Dakota farmers' leader. (Canton, S.D.) 1890-19??, 1906-05-18
Was the Destruction OF San Fran
cisco a Judgement?

Ule country are aS one III SeckluS
some spiritual lesson in the great
disaster that has befallen San Fran
cisco. there is a wide range in thei.
findings as to the religious aspect OF
the calamity. Many merely hail it,
as faith has for SO long hailed the
mischances of human life, as another
opportunity for unquestioning sub
mission to a benign but inscrutable
will. A large part of the world, as
the editor of The Christian Register
Unitarian, Boston, remarks, has en-
tirely escaped from the belief that
such an event is a judgement of the
Almighty, intended to punish people
for their sins and to warn them of a
more dreadful doom if they do not
repent. "Such calamity" bluntly
asserts The Presbyterian Banner,
Pittsburg, ''has no connection with
human sin, but is cosmic in it's
origin" "Undoubtedly the cause
was purely physical" says The Bap-
tist Commonwealth, Philadelphia,
which considers the opposite idea
that it was punishment from God
on account of the wickedness of the
city mot at all satisfactory" For,
as this paper naively remarks, very
wicked as San Francisco was, sit is
not the only city Of it's kind.' Nor,
moreover, was it the only sufferer,
since "the earthquake devastated
several small cities that have not
been at all corrupt This would
not have happened, argues The Com
monwealth, if God had singled out
San Francisco for punishment. "Was
it Judgment on San Francisco? asks
Zion's Herald, Methodist, Boston,
and goes on to say that "the question
can not be answered by any human
wisdom at present at command" :"
The same non-committal position is
taken by The Michigan Christian
Advocate, Methodist, Detroit, which
says:
'"To say that the disaster which
overlook San Francisco was a divine
visitation on account of its sins is to
presume to know more than any
mortal does. Some affect to believe
that Chicago and New York will
soon be overthrown in the same way.
When they are, it will be time enough
for the prophets of vengeance to claim
a superhuman power of forecast
Even more indefinite are the words
of the New York Observer, Evangeli-
cal: cit might be hasty and unwar-
rantable to call the disaster special
retributive providence, but it is not
impossible that it may have been in
some sense visitation Of divine judg-
ment." To The Lutheran Observer,
Lancaster, this heartrendering dis
aster is part Of the awful problem of
human sutfering-a problem whose
solution only God can show us when
our eyes are cleared Of all earthly
mists." The Signs of the Times,
Seventh Day Adventist, Mountain
View, Cal, recognizes in the earth
quake another premonition of the
second coming of the Lord.
We find the famous evangelist, the
Rev. DR.. Torrey, and the editor of
The New World, Roman Catholic
weekly of Chicago, united in the
view that the disaster was sent by
God as direct punishment to "the
great and wicked city of San Fran
CISCO" "It is to my mind one of the
wickedest cities in this country"
says DR.. Torrey, "and the Lord has
taken solemn way of speaking to
its inhabitants" Says The New
World: ..-.
'God rules in the storm, the vol
canic eruption, the tidal wave, and
the earthquake. He is the Lord and
Master Of nature and its laws, as well
as of the supernatural sphere. But
the pygmy ministers Of Chicago in
their vapid, and to some extent BIAS
phemous, utterances last Sunday
morning on the San Francisco cata-
clysm attempted to dethrone God in
His own universe. Not even Tyndall,
sitting with crossed legs on the sum-
nit of the Alpine Matterhorn, con-
templated natures independence Of
divine control to a more extravagant
degree than our Chicago Protestant
divines. One fellow argued from the
Book of Job that God does not punish
sin by temporal Affections. But when
we remember that only a few years
ago on Good Friday night of all the
nights of the year many of the
wealthy citizens of San Francisco
assembled together with lewd women
in one of the most luxurious mansions
of the city and carried their hellish
orgies so far that they kicked the
globes off the chandeliers, we shall be
inclined at least to abstain from
asserting that subterranean gases,
faults, and other seismic agencies
were the principal and only cause of
natures convulsions.
Such views as these move The
Truth Seeker, free thought, New
York, to satirical comment. They
would attribute, it points out, every
thing bad to God and everything good
to man. "It must be man who will
rebuild the city; all God did was to
destroy it," He shook the buildings
down, set the fires, burned people to