They may be meant to teach men, to warn them, to make them more wise
and prudent for the future, more humble and aware of their own
ignorance and weakness, more mindful of the frailty of human life,
that remembering that in the midst of life we are in death, they may
seek the Lord while he may be found, and call upon him while he is
near. They may be meant to do that, and to do a thousand things
more. For God's ways are not as our ways, or his thoughts as our
thoughts. His ways are unsearchable, and his paths past finding
out. Who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him,
or even settle what the Lord means by doing this or that?
All we can say is--and that is a truly blessed thing to be able to
say--that floods and earthquakes, fire and storms, come from the
Lord whose name is Love; the same Lord who walked with Adam in the
garden, who brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, who was
born on earth of the Virgin Mary, who shed his life-blood for sinful
man, who wept over Jerusalem even when he was about to destroy it so
that not one stone was left on another, and who, when he looked on
the poor little children of Judaea, untaught or mistaught, enslaved
by the Romans, and but too likely to perish or be carried away
captive in the fearful war which was coming on their land, said of
them, 'It is not the will of your Father in heaven, that one of
these little ones shall perish.
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