St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1901-11-30

Washington,
In this discourse DR.. Talmage
shows that the good or evil we do re-
turns to bless or blast us; text, Isaiah
1l:22: ''It is He that stitch upon the
circle of the earth"
While yet people thought that the
world was fat 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 a circle. 5
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,
it would have been 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 $4,000 columns of
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 preferable
to all others. I will not say that the
Giants Causeway was the worlds
molding-room, but do say out of q
great many figures God seems to have
selected the circle as the best. "It is
He that stitch on the circle of the
earth" The stars in circle, the
moon in circle, the sun in a 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 a 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 a 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 straight line, but
curvilinear, with 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
scientific 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 it's
achievements until after many CEN
turtles the world will have plums and
pears equal to the paradisaical. The
art Of gardening will grow for CEN
turtles, 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 MAX
ers 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 1890. 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 continues to improve
in masonry, we shall have, after
awhile, perhaps after the advance Of
centuries, mortar equal to that which
I saw in the wall of an exhumed Eng
fish city built in the time of the ROM
ans, 1000 years ago, that mortar to-
day as good as the day in which it
was made, having outlasted the brick
and stone. I say after hundreds of
years masonry may advance to that
point.
If the 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 Pompeii. The world is not go-
ing back. Oh, no! But it is swinging
in 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 I'M
til it makes the complete circuit. The
curve is in the right direction; the
curve will keep on until it becomes
the circle.
Well, now, what is true in the ma
terial universe is true in Gods moral