It
seems quite plain to you, now that you have been taught so much about the
form of the earth, that it must be round. But I wonder whether you have
ever thought that, long before a geography-book was written or a globe was
made--at a time when no one had ever sailed round the world, but all the
wise men thought the earth was flat (except where the mountains and hills
were), and that if they could only travel far enough, they would in time
get to the world's end--God had spoken of it as round. He had spoken of
Himself as the One who "sitteth upon the circle" (or "arch") "of the
earth"; and of the inhabitants thereof--all the people who have lived and
died upon it--as "grasshoppers"; creatures of a day.
When we learn something about other worlds, and find out that this world,
so large in our eyes that we cannot think of anything to compare with it
for greatness, is yet so small that it is like a grain of sand in the vast
universe which God created at the beginning, we may well ask
"Why did the Son of God come down
From the bright realms of heavenly bliss,
And lay aside His kingly crown,
To visit such a world as this?
"Why in a manger was He born,
Who was the Lord of earth and sky?"
The answer to this question is to be found in the verse which you know so
well, where the Lord Jesus Christ Himself tells us that "God so loved the
world"--this place which is "a little city" indeed compared with other
worlds; and the "few men within it"--all sinful people who had gone away as
far as they could from Him--God so loved this lost world, "that He gave His
only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but
have everlasting life.
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