2 ^BOUT VOLCANOS AND EARTHQUAKES. 



and houses and churches; and closing on them widi a 

 snap, and smashing them to pieces ; and then perhaps 

 opening again, and casting them out with a flood of 

 dirty water from some river or lake tliat had been 

 gulped down with them. Now, all this, and much 

 more, is literally true, and has happened over and over 

 again ; and when we have imagined it all, we shall have 

 formed a tolerably correct notion of some at least of 

 these visitations. And perhaps some may have been 

 tempted to ask why and how it is that God has per- 

 mitted this fair earth to be visited with such destruction. 

 It can hardly be for the sins of men : for when these 

 things occur they involve alike the innocent and the 

 guilty ; and besides, the volcano and the earthquake 

 were raging on this earth with as much, nay greater 

 violence, thousands and thousands of years before man 

 ever set his foot upon it. But perhaps, on the other 

 hand, it may have occurred to some to ask themselves 

 whether it is not just possible that these ugly affairs are 

 sent among us for some beneficent purpose ; or at all 

 events that they may form part and parcel of some great 

 scheme of providential arrangement which is at work for 

 good, and not for ill. A ship sometimes strikes on a 

 rock, and all on board perish ; a railway train runs into 

 another, or breaks down, and then wounds and contu- 

 sions are the order of the day ; but nobody doubts that 

 navigation and railway communication are great bless- 

 ings. None of the great natural provisions for produc- 

 ing good are exempt in their workings from producing 

 occasional mischief. Storms disperse and dilute pesti- 



