"As for the earth, out of it cometh bread: and under it is turned up as it were fire. The stones of it are the place of sapphires; and it hath dust of gold."—JOB xxviii. 5, 6.
Have you ever noticed that some words have two meanings, both their own, but giving us very different thoughts about the things of which they speak, according to the way in which we use them?
It is so with our earth. We may speak of it as the firm ground upon which we stand, and may think of the wonderful time of which we are going to read in our chapter in Genesis, when God caused it to bring forth and bud, and clothed all its waste places, so that it has been ever since the green earth which is so fair to look upon. This is the way in which we generally speak of the earth, is it not?—but we may also think of it, not as it appears to us, but as a great globe hung up in the heavens by the mighty hand of God, who "hangeth the earth upon nothing"; for "the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and He hath set the world upon them."
If you could look at a star through a telescope, I think the first thing that would strike you is that there is nothing by which it is upheld and kept in its place. You might say, as you saw it, as it were, hanging in the depths of the sky, "Why, it is hung upon nothing!"
It is just so with our earth: there is nothing that we can see by which it is supported, no "pillars" for it to rest upon—but yet it is kept in its place. God set it there, and God keeps it there.
The Hindu has tried to account for this in his own way: he says the earth does rest upon something; it is supported upon the backs of four great elephants and when he is asked, "Where do they stand?" he replies, "Upon the back of a huge tortoise." This shows the folly of men who have tried to explain what filled the patriarch Job with awe and wonder, even before God had asked him those questions which He alone could answer. "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who hath laid the corner stone thereof, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?"
Once in a time of great danger and trouble, Luther wrote thus to a friend: "I recently saw two miracles; you listen to hear of something startling: some great light burning in the heavens, some angelic visitation—some unusual occurrence; but you hear only this. As I was at my window, I saw the stars, the sky, and that vast and glorious firmament in which the Lord has placed them. I could nowhere discover the columns on which the Master has supported this immense vault, and yet the heavens did not fall! And here was the other miracle: I beheld clouds hanging above me like a vast sea—I could neither perceive ground on which they reposed, nor cords by which they were suspended, and yet they did not fall upon me."
We find it difficult to think of our own globe as a star; but so it is, and when you go out at night and look up at the sky, all covered with little points of light, you may remember that our great earth, with its mountains and forests, seas and plains, and all its cities and towns alive with busy men and women, is but a tiny speck in God's universe; many of those stars which seem so small, as their "twinkle, twinkle" comes from so far away, are themselves suns, larger than that mighty sun of ours which it takes the earth a whole year of days to travel round; and all these wonderful worlds belong to Him "for whose pleasure they are and were created."
Looked at in this way, our earth is but one of a group of eight stars, which have been called planets, or wanderers, because, while other worlds, which are called fixed stars, keep constantly in the same position with regard to each other, these planets are always moving. They have two movements; I think you know that our earth turns round upon itself, as your top does when it spins, and that in this way the changes of day and night come to us; the other movement is that by which it, along with the other planets, travels round the sun.
This yearly journey round the sun which the earth takes is a long one, but so swiftly does it move that it may be said rather to fly than to wander. Shut your eyes and count "One," "two," "three," "four," "five"; in this little moment of time the earth will have got over a hundred miles of its journey. You see it flies along faster than any bird; and what a noiseless flight it is! How is it that we do not feel it moving? Ah, you must remember that the earth carries you along with it; you know nothing about the rapid journey, and yet you are a traveller in spite of yourself—a traveller round the sun.