The Voice of God by N. Y. Observer

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Nov 4, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 42.

The Voice of God.

By N. Y. Observer

WHEN the earth trembled in Charleston, there were some that mocked, but when the shock was repeated, and the buildings tottered and fell, their mockery was changed into fear, and the proud and self-sufficient scientist ran for the open square as fast as the ignorant negro, and felt even more keenly that unless God helped them the city was doomed. It is an old and very common experience, that the first persons to turn pale in shipwreck and to call upon God, are those who have boasted of their self-reliance and independence of God in fair weather; and there is no surer evidence of ignorance and cowardice, than an irreverent and flippant treatment of those movements in the material world by which God manifests himself to the creatures whom he has made. The proper attitude of every man, be he learned or ignorant, saint or sinner, in view of an earthquake is that of humility. “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.”

Science, with all its theories and inventions, has never been able to defend mankind from a single earthquake, nor to afford the slightest help during its vibrations; but religion has enabled its adherents to say, “Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.”

It is one thing to assume that a calamity is a wrathful visitation of God upon a particular place or individual, and quite another to believe that the voice of God is to be heard in the tempest and the earthquake, as well as in the murmur of the rivulet, and the zephyr breeze. He who assumes to interpret calamity as God’s wrathful judgment should remember the words of our Lord respecting the victims of a Jewish accident,—“or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you nay, But, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” And he, on the contrary, who, looking over the material world, neither sees, nor hears, nor recognizes God in all these works and wonders, should read and ponder the words of Paul from Mars Hill to the Athenians, respecting God: “In him we live and move and have our being.”

To the true student of nature, all things speak of God, from the dew-drop that sparkles on the flower, to the brightest star in Orion’s gleaming belt; from the hum of the tiniest insect to the fearful roll of the earthquake; and he is not to be envied who hears and sees the phenomena of this curious and wonderful world without a single thought of the Creator and Preserver of all! To him the world is a workshop without a workman; to the devout student it is a temple wherein he may daily and hourly worship a God of wisdom, power, and love.—N. Y. Observer.