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Show Thought of God as "Dispensing an Earthquake" Is Not Christian By DR. J. M. WILSON, Canon Worcester (Eng.) Cathedral. The prevailing thought is still that we must look for Him in "signa from heaven," some interference with physical laws. "If there is a God in heaven such as we were taught about, He could interfere to prevent the awful evils in the world." That is the natural conclusion from the conception, which we now implant in our schools, of a pre-Christian pre-Christian God, apart from men, ruling the world of man. If He is not that, men ask, "What is He?" He is regarded as willing and causing all that happens. That is more than we are entitled to say. The mystery of God is not so simply solved. A few months ago, when Tokyo was destroyed by an earthquake, a leading newspaper, and even a bishop, spoke of it as "a dispensation of Providence." Is it so? Such a thought of God as "dispensing an earthquake" is neither Christian nor philosophical philo-sophical ; but a primitive and mistaken guess Nothing less is needed ultimately than a revision of presentation of the Christian revelation of God freed from some of the integuments and associations and quasi-logical inferences it has carried with it from pre-Christian days, or acquired from non-Chrktian sources in its passage through the. darker Christian centuries. . . . |