Note and Comment

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · May 24, 1906

WHAT are spoken of as “freaks” of the earthquake in San Francisco, show that it was not merely a quaking of the ground that occurred on that memorable morning, but that the erstwhile solid earth suddenly became like the surface of wind-swept water, and moved in waves which met and broke like sea waves, having a much more destructive effect in some places than in others close by. A writer in Collier’s Weekly says:—

A building that lay under the breaking point of an earth wave was pulled apart as you pull apart a piece of bread, or its sides ground together, or it fell like a house of cards. For blocks the pavement was scarcely disturbed; then there would be a block where it had been turned into miniature hills and valleys. The stone blocks of the post-office seemed to have been screwed about like dominoes under the hand of a player, and still the building stood. But if the seven-million-dollar city hall had been built with a view to earthquake destruction, its fate could not have been worse.

The nature of the power which gives this motion to the surface of the solid earth is a mystery no human mind has solved. But certainly such forces do not manifest themselves independently of the will of God. “There is no power but of God.” Even the falling of the sparrow is a matter of note to him. These destructive events occur only as God permits them to occur; and in permitting them he has a purpose, which it is incumbent on men to discover. To say that God had nothing to do with the San Francisco earthquake is to deny God altogether.