Note and Comment

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Feb 18, 1904

A MEMBER of the staff of the Baltimore Sun who was an eye-witness of the catastrophe which so recently drew the attention of all eyes in the country to that city, makes these statements with reference to the supernatural character of the work of destruction. We copy from the Washington Post of February 8:—

“You can not imagine it; you can not imagine it,” he kept repeating.

“I have seen big fires in New York and Chicago,” he said, “when block after block would fall before the sweep of the flames, but nothing that approached in terrible fury the catastrophe that fell upon Baltimore to-day. The flames swept down the streets with the onward rush and fury of a tidal wave. Great billows of fire two hundred feet in height would fill the space between the buildings, and, sweeping from side to side, would blot out of existence a skyscraper as if it were a box of matches.

“The Union Trust building and the Atlantic Trust building shared this fate. One moment they stood in the stately beauty of stone and marble; a moment later and they were not. The flames would dash against their sides, beat in the massive walls, leap from windows and roofs and—then would come the collapse. The Union Trust building, one of the handsomest in the country, seemed to my mind to vanish almost as I looked.

“The city was a mass of whirling, burning, blinding embers. In the Sun office, where we sat at work over our desks, the copy paper would burn as we wrote. In the streets the embers fell in sheets and rose and fell again, as the swift wind carried them along. Everywhere were drawn and anguished faces, and the marks of desolation.”

In the presence of such visitations the pride of man is humbled, and he is made to realize that there are about him mightier forces than he is able to control, ready to rise up and assert their sovereignty over the works of his hands. He is called upon to humble himself under the mighty hand of God.