ideals upon which men proceed will determine the value and permanence of such a social life as they are likely to create. Upon foundations of iron and brass nothing better than iron and brass can ever be built. If our ideals fall short of the divinest that are possible to men, if our deepest principles fall short of the glory of the eternal skies, then the building of the ideal city becomes for ever impossible for us. On the other hand, the foundations of precious stones cannot fail to issue in the wall of jasper. “When Divine forces form the base, the city is certain to rise in the likeness of God. Out of the love of the Cross a kingdom of love shall of necessity grow. All ye that desire to build the jasper wall, remember that it cannot be built except on the jasper foundation.
III. There are one or two points remaining in the characterisation of the jasper wall which must receive brief notice. One consists in the measurement of the thickness of the wall, which is declared to be a hundred and forty and four cubits--that is, twelve cubits by twelve. This is clearly, once more, the number that symbolises redemption, and so brings the thickness of the city-wall into line with the twelve thousand furlongs that measure the length and breadth and height of it. In the last place, it is instructive to note that the city when measured proves to be an exact cube. “The length and the breadth and the height thereof are equal.” The cube has from ancient times been regarded asa symbol of ideal perfection. Here human life is at last full and complete, having found the complete cycle of its power. Probably, however, John’s picture is more immediately connected with the form of the “holy of holies” in the tabernacle, which was also a perfect cube, no doubt based upon the ancient idea of that form asbeing specially perfect and sacred. (John Thomas, M. A.)
