Protective Calamities

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 7, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 39.

Protective Calamities.

THERE are certain diseases which physicians denominate “protective” diseases. Among them are small-pox, scarlet fever, measles, etc. They are called “protective,” because once having them is a protection against any future attack of them. It would seem that the journals of this country are determined to class destructive earthquakes as a “protective” calamity. They nearly all, the religious journals especially, agree that now that Charleston and vicinity has suffered, “it will doubtless be centuries before another serious earthquake will occur.” But the history of the past demonstrates the fact that earthquakes are not “protective” in any sense. They protect nothing when they occur, nor is the occurrence of one an assurance that another may not soon follow. The persistence with which the papers exclaim, “We shall have no more earthquakes,” savors very much of the boy who whistles to keep his courage up as he goes through the graveyard on a dark night. Their assertions may quiet their own apprehensions, but they cannot keep the earth from shaking.