A LESSON FROM THE RECENT EARTHQUAKE.
By K. Blossom Wilcox
How uncertain is life! We do not know at what moment we may be called to lay aside our work, lay down our burdens, and respond, whether we will or not, to the summons of that dread enemy—Death. Well did an apostle write: "What is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." But is death an enemy?—"The last enemy to be destroyed is death." But, praise God, it is to be destroyed. "Yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life." But what will money or riches avail? It will not buy back the sweetest and most precious thing in this world—life. During the recent great catastrophe in San Francisco, it is said that one hundred dollar bills were torn in pieces and cast to the winds. Ah, money, no amount of money, could stop, or even check, the mighty convulsions of nature. But we know that this sad calamity is simply a foretaste of what will come upon the world when the restraining hand of God is withdrawn, and His judgments fall upon a wicked and rebellious people, when the dregs of the cup of God's wrath, unmixed with mercy, shall be poured out upon the earth. Many thought at this time that the end of the world had come, and faces blanched with terror, forms trembling with fear, without hope, without refuge to which they could flee, were seen on every side. But how different was, and will be, the experience of those who are truly God's people at such times as these. They have a Refuge to which they can flee, a Fortress in which they can hide. O, why do we not trust Him more? Does it take an earthquake like this to teach us the lesson of perfect trust, of implicit confidence in our heavenly Father. If so, let us learn the lesson well, and thank God for the warning before it is forever too late. Let us make everything right with God and with our fellow men, and walk so carefully and prayerfully before Him that we may ever rest in the fullest confidence on the precious promises with which His blessed Word abounds. "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my Refuge and my Fortress, my God; in Him will I trust." "Because thou hast made the Lord,8which is my Refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling." "I will never suffer the righteous to be moved." And there are many more. "And when the last mighty convulsions shall shake the earth, and the sea, and the sky, and the fragments of a thousand barks, richly freighted with intellect and learning, are scattered on the shoals of error and delusion, their vessel [the righteous, those who rest upon God's promises] shall in safety outride the storm, and enter in triumph the haven of eternal rest."