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Show it. He shook the buildiags down, set the fires, burned people to death, broke the water mains, destroyed de-stroyed the food and drove people into the park where they caught measles, typhoid fever and other diseases. But God didn't send the soldiers to protect pro-tect them that was Funston. He did not repair the1 water main, that was the company. He will not rebuild the city, that is up to the steel-workers and carpenters." ". . ; . We suspect San Francisco was-rather, a wicked city, but if it was on account of its wickedness that it was destroyed, how long are Chicago and New . York to stand?. How about Paris? For that matter, mat-ter, how about Salt Lake? If San Francisco was wicked by the square mile, Salt Lake is wicked by the square block. Looking over the meager list that has been sent down to us, we find that Duras in Greece was buried with all its inhabitants, and twelve cities in Campania were also buried 345 years before Christ Was that on account of their wickedness? Lysimachia was buried by an earthquake earth-quake 283 years before Christ. Ephesus and other cities were overturned in the year A. D. 17. Four cities in Asia, two in Greece and two in Galicia were overturned in A. D. 105. In the year 257 Pontis and Macedonia and one hundred and fifty other cities and 'towns were destroyed. In the year 543 there was an earthquake that was felt by nearly the entire world. Some 255 earthquakes have occurred oc-curred in England and on the prediction of a lunatic in 1750 thousands of people, particularly "those of rank and fortune, ' passed the night on the 7th in their carriages, in their tents and in Hyde park. In 1580 part of St. Paul's and the Temple churches in London fell. In 1186 in Calabria one of its cities and all its inhabitants were overwhelmed in the, Adriatic sea. There have been repeated earthquakes in Japan and China, where from 100,000 to 200,000 people were killed in each. And these are only a few that are recorded, and only a few of those that happened were ever recorded. record-ed. This old planet that we live on has a very uncertain un-certain crust. When it gets going it is very unreasonable unrea-sonable and it doesn't distinguish between the wicked and the good. Were Salt Lake to be visited, we suspect THE TELEGRAM would be in just as much danger as either the Herald or the News. Earthquakes come and go like storms. It would be just as fair to say that Galveston for its wickedness wicked-ness was swept by a hurricane and the piled np waves of the Gulf of Mexico, as to say that it was the wickedness of San Francisco that wrought the i ruin there. The old earth has been undergoing re- pairs ever since its creation. The earthquakes that have come since man inhabited it are nothing compared com-pared with the convulsions that preceded the lives of men. It took some millions of years through means of earthquakes and glaciers to prepare this world to. be a habitation for man, and an earthquake earth-quake now is no more strange than the storm or the frost or any other of the elements through which nature works. EARTHQUAKES AND SIN. The religious papers of the East are now discussing discuss-ing the question of whether the destruction of San Francisco was a judgment upon the people for their . wickedness or not. The New York Observer says: , "It might be hasty and unwarrantable to call i the disaster a special retributive providence, but it I is not impossible that it may have been in some ' sense a visitation of divine judgment." 1 The Lutheran Observer says: . 'This heartrending disaster is part of all of the i problem of human suffering;- a problem whose so- ! lotion only God can show us when our eyes are ' cleared of all earthly mists." t The Signs of the Times, which is a Seventh-day ' Adrentist publication, sees in the earthquake .an-: .an-: other premonition of the second coming of the Lord.' i The Rev. Dr. Torrey and the editor of the New ; World, a Roman Catholic weekly of Chicago, unite in the view that the disaster was sent by God as a direct punishment to the "great and wicked city of . San Francisco." Dr. Torrey says: "It is to my mincLone of the wickedest cities in this country, and the Lord has taken a olemn way of speaking to its inhabitants." r ' ' But why did the Lord at the same time go out of the city, down to Palo Alto, and smash into smithereens Mrs. Stanford's memorial church? The New World illustrates the foundation of its belief as follows: , . . . Vs ' "Wlren we remember that only a few years ago, on Good Friday night, of all the nights of the year, many wealthy citizens of San Francisco assembled i together with lewd women in one of the most lux- urious mansions of the city and carried their hellish ; orgies so far that they kicked -the globes off the chandeliers, we shall be inclined at least to abstain - from asserting that subterranean gases, faults and other seismic agencies, were the principal and only cause of nature's convulsions." ' That carousal was in New York. Tho Truth Seeker grows satiric, and speaking of xthe matter says of such views as those above expressed, ex-pressed, "They would attribute everything bad . to God aL"3 everything good to man- It must be men i M will KcIIi tls cirri all God did was to destroy |