Isaiah 40:22

It is He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth

The circle

While yet people thought that the world was fiat, and thousands of years before they found out that it was round, Isaiah intimated the shape of it.

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 favourites. Out of a great many figures God seems to have selected the circle as the best. “It is He that sitteth upon 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.

1. The history of the world goes in a circle. 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 at Burslem, England, and you will find them making cups and vases after the style of the cups and vases exhumed from Pompeii. The world is not going back. But it is swinging in a circle, and will come back 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.

2. What is true in the material universe is true in God’s moral government and spiritual arrangement. That is the meaning of Ezekiel’s wheel; the wheel means God’s providence. But a wheel is of no use unless it turns around, and if it turns around it moves in a circle. These 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, slew 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 around to the dogs that should eat the body of Jezebel the murderess. But it is sometimes the case that this circle sweeps through a century, or through many centuries. People got tired of a theocracy. They said--“We don’t want God directly interfering with the affairs of the world; give us a monarchy.” 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 recognised. 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 a theocracy, and say, “Let God come back and conduct the affairs of the world.” But do not become impatient because you cannot see the course of events, and therefore conclude that God’s 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. If men short-lived 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! But it is often the case that the rebound 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, “You don’t know me, do you?” You say, “No, I don’t remember ever to have seen you.” “Why,” he says, “I was in the Sabbath-school class over which you were the teacher; one Sunday you invited me to Christ.” What is true of the good is just as true of the bad. You utter a slander against your neighbour. It has gone forth from your teeth; it will never come back, you think. 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 maltreat an aged parent. You begrudge him the room in your house. But God has an account to settle with you on that subject. 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. Retribution in a circle! I would like to see Paul, the invalid missionary, at the moment when his influence comes to full orb--his influence rolling out through Antioch, Cyprus, Syria, Corinth, Athens, through Asia, through Europe, through five centuries, through twenty centuries, through all the succeeding centuries, through earth, through heaven, and at last, the wave of influence, having made full circuit, strikes his great soul. I should not want to see Voltaire when his influence comes to full orb. No one can tell how that bad man’s influence girded the earth, save the One who is seated on the circle of the earth. (T. De Witt Talmage, D. D.)

The inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers

Men as grasshoppers:--

1. So little and inconsiderable.

2. Of such small value.

3. Of such little use.

4. So easily crushed. Proud men’s lifting up themselves is but like the grasshopper’s leap; in an instant they must down to the earth again. (M. Henry.)