IN accordance with their usual custom, the National Reformers are endeavoring to make capital out of the Johnstown flood, and use it to frighten people into a support of the Sunday sabbath. In a recent communication to the Christian Cynosure, Rev. J. M. Foster said of this calamity:—
“God has a controversy with our nation, because of our rebellion against him. He is giving us a solemn warning that the day of mercy is near its close. The day of judgment is near at hand. ‘The nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted.’ The iron rod of the divine judgment fell upon our national body. Johnstown suffers. ‘Think ye that those eighteen men upon whom the tower of Siloam fell and slew them were sinners above all that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you nay; but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.’ Think you that the thousands who were carried down by the Johnstown flood were sinners above all the citizens of the United States? I tell you nay. But except this nation repent of its rebellion against the King of kings and bow to his scepter, we shall all in like manner perish.”
Of course, Mr. Foster thinks the failure to keep Sunday is the great sin of this nation. He thinks that the ten commandments are to be recognized as the fundamental law of the land, and to his mind, the fourth commandment, by some hocus pocus enjoins the observance of Sunday. We know that this country is wicked, especially the cities, but we are sure that the judgments of Heaven are not being poured out upon it for any failure to do anything which God never required anybody to do. If the National Reformers could put their finger upon a single text requiring the observance of Sunday, they would be fast enough to do it; but as it is, they simply assume that it should be kept, and that God is angry with this nation because it is not recognized in the laws of the land.
If this were indeed the reason of the Johnstown disaster, it seems strange that any part of Pennsylvania should have been visited. That State now has as strict a Sunday law as any State in the Union, and it would seem more reasonable that if God were going to punish any commonwealth for failure to keep Sunday, he would punish those who are paying the least regard to that day. We do not believe that this was a divine visitation in any such sense as is implied by Mr. Foster. We are not among those who believe that the world is governed entirely by blind, fixed laws, but neither do we believe in making God responsible for those calamities which are due to human neglect. God is under no obligation to work a miracle to preserve his creatures from the results of their own negligence, and he did not do it in the case of440Johnstown; but there is no more sense in supposing that the flood was a judgment sent because the people did not keep Sunday, than there is in thinking that it occurred because only a part of them worshiped the Virgin Mary.
Mr. Foster is entirely too anxious to invoke the wrath of God against those who differ with him in matters of religion, but this disposition only shows what he would do if he only had the power; he would invoke the power and wrath of man as well.