The Circle
T. DeWitt Talmage
Isaiah, 40: 22: " It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth."
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's 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's Causeway in Ireland shows what God thinks of mathematics. There are over thirty-five thousand columns of rocks-octagonal, 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's Causeway was the world's moulding room, but I do say, out of a great many figures, God seems to have selected the circle as the best. "It is he that sitteth on the circle of the earth." 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 thlan in straight liies. Six thou- sand years ago God flung this world out of his right hand; but he did not throw it out in a straight line, b ...
T. DeWitt Talmage
Isaiah, 40: 22: " It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth."
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's 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's Causeway in Ireland shows what God thinks of mathematics. There are over thirty-five thousand columns of rocks-octagonal, 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's Causeway was the world's moulding room, but I do say, out of a great many figures, God seems to have selected the circle as the best. "It is he that sitteth on the circle of the earth." 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 thlan in straight liies. Six thou- sand years ago God flung this world out of his right hand; but he did not throw it out in a straight line, b ...
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