The Recent Wonderful Phenomena in Heaven and Earth.
By Editor
THE following selection, sent us by a brother, appeared recently in the columns of a secular paper in New York city, but is more valuable than if it originated with the Advent press. We think its author shows a degree of sagacity amounting almost to prescience, which verifies the Saviour's words that "the children of the world are wiser in their generations than the children of light." Doubtless an All-controlling Power is speaking to the wayward sons of men in the multiplied and singular phenomena of the present time. All who read with care the Book of God, may learn that war, famine, pestilence, earthquakes, fearful sights, &c., are but the dread precursors of the judgment of the great day, and the ushering in of the reign of peace. As if in mercy to cause the inhabitants of earth to stop and think, while it may do them some good, God sends these portentous heralds among the people. Reader, are you learning the lesson? "Earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes and similar violent operations of nature are not uncommon in this uneasy hemisphere. The whole western slope of the continent is a region of 'violence, fracture and fire.' Two or three movements of the earth are felt every year on the Pacific side—now at St. Louis, and again, at San Francisco. And as a volcano is an almost necessary result of an earthquake of any consequence, we may say that we have also our two or three volcanic eruptions, either on the land or thousands of miles out under the sea. Four earthquakes were felt on the continent in 1864—ranging from the Mississippi to the Pacific, and from Canada to Panama. In the present year we have had already an even larger number. Hurricanes also are almost a feature of life in the tropical region of America—progressive whirlwind storms of the most terrific power. Sometimes these invade the temperate zone also, and last year one made a swathe all across the northern section of the United States. But recently a great number of these wonders of nature have occurred within a short period of each other—so short a period as naturally to suggest some relation of cause and effect. On the 6th of September there was a terrible hurricane at Guadaloupe, in the West Indies, and on the 22d, an earthquake at Porto Rico. On the 23d of the same month Mt. Hood, in Oregon, began to discharge volcanic matter, and the internal disturbance thus indicated was also seen in a very considerable earthquake that on the 8th instant rocked the houses of San Francisco to and fro in a very free and easy manner. Several celestial wonders have also come in this same period. Some accident of a stupendous nature evidently occurred in the sun in September; perhaps a fiery crust caved in over an immense space, making visible nine thousand miles of a darker central substance. That is the magnitude of the darker part of a spot now visible on the luminary—the length of the whole spot darker and lighter together, being twenty-nine thousand miles. In the same eventful September a new planet was discovered in the heavens; and only the other day we had that ever fresh wonder, an eclipse of the sun. We do not assert the relationship of these phenomena, but no man having full regard to the history of science will venture to deny that such relationship exists. We cannot see, perhaps, that a great wind storm in the West Indies has anything to do with the agitation of the molten masses beneath the crust of the earth on the Pacific shore of our continent; nor can we say how a volcanic demonstration of nature's gigantic chemical processes may be associated with shadows seen on the sun. But it is known that the disturbances in the sun directly influence the electrical conditions of the earth, and to the influence of those electrical disturbances no one can assign a limit. They cannot be without their influence on such a purely atmospheric phenomenon as the hurricane. Between the disturbed electrical conditions of the earth and the central fires there is also an evident connection. Tremblings of the earth—shocks, volcanoes—are always preceded by changed electrical conditions; and when considerable, this changed condition has even a remarkable influence upon animal life. And it should be remembered, in connection with all these phenomena, that only so long ago as when the attempt was made to lay the Atlantic cable, the earth was swept by a remarkable electric storm. This period of remarkable phenomena comes just at the close of another sort of a storm. It follows a great war, and with us, perhaps, precedes a pestilence. Perhaps it is one of the ancient errors of the human race that earthquakes and eclipses accompany pestilence and war. Wars certainly come oftener than eclipses or even comets, and earthquakes shake countries that are otherwise in the most positive peace. It may be convenient to assume this connection when we cannot explain war in any other way, and there is some use for such an assumption in our war. Reflecting that Southern men made it, it would seem almost as if their action must have been influenced by some uncontrollable madness, as wide spread and general as the air. But in the case of pestilence, and especially such a pestilence as the cholera, science has made the connection obvious. Certain states of the atmosphere unquestionably favor the spread of that disease, and these states may possibly result from the same electrical conditions that associate the natural wonders with each other. Undoubtedly the physical life of man is thus "subject to all the skyey influences." Medical science can see very well that the influence of an eclipse, a comet or an electrical storm, if it changes the condition of the atmosphere, will enable an epidemic to sweep off a whole section of the human race; and it acknowledges as true, this ancient notion, so often denounced as a superstitious error. But now we denounce as superstitious error the other ancient notion, that the eclipse and kindred phenomena affect also our intellectual life. May not the next hundred years of science prove that also to be a truth?