In that wonderful chapter of hope and cheer—Romans 8—the apostle carries the suffering and self-denying children of God forward to the culmination of their hope in these words:
"For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to usward. For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God." Verses 18-21, A.R.V.
The statement above is fully borne out by other scriptures, and by reason. God is one. God's universe is one. One great Fountain sends its life-pulses from center to its remotest outposts. Before sin entered, when "the morning stars sang together," and "all the sons of God shouted for joy," there was perfect harmony thruout God's royal dominion. No jarring notes brought discord, no perverted law wrought chaos or death. But when sin came, when the highest of God's creatures perverted, transgressed, the highest of God's laws, the very universe was convulsed with pain. As a pierced eye or an aching tooth perturbs the whole man and completely upsets his equilibrium, so the entrance of sin, which, full-grown, produces death, perturbed, troubled, pained, and crippled God's handiwork. "For the creation was subjected to vanity." When God's Day-star, Lucifer, sinned, when man, earth's ruler, followed, all the members of God's creation suffered in sympathy. The fearful storms which sweep the earth, the drouths, the earthquakes, are not the normal actions of earth's normal laws. They proclaim that sin is at work; the earth is subjected on account of man's sin. All of verse 20, except the last two words, is parenthetical. Read without the parenthesis, "For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God, . . . . in hope that the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God."
Salvador Donoso Street, Valparaiso.
It is still waiting for that better day when all God's universe shall swing in majestic unison to perfect law, when wandering comets and lawless meteors shall no longer bode destruction, when consuming suns and dead moons shall no longer mar the handiwork of the Creator, but all shall be in harmony.
But not yet. The sons of earth are still sinning. The work of the deceiver is not over. The sons of God are still subject to vanity, to suffering, to trial, to conflict. And with all this the apostle declares, "We know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." All the violent, unseemly, destructive manifestations we see and experience in earth and sky are the groanings and travaillings caused by sin.
Under sin the world has waxed old, "as [[FIGURE]] doth a garment," and as an old garment is changed for a new so shall He whose "years shall not fail" change the racked and frayed and olden earth to a new. But now it is old, and the increasing earthquakes and calamities, despite all that the skill and science of modern men and methods can do, betoken the end. So Jesus declared that the "famines and earthquakes in divers places" would be the "beginning of travail." Matt. 24: 7, 8. In the beginning of sin's entrance such fearful convulsions occurred as men can only guess from the records left in the seamed and wrinkled planet. For centuries she settled down to fairly steady revolution along the channels of law still unperverted. But now she is nearing her end, and the throes of violence are returning, fierce as the end of a maniac.
When thousands went down in the mighty convulsions which shook Formosa to its center, and caused Vesuvius to belch forth its myriameters of lava in the beginning of 1905, it was thought the earth would rest, and surely there was no danger to be apprehended outside of the "earthquake lands." But on April 18, 1906, came the earthquake which laid low San Francisco, followed a few months later by an equal in Valparaiso, followed by another in China; April 14, of this year, came the earthquake in southern Mexico, followed by the awful Kingston temblor.
October 16 the seismographs of the world [[FIGURE]] reported a very great earthquake which must have had its center out in the ocean somewhere. Seismographic pens were swung from the record sheet in both Washington and Albany, and in both intensity and duration it was reported as remarkable.
A little later news comes to us from a missionary in the Friendly Islands, who writes:
"We are having somewhat of an uncomfortable experience thru the submarine eruption that has recently broken out a few miles from here. The earth is shuddering and vibrating a large part of the time, and the air is filled with the sound as of a roaring lion. Occasionally there are loud explosions. The quantities of lava and stones being thrown up are forming a large island, which is slowly coming up out of mid-ocean. The natives here have been terrified, and the Europeans are somewhat disturbed concerning it."
October 24 a series of earthquakes occurred in the district of Calabria in the south of Italy, and in the island of Sicily. Many towns were destroyed, lives were lost, and thousands left homeless. November 18 heavy shocks were again reported and much damage done.
The worst disaster of the year occurred October 27 at Kartagh, in Bokhara, in Russian Turkestan, Asia. A fearful earthquake caused a mountain to topple over and the whole town was destroyed, and from 15,000 to 20,000 people killed. The earthquake was recorded in Washington and London.
