It is not always on remote islands peopled with pagans that great
disasters occur, as memory witnesseth. Nor are the forces of nature
inadequate to production of a fiercer throe than any that we have
known. The situation is this: we are tied by the feet to a fragile
shell imperfectly confining a force powerful enough under favoring
conditions, to burst it asunder and set the fragments wallowing and
grinding together in liquid flame, in the blind fury of a readjustment.
Nay, it needs no such stupendous cataclysm to de-people this uneasy
orb. Let but a square mile be blown out of the bottom of the sea, or a
great rift open there. Is it to be supposed that we would be unaffected
in the altered conditions generated by a contest between the ocean and
the earth’s molten core? These fatalities are not only possible but in
the highest degree probable. It is probable, indeed, that they have
occurred over and over again, effacing all the more highly organized
forms of life, and compelling the slow march of evolution to begin
anew. Slow? On the stage of Eternity the passing of races—the entrances
and exits of Life—are incidents in a brisk and lively drama, following
one another with confusing rapidity.
Mankind has not found it practicable to abandon and avoid those
places where the forces of nature have been most malign. The track
of the Western tornado is speedily repeopled. San Francisco is still
populous, despite its earthquake, Galveston despite its storm, and
even the courts of Lisbon are not kept by the lion and the lizard. In
the Peruvian village straight downward into whose streets the crew
of a United States warship once looked from the crest of a wave that
stranded her a half mile inland are heard the tinkle of the guitar and
the voices of children at play. There are people living at Herculaneum
and Pompeii. On the slopes about Catania the goatherd endures with
what courage he may the trembling of the ground beneath his feet as
old Enceladus again turns over on his other side. As the Hoang-Ho goes
back inside its banks after fertilizing its contiguity with hydrate of
Chinaman the living agriculturist follows the receding wave, sets up
his habitation beneath the broken embankment, and again the Valley of
the Gone Away blossoms as the rose, its people dicing with Death.
This matter can not be amended: the race exposes itself to peril
because it can do no otherwise. In all the world there is no city of
refuge—no temple in which to take sanctuary, clinging to the horns of
the altar—no “place apart” where, like hunted deer, we can hope to
elude the baying pack of Nature’s malevolences. The dead-line is drawn
at the gate of life: Man crosses it at birth. His advent is a challenge
to the entire pack—earthquake, storm, fire, flood, drought, heat, cold,
wild beasts, venomous reptiles, noxious insects, bacilli, spectacular
plague and velvet-footed household disease—all are fierce and tireless
in pursuit. Dodge, turn and double how he can, there’s no eluding them;
soon or late some of them have him by the throat and his spirit returns
to the God who gave it—and gave them.
We are told that this earth was made for our inhabiting. Our dearly
beloved brethren in the faith, our spiritual guides, philosophers and
friends of the pulpit, never tire of pointing out the goodness of
God in giving us so excellent a place to live in and commending the
admirable adaptation of all things to our needs.
What a fine world it is, to be sure—a darling little world, “so suited
to the needs of man.” A globe of liquid fire, straining within a shell
relatively no thicker than that of an egg—a shell constantly cracking
and in momentary danger of going all to pieces! Three-fourths of this
delectable field of human activity are covered with an element in which
we can not breathe, and which swallows us by myriads:
With moldering bones the deep is white
From the frozen zones to the tropics bright.
Of the other one-fourth more than one-half is uninhabitable by reason
of climate. On the remaining one-eighth we pass a comfortless and
precarious existence in disputed occupancy with countless ministers of
death and pain—pass it in fighting for it, tooth and nail, a hopeless
battle in which we are foredoomed to defeat. Everywhere death, terror,
lamentation and the laughter that is more terrible than tears—the fury
and despair of a race hanging on to life by the tips of its fingers!
And the prize for which we strive, “to have and to hold”—what is it?
A thing that is neither enjoyed while had, nor missed when lost. So
worthless it is, so unsatisfying, so inadequate to purpose, so false to
hope and at its best so brief, that for consolation and compensation we
set up fantastic faiths of an aftertime in a better world from which
no confirming whisper has ever reached us across the void. Heaven is a
prophecy uttered by the lips of despair, but Hell is an inference from
analogy.