277. The Circle

The Circle

Isa_40:22 : ’93It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth.’94

While yet people thought that the world was flat, and thousands of years before they found out that it was round, Isaiah, in my text, intimated the shape of it, God sitting upon the circle of the earth. The most beautiful figure in all geometry is the circle. God made the universe on the plan of a circle.

There are in the natural world straight lines, angles, parallelograms, diagonals, quadrangles; but these evidently are not God’92s favorites. Almost everywhere where you find him geometrizing, you find the circle dominant, and if not the circle, then the curve, which is a circle that died young! If it had lived long enough, it would have been a full orb, a periphery. An ellipse is a circle pressed only a little too hard at the sides.

Giant’92s Causeway in Ireland shows what God thinks of mathematics. There are over thirty-five thousand columns of rocks’97octagonal, hexagonal, pentagonal. These rocks seem to have been made by rule and by compass. Every artist has his moulding room, where he may make fifty shapes; but he chooses one shape as preferable to all others. I will not say that the Giant’92s Causeway was the world’92s moulding room, but I do say, out of a great many figures, God seems to have selected the circle as the best. ’93It is he that sitteth on the circle of the earth.’94 The stars in a circle, the moon in a circle, the sun in a circle, the universe in a circle, and the throne of God the centre of that circle. Full appreciation of this would correct the bungling architecture of churches, whose shape is a defiance of divine suggestion.

When men build churches, they ought to imitate the idea of the Great Architect, and put the audience in a circle, knowing that the tides of emotion roll more easily that way than in straight lines. Six thousand years ago God flung this world out of his right hand; but he did not throw it out in a straight line, but curvilinear, with a leash of love holding it so as to bring it back again. The world started from his hand pure and Edenic. It has been rolling on through regions of moral ice and distemper. How long it will roll God only knows, but it will in due time make complete circuit and come back to the place where it started’97the hand of God’97pure and Edenic.

The history of the world goes in a circle. Why is it that the shipping in our day is improving so rapidly? It is because men are imitating the old model of Noah’92s ark. A ship carpenter gives that as his opinion. Although so much derided by small wits, that ship of Noah’92s time beat the Lucania and the Teutonic, of which we boast so much. Where is the ship on the sea today that could outride a deluge in which the heaven and the earth were wrecked, landing all the passengers in safety?’97two of each kind of living creatures, hundreds of thousands of species.

Pomology will go on with its achievements, until after many centuries the world will have plums and pears equal to the Paradisaical. The art of gardening will grow for centuries, and after the Downings and Mitchells of the world have done their best, in the far future the art of gardening will come up to the arborescence of the year one. If the makers of colored glass go on improving, they may in some centuries be able to make something equal to the east window of York Minster, which was built in the year 1290. We are six centuries behind those artists; but the world must keep on toiling until it shall make the complete circuit and come up to the skill of those very men.

If the world continue to improve in masonry, we shall have after a while, perhaps after the advance of centuries, mortar equal to that which I saw this summer in the wall of an exhumed English city, built in the time of the Romans, sixteen hundred years ago’97that mortar today as good as the day in which it was made, having outlasted the brick and the stone. I say, after hundreds of years, masonry may advance to that point.

If the world stands long enough, we may have a city as large as they had in old times. Babylon, five times the size of London. You go into the potteries in England, and you find them making cups and vases after the style of the cups and vases exhumed from Pompeii. The world is not going back. Oh, no! but it is swinging in a circle, and will come around to the styles of pottery known so long ago as the days of Pompeii. The world must keep on progressing until it makes the complete circuit. The curve is in the right direction, the curve will keep on until it becomes the circle.

Well, now, my friends, what is true in the material universe is true in God’92s moral government and spiritual arrangement. That is the meaning of Ezekiel’92s wheel. All commentators agree in saying that the wheel means God’92s providence. But a wheel is of no use unless it turns, and if it turns it turns around, and if it turns around it moves in a circle.

What then? Are we parts of a great iron machine whirled around whether we will or not, the victims of inexorable fate? No! So far from that, I shall show you that we ourselves start the circle of good or bad actions, and that it will surely come around again to us unless by divine intervention it be hindered. Those bad or good actions may make the circuit of many years; but come back to us they will as certainly as that God sits on the circle of the earth.

