ed by a Divine force and led on to a Divine
end. All things are ours, and we are Christ's, and Christ is God's; this
is the established order of subordination. Most certainly it cannot be
unscientific in the Author of nature to make the same His messenger for
good or evil. It is not unscientific to throw a line from the shore to a
ship in distress, even though thrown from the mouth of a cannon, nor is
it counted unscientific to use that same cannon in war to destroy men.

The earthquake spoken of in the text is, indeed, a small affair in
comparison to some that have occurred in this world; and if the same God
be living now as then, surely He can rend in twain the little mountain of
Olivet. And if we grant to the infidel scientist of to-day the fact that
there is no God, still the thing prophesied of is neither unreasonable or
impossible, because what has been may be again; and as the demand in this
case is small in comparison to what has been, surely this thing may come
to pass. In times past Providence and the wants of the Church have been
timely aided by convulsions in nature, and if they were only so
accidentally, why then accidentally they may all agree again. To the
scientist, especially the geologist, there can be no great difficulty in
crediting the miracles of the text when we think of the successive
revolutions that have taken place. Fires, and floods, and earthquakes,
have done sublime service in the past, whether we credit the same to
Nature or to God. That an earthquake, or any peculiar expression of
nature, should be timed to meet a special condition of the Church or the
special purposes of a Providence, is not strange. In such an event there
really is no more wonder than that a man should set an alarm on his clock
to go off at three minutes past four in the morning. Some men can
swallow big things if you will only allow them to make out the author to
be Nature. But whether we attribute the things past to Nature or to God,
we know that wonderful things have happened.

Seismology, the science of earthquakes, is by no means void of interest.
The earthquake catalogue of the British Association takes notice of, and
records the occurrence of, over 6,000 that happened between 1606 B.C. and
1842 A.D. Some of these have been terrible in force, destruction, and
extent, oftentimes changing the whole face of a country, its climate, and
river courses. The great earthquake of 1783 in Calabria, probably cause