November 8 the Lusitania reported that a wave over eighty feet high swept over the ship, smashing three windows in the captain's house, eighty feet above the water-line.
November 15 the United States revenue cutter McCulloch, in San Francisco harbor from a cruise in Alaskan waters, reported that a volcanic island was thrown up in Bering Sea in 1906 to a height of 395 feet, and was named after their ship by the officers of the McCulloch [[FIGURE]] on July 4 of last year. This year the island had disappeared in an earthquake. A little spit of land rose to the height of 100 feet, which contained "millions of tons of solid material." The sea was still hot and boiling when the cutter arrived. Photographs were taken and drawings made.
What do these convulsions of nature mean to you, reader? All nature is warning us of the end. "But," you say, "are we not safe here?" That is what was said years ago. A gentleman in Chicago sends us the following from "Harper's Monthly," of March, 1869, thirty-eight years ago. Read its assurances of safety:
"The Lands of the Earthquake."
"Will the earthquake in all its terrors ever visit us? Is New York ever to be humbled? . . . or Pittsburg and Chicago? . . . Must San Francisco become a new Callao? . . . If we have ever for a moment entertained such fears, history at once reassures us. History, mother of science, points to the unchangeable unity of nature. . . . The laws of nature are immutable. . . . The stars rise and set as they did of old; the seasons come with their wonted regularity, and summer keeps us every year as it fed the Assyrians and the Greeks; the ocean keeps its appointed bounds. . . . Hence history assures us that even the11terrible earthquake is bound by the unchanging laws of nature to a single path, from which it is not permitted to diverge. And history marks out upon the map of the world where that path lies. . . . Rome and Naples, for example, lie close to the path of the earthquake, and have been subject to slight shocks for centuries, yet they are probably as safe as London or Paris; . . . yet San Francisco is as safe as Rome or Florence, and the North Pacific shore as the coast [[FIGURE]] of England. History, in fact, assures us that ours is not one of the lands of the earthquake; that our exemption from its terrors is as certain as that the seasons will not vary or the summer fail to come; that maternal nature has sheltered us from the destroyer that we may enjoy her gifts at leisure and unfold her vast resources by incessant toil; and that He who holds the earthquake in check has ordained that we may do His work unimpeded by the perpetual horror that broods over other lands."
But it came, nevertheless, a warning from God of what is to be when a mightier earthquake than the planet has yet known shall shake it from center to circumference, and the "cities of the nations" shall fall. Rev. 16: 18-20. Men laughed before the Charleston earthquake, and thought they were exempt, assured by such messages as the above, but it came. San Francisco felt assured of safety; the city by the Golden Gate had nothing to fear, but the temblor came. And they will come, till the old earth's torrent of sin ceases, till its load of iniquity is destroyed in the glory of Christ's presence. Joaquin Miller, "the poet of the Sierras," well said in writing on one of the bloody prize-fights in San Francisco:
"But this sort of thing to-day is right straight along on the road of destruction. She [San Francisco] seems to be learning nothing at all from the fearful lesson she has just had. The preachers from their high places above all laymen, with their wonderful opportunities to see and [[FIGURE]] to say, are saying nothing. But there stands at the heart of the city the one most eloquent orator on earth to-day. That is the rent and ruined City Hall. Here under this torn dome that utters all day and utters all night the full year thru let us take heed. This warning sermon comes from the rended lips of stone and steel. Here under this impressive ruin once beat the
great, strong heart of a great city, and here crime, all sorts of crime were hatched and housed. And here the hand of God fell hardest. Yet no one seems to see nor care at all, or at all comprehend the fearful sermon written on the silent and ever-lifted lips. Go see for yourselves. Go any day or any night. There the ruin stands, and there it will stand; for man seems instinctively afraid to try and restore what God so utterly destroyed.
"San Francisco wills to go straight to ruin again just as fast as she can go. These little dog shows, such as I encountered to-day, are milestones on the steep downhill road. I have said I am of age, and I, and I only, am responsible for what I say."
Sometime men will listen without scoffing, but it may be everlastingly too late.
Merced Temple, Valparaiso.
A Street in Kingston, Jamaica.
McCulloch Peak, as it appeared a year ago, shortly after it rose from the sea, 395 feet high, with a base about 2,000 feet square. It is now gone.
