all the sorrow, the anguish, the
pain, the unspeakable tragedies, and sends no wing of angel to
cleave the pitiless sky, no voice out of the silence to console, no
hand to help?

What man is there of you, if he had the power, would not banish
sickness, sorrow, pain and death?

What man is there of you who, if he could, would not make every
human being well and happy?

What then? What is the conclusion of the matter concerning you?
Simple enough--you have _the heart to do it, but not the power_.

What is the conclusion concerning this God of nature? _He has the
power--but does not manifest the heart_.

What will you say of this God of nature in such a scheme?

What can you say but that your heart is better than the heart of the
God which nature reveals?

Can you hear, understand and love a God like that?

Can you climb through nature up to nature's God and say, "I have
found him, I know him?"

You can climb up, but where will you find him?

You will find him wrapped in the black thundercloud or girded with
the robe of the lightnings: You will find him the God who splits the
earth in twain with the earthquake's riving blow, loosens the bands
of the sea, sends tidal waves in surges of destruction, pours out
the lava streams from the volcano's cone, as kings pour wine from an
earthen cup, spilling the wine and breaking the cup; the God who
turns an earthly paradise (like Messina) into a fire-smitten desert,
and a city of the living into a cemetery of the unburied dead.

When your heart aches, will such a God care for you? Will his
thunders console you? When your soul is dark, will his lightnings
illumine it? When you yearn for love, will his inexorable law supply
it?

Ah, sirs, without Christ you are without a God whom you can love,
whom you can trust, to whom you can go, and in whose strength you
can lie down and--at last--be folded in peace.

If Jesus Christ is not God, if the only God to whom you can go is
the God of nature, then you might as well fall down in the sand at
the base of the far Egyptian sphinx, open your eyes for a moment to
the blue sky that spreads away to the horizon before its staring
face, its cold, chiselled, inscrutable smile, and the next moment
shut your eyes against the pelting dust the idle winds blow thither.

Ah! Nature is a sand-dune--and the God of nature is a Sphynx.

Do you care to kneel and worship there?

If Jesus Christ be not God the disaster is not alone to him, bu