Newport weekly independent., 1901-11-29
SWINGS IN A CIRCLE.
Good or Evil We Do Shall Retrrn
 to Bless or Blast Us.
pr. TaImage Uses the Beautiful Geo. metrical Figure in His Discourse Circle of Centuries and
 of Good Deeds

Washington, Nov. 8.
 In this discourse Dr. Talmage shows that the good or evil we do re- turns to bless or blast us; text, Isaiah 11:22: '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 beau- tiful figure in all geometry is the circle. God made the universe on the plan of circle.
 There are in the natural world straight lines, angles, parallelo- grams, diagonals, quadrangles, but these evidently are not Gods favor ties. Almost everywhere you find him geometrizing you find the circle dom- inant, and if not the circle then the curve, which is a circle that died young. If it had lived long enough, 1t would have been a full orb, peri phery. An ellipse is circle pressed only little too hard at the sides.
 Giants Causeway, in Ireland, shows what God thinks of mathematics. There are over 35,O0o columns of rocks-octagonal, hexagonal, pentag- onal. These rocks seem to have been made by rule and compass. Every artist has his molding room, where he may make fifty shapes, but he chooses one shape as prefera ble to all others. I will not say that the Giants Causeway was the worlds molding-room, but l 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 circle, the moon in a circle, the sun in circle, the universe in circle and the throne of God the center of that circle.
 Appreciation of this would correct the architecture of churches whose shape is often defiance of divine suggestion. When men build church. es, they ought to initiate the idea of the Great Architect and put the audi ence in circle, knowing that the tides of emotion roll more easily that way than in straight lines. 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, but curvilinear, with a leash of love hold ing 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, the hand of God, pure and Edenic.
 The history of the world goes in circle. Why is it that the shipping in our day is improving so rapidly? A scien tific builder says it is because men are initiating in some respects what the small wits deride, the old model of Noah's ark, not as we see it in old time pictures, but as it really was according to the account given. Great ships have we now, but where is the ship on the sea to-day that could outride deluge in which the heaven and earth were wrecked, land ing all passengers in safety-two of each kind of creatures, hundreds of thousands of species.
 Pomology will go on with its achievements until after many cen- turies the world will have plums and pears equal to the paradisaical. The art of gardening will grow for cen turies, 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 ar- borescence of the year 1. If the mak- CTS of colored glass go on improving, they may in some centuries be able to make something equal to the east window of York minister, which was built in the year 1290. We are six centuries behind those artists, but the world must keep on toiling until 1t shall make the complete circuit and come up to the skill of those very men.
 If the world continues to improve Ill masonry, we shall have, after awhile, perhaps after the advance of centuries, mortar equal to that which saw in the wall of an exhumed Eng AAoh& NiCJ OuilO III CAC tllIIC Ol tuC hOIus ans ,6o0 years ago, that mortar to- dayks good as the day in which it was Made, having outlasted the brick and lone. I say after hundreds of years\masonry may advance to that point.(
 If tNe world stands long enough, we may have city as large as they had in old times Babylon, five times the size of London. You go into the pot teries of England, and you find them making cups and vases after the style of the cups and vases exhumed from Pohpeii. The world is not go- ing back. Oh, no! But it is swinging in circl& and will come around to the styles of pottery known so long ago as the days of Pompeii. The world must keep on progressing un-