he the breath of life.

The very earthquake which shakes the earth to its center and shatters
cities into ruin, prevents by that very concussion the graver
catastrophes which bury continents out of sight.

The very hurricane which comes sweeping down and on, prostrating
forests, hurling mighty tidal waves on the shore and sending down many
a gallant ship with all its crew, bears on its destructive wings, "the
incense of the sea," to remotest parts, that there may be the blooming
of flowers, the upspringing of grass, the waving of all the banners of
green, and the carrying away of the vapors of death that spring from
decaying mold.

Man the Conqueror.

Pascal said "man is but a reed, the feeblest thing in nature, but he
is a reed that thinks." The elemental forces break loose and for the
time being he cannot control them. Amid nature's convulsions he is
utterly helpless and insignificant.

It is but for a moment, however, that he yields. He knows that he is
the central figure in the universe of worlds. "He is not one part of
the furniture of this planet, not the highest merely in the scale of
its creatures but the lord of all." He is not a parasite but the
paragon of the globe. He has faith in the unchangeableness of the laws
he is mastering while suffering from them. He confidently declares
there is nothing fitful, nothing capricious, nothing irregular in
their action. The greater the calamity the more earnest his effort to
ascertain its causes and learn the lessons it teaches.

Fearlessly man must meet the events of life as they come. Speculations
as to future cataclysms and fearful forebodings as to the immediate
end of the world must all be given to the winds. There will be at some
time an end to our globe. It may be frozen out, or burned out, or
scattered into impalpable dust by the terrific explosion of steam
generated by an ocean of water precipitated into an ocean of fire. But
cycles of millenniums will intervene before such an apocalypse takes
place.

In the spirit of Campbell's "Last Man" we must live, and act;

"Go sun, while mercy holds me up
On nature's awful waste
To taste the last and bitter cup
Of death, that man must taste:
Go, say thou saw'st the last of Adam's race
On earth's sepulchral clod,
The darkening Universe defy,
To quench his immortality
Or shake his trust in God."

Wickedness not the Cause of Destruction.

There are among us m