Jezebel, the worst woman of the Bible’97Shakespeare copying his ’93Lady Macbeth’94 from her picture’97slew Naboth because she wanted his vineyard. While the dogs were eating the body of Naboth, Elijah the prophet put down his compass, and marked a circle from those dogs clear round to the dogs that should eat the body of Jezebel the murderess. ’93Impossible!’94 the people said; ’93that will never happen.’94 Who is that being flung out of the palace window? Jezebel. A few hours after they came around, hoping to bury her. They find only the palms of the hands and the skull. The dogs that devoured Jezebel and the dogs that devoured Naboth. Oh, what a swift, what an awful circuit! But it is sometimes the case that this circle sweeps through a century, or through many centuries. The world started with a theocracy for government; that is, God was the president and emperor of the world. People got tired of a theocracy. They said, ’93We don’92t want God directly interfering with the affairs of the world; give us a monarchy.’94 The world had a monarchy. From a monarchy it is going to have a limited monarchy. After a while, the limited monarchy will be given up, and the republican form of government will be everywhere dominant and recognized. Then the world will get tired of the republican form of government, and it will have an anarchy, which is no government at all. And then, all nations finding out that man is not capable of righteously governing man, will cry out again for theocracy, and say: ’93Let God come back and conduct the affairs of the world.’94 Every step’97monarchy, limited monarchy, republicanism, anarchy’97only different steps between the first theocracy and the last theocracy, or segments of the great circle of the earth on which God sits.

But do not become impatient because you cannot see the curve of events, and therefore conclude that God’92s government is going to break down. History tells us that in the making of the Pyramids it took two thousand men two years to drag one great stone from the quarry and put it into the Pyramids. Well, now, if men shortlived can afford to work so slowly as that, cannot God in the building of the eternities afford to wait? What though God should take ten thousand years to draw a circle? Shall we take our little watch, which we have to wind up every night lest it run down, and hold it up beside the clock of eternal ages? If, according to the Bible, a thousand years are in God’92s sight as one day, then according to that calculation the six thousand years of the world’92s existence has been only to God as from Monday to Saturday.

But it is often the case that the rebound is quicker, the return is much quicker than that. The circle is sooner completed. You resolve that you will do what good you can. In one week you put a word of counsel in the heart of a Sabbath School child. During that same week you give a letter of introduction to a young man struggling in business. During the same week you make an exhortation in a prayer-meeting. It is all gone; you will never hear of it perhaps, you think. A few years after, a man comes up to you and says: ’93You don’92t know me, do you?’94 You say: ’93No, I don’92t remember ever to have seen you.’94 ’93Why,’94 he says, ’93I was in the Sabbath School class over which you were the teacher; one Sunday you invited me to Christ; I accepted the offer. You see that church with two towers yonder?’94 ’93Yes,’94 you say. He says: ’93That is where I preach,’94 or, ’93Do you see that governor’92s house? That is where I live.’94

One day a man comes to you and says: ’93Good morning.’94 You look at him and say: ’93Why, you have the advantage of me; I cannot place you.’94 He says: ’93Don’92t you remember thirty years ago giving a letter of introduction to a young man’97a letter of introduction to Moses H. Grinnell?’94 ’93Yes, yes, I do.’94 He says: ’93I am the man; that was my first step toward a fortune; but I have retired from business now, and am giving my time to philanthropies and public interests. Come up to Yonkers and see me.’94

Or a man comes to you and says: ’93I want to introduce myself to you. I went into a prayer-meeting some years ago; I sat back by the door; you arose to make an exhortation; that talk changed the course of my life, and if I ever get to heaven, under God I will owe my salvation to you.’94 In only ten, twenty, or thirty years, the circle swept out and swept back again to your own grateful heart.

But sometimes it is a wider circle, and does not return for a great while. I saw a bill of expenses for burning Latimer and Ridley. The bill of expenses says:

One load of fire fagots…………. 3s. 4d.

Cartage for four loads of wood……2s.

Item, a post…………………. 1 Samuel 4 d.

Item, two chains……………… 3s. 4d.

Item, two staples……………… 6d.

Item, four laborers……………. 2 Samuel 8 d.

making in all twenty-five shillings and eight pence. That was cheap fire, considering all the circumstances; but it kindled a light which shone all around the world and aroused the martyr spirit, and out from that burning of Latimer and Ridley rolled the circle wider and wider, starting other circles, convoluting, overrunning, circumscribing, overarching all heaven’97a circle.

But what is true of the good is just as true of the bad. You utter a slander against your neighbor. It has gone forth from your teeth; it will never come back, you think. You have done the man all the mischief you can. You rejoice to see him wince. You say, ’93Didn’92t I give it to him!’94 That word has gone out, that slanderous word, on its poisonous and blasted way. You think it will never do you any harm. But I am watching that word, and I see it beginning to curve, and it curves around, and it is aiming at your heart. You had better dodge it. You cannot dodge it. It rolls into your bosom, and after it rolls in a word of an old book which says, ’93With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.’94

You maltreat an aged parent. You begrudge him the room in your house. You are impatient of his whimsicalities and garrulity. It makes you mad to hear him tell the same story twice. You give him food he cannot masticate. You wish he was away. You wonder if he is going to live forever. He will be gone very soon. His steps are shorter and shorter. He is going to stop. But God has an account to settle with you on that subject. After a while, your eye will be dim, and your gait will halt, and the sound of the grinding will be low, and you will tell the same story twice, and your children will wonder if you will never be taken away. They called you ’93father’94 once; now they call you the ’93old man.’94 If you live a few years longer, they will call you the ’93old chap’94! What are those rough words with which your children are accosting you? They are the echo of the very words you used in the ear of your old father forty years ago. What is that which you are trying to chew, but find it unmasticable, and your jaws ache and you surrender the attempt? Perhaps it may be the gristle which you gave to your father for his breakfast forty years ago.

