Amos 7:7-8 Thus he showed me: and, behold, the LORD stood on a wall made by a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand.… Italy is a land of volcanoes, and earthquakes, and other shaking things of the sort, so that it is not easy to build tall and slender towers and yet keep them true to the plummet: There comes a shake, or the foundation yields a little, and the towers tilts — like the leaning tower of Pisa, and the two leaning towers of Turin. It is natural then that builders who have taken pains to do their work thoroughly should seek for some way to "prove" it, so as to show that what they have done is both upright and downright. The builders of the cathedral in Florence took a very ingenious way of proving tiffs. High up, in the centre of that beautiful building, is a lofty dome, like that of St. Paul's, with stained windows all round. On the casement of one of these windows is a small iron ring, and it is by this the uprightness of the tower is tested every year. For, on a certain day in June, at a certain hour, the sun shines through that ring, and its light falls on a brass plate let into the marble floor far beneath. So long as the sunbeam falls on a spot there, on that day and at that moment, it proves that the building is as erect as on the day it was finished; if it had tilted over so little to the one side or the other, that long ray of light would have proved it, for then it could not have fallen exactly on. the right spot. (J. Reid Howatt.) Parallel Verses KJV: Thus he shewed me: and, behold, the Lord stood upon a wall made by a plumbline, with a plumbline in his hand. |
    |