takes
first rank, as it does, also, in some respects, among all
recorded earthquakes.... In six minutes sixty thousand people
perished."--_"Earthquakes," pp. 142, 143._

"Lo, there was a great earthquake," the revelator said. It was indeed "a
great earthquake," and great was its influence. In all the world, men's
hearts were mightily stirred. James Parton, an English author, says of
it:

"The Lisbon earthquake of Nov. 1, 1755, appears to have put
both the theologians and philosophers on the defensive.... At
twenty minutes to ten that morning, Lisbon was firm and
magnificent, on one of the most picturesque and commanding
sites in the world,--a city of superb approach, placed
precisely where every circumstance had concurred to say to the
founders, Build here! In six minutes the city was in ruins....
Half the world felt the convulsion.... For many weeks, as we
see in the letters and memoirs of that time, people in distant
parts of Europe went to bed in alarm, relieved in the morning
to find that they had escaped the fate of Lisbon one night
more."--_"Life of Voltaire," Vol. II, pp. 208, 209._

The World Set to Thinking

This earthquake set men to thinking of the great day of God. Voltaire,
the French philosopher, was "profoundly moved" by it, we are told. "It
was the last judgment for that region," he wrote; "nothing was wanting
to it except the trumpet." More than a month afterward, while still the
perturbations of the earth were continuing, this skeptic wrote a poem
upon the problem presented, voicing the sentiment:

"My heart oppress'd demands
Aid of the God who formed me with his hands.
Sons of the God supreme to suffer all
Fated alike, we on our Father call....
Sad is the present if no future state,
No blissful retribution mortals wait,
If fate's decrees the thinking being doom
To lose existence in the silent tomb.
_All may be well_; that hope can man sustain.
_All now is well_; 'tis an illusion vain.
The sages held me forth delusive light,
Divine instructions only can be right.
Humbly I sigh, submissive suffer pain,
Nor more the ways of Providence arraign."

--"_Poem on the Destruction of Lisbon,_"
_Smollet's translation; Works, Vol. XXXIII, ed. 1761._

Just at the time, plans were under way for the opening of a theater at
Lausanne for the special performance of