THE GOD OF EARTHQUAKES.
rE recent earthquake at Manila had, like almost all earth- quakes, a very striking religious aspect. There is no other natural phenomenon which strikes the masses of ignorant men as so exclusively supernatural. Mr. Buckle, as is well known, consi- dered them one of the great sources of Spanish superstition and as snapping by their imaginative terrors the chain of civilization. Even the Greeks, by no means apt to take the characteristic attri- butes of their gods from the more terrible of earthly events, gave to their God of the ocean, Poseidon, the epithet of the Earth- shaker ; while the Jews, possessed by a truer inspiration, spoke of God as the root of all that was most fixed and enduring—the Rock of Ages who had made "the round earth so fast that it can- not be moved." Elijah was expressly taught that "God was not in the earthquake," and though the Psalmists frequently ascribe the tumbling of the earth and the failing foundations of the hills to His especial wrath, yet they never fail to concluide.the picture of Storm and chaos by one of peace and deliverance, and, like Elijah, see the earthquake passing away before the tranquil voice of divine promise. But this, as Mr. Buckle warns us, has not prevented the close association of the earthquake with divine power in the Christian ages. That there is something in this phenomenon which, more than any other, expresses with awful power the collapse and nothingness of human things is obvious enough. Even the lower ani- mal creation perceive its approach, as some of them have been said to iliscern and quail before disembodied spirits or at the approach of death. In the earthquake at Naples, in 1806, the sheep and goats rushed in dismay against their folds before any human being had felt a shock ; the dogs howled, the horses became furious in their stalls, the cats' hair bristled with terror, rabbits and moles rushed from their holes, the birds rose scared into the air, the fish crowded to the shore, the ants abandoned their anthills, the locusts crept through the streets towards the sea,—and all this before the danger became sensible to any observer. But even men become sensible of horror before they become sensible of danger. A gentle- man of Copiapo wrote to Captain Basil Hall --" Before we hear the sound, or, at least, are fully conscious of hearing it, we are made sensible, I do not know how, that something uncommon is going to hajopen ; everything seems to change colour; our thoughts are chained immoveably down ; the whole world appears to be in disorder ; all nature looks different to what it was wont to do, and we feel quite subdued and overwhelmed by some invisible power. Then comes the terrible sound, distinctly heard, and immediately the solid earth is all in motion, waving to and fro like the surface of the sea. Depend upon it, a severe earthquake is sufficient to shake the firmest mind." And, no doubt, its phenomena are more apparently preternatural than those of any other human event. The ground assumes the appearance of running water,—indeed, .does transmit tidal waves as distinctly as the ocean itself. Not only are valleys exalted, and hills made low, but nature appears to be working out on an awful and tragic scale the wonders of a pantomime. After the great earthquake of Quito in 1797, many whom the earthquake surprised in the town of Riobamba were ,found as corpses on the top of a hill separated by a river from the place, and several hundred feet higher than the site of the town. The place was shown to Humboldt where the whole furniture of one house was found buried beneath the ruins of another, and it could only be accounted for by supposing that it had sunk into the earth at one spot, and been disgorged at that other. In Calabria, 1783, whole estates were literally shuffled, so that, for example, a plantation of mulberry trees was set down in the middle of a corn- field, and a field of lupines was removed into the middle of a vine- yard. For several years after, law-suits were actively carried on in the Courts of Naples to reclaim landed property thus bodily con- veyed, without legal forms, from one man to another. Who can wonder that people who thus see what Englishmen emphatically call real property flying like shadows before their eyes, prostrate themselves before the great Earthshalrer in paroxysms of fear and superstition?
