Truth. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1901-1908, 1906-05-19
WAS THE DESTRUCTION OF SAN
FRANCISCO A JUDGMENT?

spiritual lesson in the great disaster
that has befallen San Francisco, there
Is wide range in their findings as
to the religious aspect of the calamity. |
Many merely hail 1t, as faith has for |
so long hailed the mischances of hui |
man life, as another opportunity for
unquestioning submission to a benign |
but inscrutiable will. A large part of |
the world, as the editor of The Chris
tian Register Unitarian, Boston, re-
marks, has entirely escaped from the
belief that such an event is judgment
OF the Almighty, intended to punish
people for their sins and to warn
them of more dreadful doom IL they
do not repent Such calamity
bluntly asserts The Presbyterian Ban
ner (Pittsburg), has no connection
with human sin, but is cosmic in its
origin" Undoubtedly the cause was
purely physical" says The Baptist
Commonwealth (Philadelphia), which
considers the opposite idea that it was
a punishment from God on account of
the wickedness of the city mot at all
Satisfactorily For, as this paper
naively remarks, very wicked as San
Francisco was, 1T Is not the only city
of its kind" Nor, moreover was It
the only sufferer, since ''the earthquake
devastated several small cities that
not been at all corrupt" This would
not have happened, argues The Com
monwealth, II God had singled out San
Francisco for punishment. WAS 1t a |
Judgment ON San Francisco?" asks
lions 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 it's sins is to /
presume to know more than any NOR
tai does. Some affect to believe that /
Chicago and New York will soon be
overthrow 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-
CALI: 1T might be hasty and unwar-
rantable to call the disaster a special
icIiuuliNc PROVIDENCE, DuI IL Is uOL
impossible that it may have been in
some sense a visitation of divine judg-
ment." To The Lutheran Observer
Uancaster) this heartrending disatser
is part of the awful problem of human
suffering-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 Ad-
ventists, Mountain View, CALI recog-
nizes in the earthquake another pre-
monition Of the scond 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 a direct
punishment to "the great and wicked
city of San Francisco" 1t +" is to my
mind one of the wickedest cities in
this country" says DR.. Torrey, land
the Lord has taken solemn way of
speaking to its inhabitants" Says
The New World:
God rules in the storm, the volcanic
ereuption, the tidal ave, and the earth
quake. He is the Lord and Master of
nature and its laws, as well as of the
supernatural sphere. But the pigmy
~. t.A1 III. Il II