PHYSICAL EVILS AND "INIDEALITY" 331 



If the author himself were asked, which would he 

 prefer — to die peacefully of old age, i.e., normally ; or be 

 burnt up by a fiery hot blast as the victims were in that 

 volcanic outburst, what would be his reply ? I am not 

 surprised that this statement met with rather severe 

 criticism in the second number of the Hibbert Journal. 

 But he admits " they are only pleas in mitigation of 

 judgment ; and the arraignment still lies against an 

 Almighty God that He might have arranged things 

 otherwise than He has ". 



" One consideration indeed there is for the special 

 comfort of him whose trouble lies in the contemplation 

 of catastrophes. It is of their very essence that, in 

 human history, they are exceptional." So are railway 

 accidents and falling towers, as of Siloam and others ; 

 still such catastrophes do occur. 



In conclusion, he leaves the concrete physical side of 

 the question and observes : " But the main trust of 

 Theism must for ever be in the spiritual experience of the 

 individual man. ... If the witness of the Spirit be with 

 him, if he has known God working in him in his sorrow, 

 in his temptation, in his remorse, in the blessed experience 

 of reconciliation, the fires of all the volcanoes will not burn 

 nor the waters of all the floods avail to quench his faith." 



The third writer is Rev. Dr. R, F. Horton, who observes 

 that men do not seem to remember that catastrophes 

 are part of natural law. " On every occasion of sudden 

 disaster the mind feels bound to discuss the question 

 again ab initio.'' He agrees with the previous writer in 

 saying : " It is surely illogical and childishly inconsistent, 

 accepting the fact that some 30,000,000 of people perish 

 by old age, disease, accident or their own fault every 

 year in the ordinary way, to see in that nothing to shake 

 one's faith in Providence." 



