The Monster of Martinique Island is still belching forth his rage. Later despatches give an enormous loss of life. The Hearst papers summarize the loss of life as follows: May 3, loss of life 150; May 8, 30,000; May 20, 100; June 6, 100; August 30, 1,000; September 3, 2,000; a total of 33,250 lives lost by the eruption. Other conservative reports make the loss of life a few thousand less. It is probable that the 2,000 lives reported lost in the eruption of September 3 includes the 1,000 of August 30. The volcano on St. Vincent Island is also active, and the poor people of these and adjacent islands are terror stricken. Would that they could see that all these perversions and abnormalities of nature are the result of sin.
A General View of St. Pierre.
What volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, tornadoes and tidal waves, famines and pestilences, are to earth, infirmities and diseases are to man. Man is not normal when he is subject to bone-distorting rheumatism, burning fever, torturing headaches, and pain-racking affections of any kind. They all came as a consequence of sin. Their constant or frequent occurrence is indicative of old age, low vitality; decrepitude. So it is with Mother Earth. She is sick with sin. And all the fearful disturbances which rack and twist and torture her mammoth frame are so many evidences of the sore sickness within her, caused by the poison of sin.
Praise God, this old earth will not forever know her present calamities or similar ones. Sometime when sin shall have so borne its legitimate fruit of destruction, woe, and death, that all will see it, the great Master will cleanse the plague spot of the universe, and recreate that which sin has marred, and restore the equilibrium. That He is able to do this, He is continually demonstrating in this sinful earth from year to year in the renewal of life. He is demonstrating it in regenerating men and women by His power. All power is His, and His all-power will be used in His soon-coming good time, and He will “make all things new.” “Be of good courage, all ye that hope in the Lord.”
The greatest power which a man can desire is power over selfishness and sin. These are his greatest foes. No mortal can conquer them single-handed. They can only be conquered by Jesus Christ. He conquered them when here; He will conquer them now in you if you will only let Him. “He is able” “to save,” “to keep,” even to the end.
