ONE of the most vivid impressions left upon the minds of many is the awful power of the earthquake. It did not seem possible for any building of wood or stone to survive such a manifestation of perverted power. One minute of such fearful motion would wreck any human structure of any weight which suffered it. It is God's goodness and mercy that it came when it did, and that all the after shocks were not concentrated in the first.
MAGNIFICENT courage and fortitude has been manifest by many of the sufferers. They have borne cheerfully, smilingly, hopefully, all the privations they have suffered, minimizing their own loss and putting heart and courage in others. We saw not a few endeavoring to cook food on a little fire enclosed in a few bricks on the street. They certainly knew little or nothing about either fire or cooking. Yet they seemed cheerful and hopeful. Praise God for the faculty of hope which springs eternal in the human breast, even tho often ill-founded. It is a glorious thing if it be based on the sure foundation.
A Scene on Market Street, San Francisco. Men hunting for canned foods amid the ruins.
Courage and Presumption.
This is said to be a Christian land. Many of the men who are with such zeal and courage bent on the rebuilding of San Francisco, are professed Christian men. We admire their splendid courage and grit. But sometimes it looks as if they were planning for the future leaving God out of their reckoning. The Biblical, "If the Lord will, we shall both live, and do this or that," has no part in the commercial creed of to-day. "The God of the Bible has naught to do with nature. It is great Science we will follow. Some of our great steel buildings withstood the shock of the earthquake, we will build all like them." One paper tells us that in rebuilding no device nor provision will be omitted "that can make it as safe from fire as the bottom of the sea." "When it is finished, it will burn again only when the caves of the ocean burst into flame. . . . We know now that San Francisco's only enemy is fire. We have no other to fear." Then we are told that Chicago and Baltimore will some day burn again, but new San Francisco, never. It will be "the safest city in the world."
IT is well to build solid and safe and sure as possible. But it is not well to defy God or flout His Word. San Francisco may build a thousand times stronger than the buildings which stood this time, but when man shall have exhausted God's mercy, and the Almighty shall say, "It is done," the cities of the nation shall fall, and the high towers shall be laid low in the dust, and San Francisco will be with them. San Francisco has had greater enemies than fire. Her pride, her presumption, her sin, her open shameless iniquity, are a thousand times worse foes than fire. Chinatown was bad, but these were worse, because open, flaunting, connived at by the authorities. The mightiest bulwark which a city, a family, an individual can have is a righteous character. All not founded on that, when "the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also, and the works that are therein shall be burned up," shall be turned to ashes. But beyond all this lies the city and the land "wherein dwelleth righteousness." That is the abiding land, the abiding city, the abiding character.
