The Martinique Catastrophe and Earth’s Instability
The recent and current disturbances in our old planet must cause some reflection among thoughtful men as to its stability and continuance. The mighty powers chained in the prison-house of the planet, the puissant chemical combinations in earth’s laboratory, have been but lightly indicated hitherto in profanely historic times. Vesuvius could overwhelm cities after a time with its mighty flow of lava, Mauna Loa could make new geography in Hawaii in days of time; but the cataclysm in Martinique took minutes for its work, where others have taken hours and days. The whole top of the mountain seems to have been blown off at once, and the city of St. Pierre deluged as by a cloud-burst of fire. In fact, the very atmosphere seemed to be aflame. Every attempt to describe the awful catastrophe seems tame. In a few minutes 30,000 persons were engulfed in an awful multiform death—crushed, suffocated, drowned, scalded, burned. One captain of a ship which escaped by a miracle, said that it seemed as tho the last day had come. At that time men will see almost universally what few were so privileged to see locally. Then there will indeed be no place of escape, and “the mighty man shall cry there bitterly.” Earthquakes, beginning about the middle of April, have brought great and sore calamity to Guatemala, involving the loss of 6,000 lives, and the destruction of much property, especially the city of Quezaltenango. Co-incident with the eruption at Martinique was one in St. Vincent, where 500 lives were destroyed. Java, an old seismic center, is also suffering greatly from earthquakes; and famine and fever are rapidly depleting the population. Famine in Russia, famine in China, and war in South Africa and the Philippines, are outbreakings of the sickness and disease of the body physical and politic of this old earth. All these disturbances are the result of sin. The old earth is abnormal, and will become more and more abnormal and diseased, till purified by fire, and renewed by the power of God. It is a poor basis of hope—this old earth. It is better to build in the everlasting kingdom of God.