Safe, truly! It is of God's mercy
from day to day and hour to hour that we are not consumed.
This, surely, or something like this, is what the earthquake says to
us. It speaks to us most gently, and yet most awfully, of a day in
which the heavens may pass away with a great noise, and the elements
may melt with fervent heat, and the earth and the works which are
therein may be burnt up. It tells us that this is no impossible
fancy: that the fires imprisoned below our feet can, and may, burst
up and destroy mankind and the works of man in one great catastrophe,
to which the earthquake of Lisbon in 1755--when 60,000 persons were
killed, crushed, drowned, or swallowed up in a few minutes--would be
a merely paltry accident.
And it bids us think, as St. Peter bids us: 'When therefore all
these things are dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in
holy conversation and godliness?'
What manner of persons?
Remember, that if an earthquake destroyed all England, or the whole
world; if this earth on which we live crumbled to dust, and were
blotted out of the number of the stars, there is one thing which
earthquake, and fire, and all the forces of nature cannot destroy,
and that is--the human race.
We should still be. We should still endure. Not, indeed, in flesh
and blood: but in some state or other; each of us the same as now,
our characters, our feelings, our goodness or our badness; our
immortal spirits and very selves, unchanged, ready to receive, and
certain to receive, the reward of the deeds done in the body, whether
they be good or evil.
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