The Lesson of the Earthquake
By L. A. S.
THESE are days when the world has nearly forgotten God. They have forgotten him in the idea, which is ever struggling to be uppermost in men's minds, that their sufficiency is of themselves, and that by their own wisdom and power they live and move and achieve success in the pursuits of life. But there are times when men have a rude awakening from this comfortable delusion, and are forced to lay their glory in the dust before a power compared with which their own is but a bubble, and remember the forgotten lessons of their childhood, about a God whose throne is in the heavens, and in whose hand is the breath of all living creatures. God has not forgotten those who have forgotten him. He is endeavoring to bring the world to its senses, and to teach men the lesson upon which their eternal welfare depends. Heroic measures are needed to awaken this proud, self-sufficient generation to a sense of their own nothingness and their need of a personal God who has power unto salvation. It is a personal God upon whom men call in the hour of trouble. When men are in the midst of earthquake and fire, they do not fall on their knees and cry to a “cosmic force.” The tendency of men to glory in their own achievements has frequently to be repressed by events which lay all man's glory in the dust. Not much occasion have men to boast of their mastery over the forces of nature. Not much occasion is there for thinking that any human power can ever for a single moment successfully grapple with the titanic forces which nature has in reserve, hidden out of the reach of man, or that any human wisdom can ever foresee the moment at which these forces may become suddenly active. Man is forced to admit that, after all, he is but a pygmy in the grasp of other and higher powers which inhabit this world of which he has been accustomed to consider himself the master. All human calculations are upset by such events as that which has brought such sudden and terrible ruin to San Francisco and the surrounding territory. Earthquake, volcano, fire, cyclone, and flood, all bring agencies of destruction before which man is helpless, and has but the one recourse of flight to save his life. But often the destruction comes with such swiftness that there is no escape. These destructive agencies are becoming alarmingly active, and the fact should cause sober reflections in the minds of thinking people. The Word of God will throw light on the situation to those who seek light from that source. It is the hour of God's judgment. The divine judgments are in the land, and the work of judgment must become more and more marked until the climax of God's controversy with sin in the earth is reached, and the day comes of the visible appearing of the Son of man in the clouds of heaven with his angels, to reap the harvest of the earth.