--and that too in mercy as well as anger--who
visited the land in Isaiah's time with thunder and earthquake, and
great noise, and storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire.
That the earth opened and swallowed up those whom God chose, and no
others. That if fire came forth, it came forth from the Lord, and
burned where and what God chose, and nothing else. Yes. If you
will only understand, once and for all, that the history of the Jews
is the history of the Lord's turning a people from the cowardly,
slavish worship of sun and stars, of earthquakes and burning
mountains, and all the brute powers of nature which the heathen
worshipped, and teaching them to trust and obey him, the living God,
the Lord and Master of all, then the Old Testament will be clear to
you throughout; but if not, then not.

You cannot read your Bibles without seeing how that great lesson was
stamped into the very hearts of the Hebrew prophets; how they are
continually speaking of the fire and the earthquake, and yet
continually declaring that they too obey God and do God's will, and
that the man who fears God need not fear them--that God was their
hope and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore would
they not fear, though the earth was moved, and though the mountains
be carried into the midst of the sea.

And we, too, need the same lesson in these scientific days. We too
need to fix it in our hearts, that the powers of nature are the
powers of God; that he orders them by his providence to do what he
will, and when and where he will; that, as the Psalmist says, the
winds are his messengers and the flames of fire his ministers. And
this we shall learn from the Bible, and from no other book
whatsoever.

God taught the Jews this, by a strange and miraculous education,
that they might teach it in their turn to all mankind. And they
have taught it. For the Bible bids us--as no other book does--not
to be afraid of the world on which we live; not to be afraid of
earthquake or tempest, or any of the powers of nature which seem to
us terrible and cruel, and destroying; for they are the powers of
the good and just and loving God. They obey our Father in heaven,
without whom not a sparrow falls to the ground, and our Lord Jesus
Christ, who came not to destroy men's lives, but to save them. And
therefore we need not fear them, or look on them with any blind
superstition, as things too awful for us to search into. We may
searc