But it is not only superstition which these terrible pheno- mena contrive to elicit. If Catholic countries did not happen to have two or three specially holy days in every week, it would be rather curious that the most memorable earth- quakes have so often surprised the crowds kneeling in their churches and cathedrals, so that the rocking earth has availed itself, as it were, of the picturesque piety of the masses to bury them in hosts among the sacred ruins. The great Lisbon earth- quake, in 1755, which buried or destroyed some 60,000 persons in a few minutes, occurred on "All Saints' Day," a high festival among the Portuguese ; and every altar was blazing with
wax tapers, when the sun grew dim, and the Palace of the Inquisi- tion fell in. The conflagration which succeeded the earthquake was
thus directly due to the universal ritual illumination. The less fatal, but almost more scenic catastrophe, in Caraccas, the capital of Venezuela, on the 26th March, 1812, occurred on Holy Thursday. The priestly processions were just about to start, and "the crowds assembled in the churches were so numerous that between three and four thousand persons are said to have been crushed by the downfall of their vaulted roofs." And the effect upon the mind of the people was naturally enough that of a religious rather than of an earthly catastrophe :— " People applied themselves to the exercise of those religious duties, which, in their opinion, were most fitted to appease the wrath of Heaven. Many assembled, and passed through the streets in pro- cessions singing funeral hymns ; others, thrown into a state of distraction by these calamities, confessed their sins aloud in the streets ; numerous marriages were contracted between persons who for many years had neglected to sanction their union by the sacerdotal benediction ; children found parents by whom they had not been acknowledged up to that time ; restitutions were promised by persons who had never been accused of fraud or theft ; families, which for many years had been estranged from one another by enmityand hatred, were drawn together by the tie of common suffer- ing." And this summer in Manilla, the fearful earthquake similarly found the population on its knees, on the eve of the Fite de Dieu. The prayers of thousands appeared to be answered by the sudden crashing of the masonry and collapse of the earth. "After dress- ing," says an eye-witness, who describes what he saw in All the Year Round of last week, "I walked slowly homeward, and, hav- ing to pass near the cathedral, I went in. Being the eve of the Fite Dieu I found it crowded with worshippers. Men and women of every hue of colour were mingled with children whose fairer skins contrasted strongly with that of the elders, especially those whose parents were Europeans. There is at all times a striking devout- ness displayed in the churches, but this struck me especially on this evening, no doubt because of the solemnity of the occasion. How many were in the building I cannot say, but the number was very great, for though the cathedral was exceedingly large, I could not see a space large enough for a single additional person beyond a few feet from the door by which I entered. Some notion may be formed of the number present, from the fact that at this time there were not less than twenty-five priests officiating in different parts of the sacred edifice. The air was so bad, that I did not remain more than two or three minutes, though the service had not long begun."
Not many minutes after the same spectator returned to the spot where the cathedral had stood. Not a dozen people, he thinks, had escaped out of the building before it came crushing down upon the two or three thousand which its walls alone must have contained. The scene to which he was witness was one of no common order. "When I reached the ruins," he says, "men and women were already working at those parts where appearances indicated the possibility of most speedily reaching bodies. The largest group was collected round a chapel, a small portion of which was upheld by the peculiar way in which a beam had fallen. Women were sobbing, and men were listening anxiously at a small opening where a window had formerly been. . . . Faint groans issued from it, and I could hear a voice—that of a girl, I thought, but it turned out to be one of the choristers*—asking piteously for help and deliverance. Then a low but deep bass voice, doubtless that of the priest who was officiating at the time of the calamity, uttered the well-known words, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord. Yea, saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labours.' As these words came forth, those outside buret into a passion of tears, which was soon choked, in order that they might hear if the voice spoke again. There were some deep groans, apparently wrung from the speaker by intense pain, and then the same voice spoke in a calm and even tone, as though addressing a congregation, For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God.' Silence fol- lowed for some minutes, and then a deep voice came forth which was so low that only I and a few others near the hole could hear it, 'Father, into Thy bands I commit my spirit, and with the utterance of those words of faith and prayer the spirit must have left the tortured body, for not a sound was heard after this, except the piteous prayers of a child." It is not easy to imagine a sublimer instance of the faith which, encountering in His own visible person the awful Earthshaker and destroyer, can see in Him nothing but the Eternal Rock of stabi-
* He was dug out alive seven or eight hours aft:rwards.
lity and of peace. The voice comes in the earthquake, but the earthquake does but disguise to the priest's glazing eyes the still small voice which bids him rest from his labours. It reminds him only of that greater earthquake which rent in twain the veil of the Temple, when a deeper dismay was vanquished, and a greater work was finished.
There is something profoundly impressive about the manner in which this poor Spanish priest encountered the horror of such a situation. The kind of faith which great catastrophes are apt to inspire is something very different, indeed, from this priest's. For that is, as Mr. Buckle teaches, a poor, superstitious sort of thing, impeding civilization and paralyz- ing the human confidence which is the root of all industry and energy. But the religious use of great catastrophes is not to inspire faith, but to call out and bring to light -what is already inspired,—to shake not merely the earthly supports, but all the external scaffolding of the mind, and throw it back on its true nakedness or its true strength. There are, probably, crises for most men and all nations in which God appears somewhat as the Gol of earthquakes, shaking everything which is not at the very centre of their life to its foundations, and solving pretty decisively for them the problem whether they have anything to lean on or not. Are there many, even of our more "enlightened" faith, as we truly call it, who would be found firm on the living Rock when the earth seemed melting away beneath their feet, and every vestige of human aid, and support. and graceful association, and emblematic promise hactbeen scattered into ruins, and they could hear through the pain, and the darkness, and the suffocating air, nothing but groans of terror and cries for help ? Was there any voice as tranquil raised to the crowd of miners who, for nearly a week, were dying in hope of succour in the Hartley Colliery? It is seldom that the God of earthquakes, when He has shattered all the artificial growths of association which we mistake for faith, finds at the kernel of the soul that spirit, one clear glimpse of which by other men turns the most destructive and negative of outward calamities into the most creative act of Divine love.
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