A gentleman passing along the avenue saw a son dragging his father into the street by the hair of the head. The gentleman, outraged at this brutal conduct, was about to punish the offender, when the old man arose and said: ’93Don’92t hurt him; it’92s all right; forty years ago this morning I dragged out my father by the hair of his head!’94 It is a circle. My father lived into the eighties, and he had a very wide experience, and he said that maltreatment of parents was always punished in this world. Other sins may be adjourned to the next world, but maltreatment of parents is punished in this world.

The circle turns quickly, very quickly. Oh, what a stupendous thought that the good and the evil we start come back to us! Do you know that the judgment day will be only the points at which the circles join, the good and the bad we have done coming back to us’97unless divine intervention hinder’97coming back to us with welcome of delight or curse of condemnation?

Oh, I would like to see Paul, the invalid missionary, at the moment when his influence comes to full orb’97his influence rolling out through Antioch, through Cyprus, through Lystra, through Corinth, through Athens, through Asia, through Europe, through America, through the first century, through five centuries, through twenty centuries, through earth, through heaven; and at last, the wave of influence, having made full circuit, strikes his soul. Oh, then I would like to see him! No one can tell the wide sweep of the circle of his influence, save the One who is seated on the circle of the earth.

I should not like to see the countenance of Voltaire when his influence comes to full orb. When the fatal hemorrhage seized him at eighty-three years of age, his influence did not cease. The most brilliant man of his century, he had used all his faculties for assaulting Christianity; his bad influence widening through France, widening out through Germany, widening through all Europe, widening through America, widening through the one hundred and nineteen years that have gone by since he died, widening through earth, widening through hell; until at last the accumulated influence of his bad life in fiery surge of omnipotent wrath will beat against his destroying spirit, and at that moment it will be enough to make the black hair of eternal darkness turn white with the horror. No one can tell how that bad man’92s influence girdled the earth, save the One who is seated on the circle of the earth’97the Lord Almighty.

’93Well, now,’94 say the people in this audience, ’93this in some respects is a very glad theory, and in others a very sad one; we would like to have all the good we have ever done come back to us, but the thought that all the sins we have ever committed will come back to us fills us with affright.’94 My brother, I have to tell you God can break that circle, and will do so at your call. I can bring twenty passages of Scripture to prove that when God for Christ’92s sake forgives a man, the sins of his past life never come back. The wheel may roll on and on, but you take your position behind the cross and the wheel strikes the cross and is shattered forever. The sins fly off from the circle into the perpendicular, falling at right angles with complete oblivion. Forgiven! Forgiven. The meanest thing a man can do is, after some difficulty has been settled, to bring it up again; and God will not be so mean as that. God’92s memory is mighty enough to hold all the events of the ages, but there is one thing that is sure to slip his memory, one thing he is sure to forget, and that is pardoned transgression. How do I know it? I will prove it. ’93Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.’94 Come into that state this morning, my dear brother, my dear sister. ’93Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven.’94

But do not make the mistake of thinking that this doctrine of the circle stops with this life; it rolls on through heaven. You might quote in opposition to me what St. John says about the city of heaven. He says it ’93lieth four square.’94 That does seem to militate against this idea; but do you know there is many a square house that has a family circle facing each other, and in a circle moving, and I can prove that this is so in regard to heaven.

St. John says: ’93I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne, and the beasts and the elders.’94 And again he says: ’93I saw round about the throne four and twenty seats.’94 Again he says: ’93There was a rainbow round about the throne.’94 The two former instances a circle; the last, either a circle or a semicircle. The seats facing each other, the angels facing each other, the men facing each other. Heaven an amphitheatre of glory. Circumference of patriarch and prophet and apostle. Circumference of Scotch Covenanters and Theban legion and Albigenses. Circumference of the good of all ages. Periphery of splendor unimagined and indescribable. A circle! A circle!

But every circumference must have a centre, and what is the centre of this heavenly circumference? Christ. His all the glory; his all the praise; his all the crowns. All heaven wreathed into a garland round about him.

Take off the imperial sandal from his foot, and behold the scar of the spike. Lift the coronet of dominion from his brow, and see where was the laceration of the briers. Come closer, all heaven. Narrow the circle around his great heart. O Christ, the Saviour! O Christ, the man! O Christ, the God! Keep thy throne forever, seated on the circle of the earth, seated on the circle of the heaven.

On Christ, the solid rock, I stand;

All other ground is shifting sand.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage