Note and Comment by Editor

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 17, 1913

Note and Comment

By Editor

Flood and Storm

The religious journals comment freely upon the terrible disasters that have visited the Central West during the last few weeks. The Examiner of April 3 says:—

It is, undoubtedly, an “act of God,” who sent the whelming rains; but the reason for it is beyond our ken.

The Northwestern Christian Advocate says:—

Again, our vaunted scientific age has received a severe shock by this raid of nature’s forces. No astuteness of mind, no known law of science, gave the wise ones any inkling of the morrow’s titanic program. Man closed his eyes in sleep for a few minutes and was awakened by the shock of an aroused monster.

Of course, we can explain it to-day, but no secret of nature could come galloping to us in premonitory warning. About the time we have builded our house on the sands of science, the winds blow and the floods come and our house falls in confusion. We have no particular insight into the laws of nature. How can we conceive a science of religion?

We speak of the natural disturbances of the past week as terrible. We seem too stunned to seek a way of explanation.

Some of the journals seek to harmonize disasters of this character with the judgment and mercy of God. Speaking on this point, the Lutheran of April 3 says:—

Such disasters, because of their suddenness and unexpectedness, completely overshadow in importance, in the popular mind, evils infinitely more appalling than they. Think of the sorrow and distress which sin is bringing with it every day in millions of homes outwardly prosperous. The tempests and floods of a whole century do not begin to cause such havoc in men’s lives as the breaking of the ten commandments do in a single year or even month. . . . Who gives this a thought? Verily, the loss of life and property wrought by storm and flood, is not to be compared with the disasters wrought by sin, terrible though the former for the moment seem to be.

The Advance of April 3 refers to the recent disasters, in the same way:—

There has come to this country a pamphlet in German by Professor Lutgert, of Germany, on the shock which the optimism of Europe received from the earthquake of 1755. At that time the greatest name among philosophers was Leibnitz, with his laws of monads and their eternal harmony. The brightest mind in contemporary life was Voltaire, with a theory of an esthetic benevolence in nature. And everywhere was a complacent deism that thought God was good but that he was not very much in earnest.

Then on Nov. 1, 1755, the city of Lisbon went down with a loss of between 30,000 and 40,000 lives, and men began anew to examine their theories. From that time, Professor Lutgert maintains, the rationalists ceased to be as optimistic as formerly, and taught a doctrine of submission to the inevitable; while the orthodox, who had been counted pessimists in their sterner doctrine of God, now rallied to a new faith, preached a goodness that could not be submerged by any calamity of life, a trust in God that no shock could overthrow, and a new emphasis on free will. Thus, as this author contends, the rationalists became the pessimists, and the Christians were revealed as the true optimists.

There had been a removal of the things that had been shaken, that the things that were not shaken might remain.

We believe that God in his infinite love permits such disasters for the very purpose of leading men to give thought to the questions of sin and the way of escape therefrom. In regard to this we quote the following from “Testimonies for the Church,” Vol. IX, page 97:—

More and more, as the days go by, it is becoming apparent that God’s judgments are in the world. In fire and flood and earthquake, he is warning the inhabitants of this earth of his near approach. The time is nearing when the great crisis in the history of the world will have come, when every movement in the government of God will be watched with intense interest and inexpressible apprehension. In quick succession the judgments of God will follow one another,—fire and flood and earthquake, with war and bloodshed.

O that the people might know the time of their visitation! There are many who have not yet heard the testing truth for this time. There are many with whom the Spirit of God is striving. The time of God’s destructive judgments is the time of mercy for those who have had no opportunity to learn what is truth.

Through the ministration of the Spirit, through the preaching of the cross, through the circulation of the Scriptures and the distribution of religious literature, God is seeking to save men from the wrath to come; and just as surely is he saying, “Come,” through fire and flood and sickness and sorrow which he permits to visit the human family. He is not the author of sorrow in that he creates it, but he does permit it, and he permits it in love. May God grant that those for whom the lesson is designed may learn it and turn to him who wounds that he may heal, and bruises that he may bind up again.