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I

EARTHQUAKES 

HAVE I ever written on earthquakes, weddings, sermons, and similar volcanic disturbances? I think not; and will therefore endeavour to repair the omission. In my old New Zealand days I used to indulge in porridge regularly and earthquakes occasionally — although the order seemed now and again in danger of getting reversed. I remember, soon after my arrival at Mosgiel, going to stay at a farm on the top of the hill — a farm that is already familiar to my earlier readers as the home of ‘Granny.’ On retiring the first night, I was told that the family breakfasted early, but that I was to lie still until I was called. Being very tired, I consented without violent demur, and was soon lost to all the world. I was awakened, however, by a loud noise. It seemed to me that somebody was not only banging at the door, but endeavouring to wrench it from its hinges. I sprang up, struck a match, and consulted my watch. It was just five o’clock. ‘If this,’ I said to myself, ‘is the indulgence allowed to guests, at what weird hour, I wonder, does the family take breakfast?’ There was no time, however, for nice mathematical computations of that sort. I hastily dressed and hurried out into the great farm kitchen. The daughter of the home stared at me as if she had confronted a ghost. I apologized for having put her to the trouble of calling me. ‘Calling you!’ she exclaimed. ‘Why, nobody called you! The boys are not up yet! I described the din that had scared me from my bed. ‘Oh,’ she replied, her face suddenly illumined, ‘that was just the earthquake!’ I resolved that never again would I be victimized by a practical joke of that kind. 

After that I had worse experiences, but they were less humiliating. At dead of night I left my unsteady bed and, looking out of the window, found the birds flying around the swaying trees and the cattle tearing about the shuddering fields — all in the wildest confusion and dismay. But the antics soon ceased. The earth grew still; the starlings returned to their nests among the firs; the terrified cattle became calm; and I stole back to bed. Again, in November, 1901, on the occasion of the famous Cheviot earthquake, I happened to be staying within the zone of disturbance. How vividly I recall the groaning of the doors and the cracking of the windows! I was standing in my room at the moment, and I remember sitting abruptly down in order to save Nature the trouble, in the course of her frolic, of reducing me compulsorily to horizontality. It may not have been dignified; but, when tricks are being played, it is usually best to enter cheerfully into the spirit of the thing. 

Now we happen to be living on a world in which earthquakes are the fashion. On the average there is an earthquake every quarter of an hour. About thirty or forty thousand occur annually. Every few minutes the earth shakes itself, like a dog coming out of the water; and, like the dog, the earth seems to feel all the better for the convulsion. The globe on which we live, for all her stolid appearance, is a nervy creature and has a creepy skin. She is all twitches. 

Earthquakes are good things. How do I know ? In two ways. First of all, they happen ; and is it thinkable that the earth would quake every few minutes, year in and year out, unless earthquakes were good for her health? And then, too, the great geologists say as much, and thus philosophy is fortified by science. You never hear of an earthquake in a desert. Perhaps, if you did, the desert would remain a desert no longer. What is it that Macaulay says in his essay on ‘The Principal Italian Writers’? ‘As the richest vineyards and the sweetest flowers always grow on the soil which has been fertilized by the fiery deluge of a volcano, so the finest works of the imagination have always been produced in time of political convulsion.’ A farm is nothing without a plough. The earth needs to be torn up every now and again. That is why we have earthquakes. 

The best description of an earthquake is Robinson Crusoe’s. But, unhappily, Crusoe was too frightened, when he felt his island rocking to and fro, to hear what the earthquake had to say for itself. Had Crusoe listened, this is what the earthquake would have said to him: ‘Think yourself lucky, O Robinson Crusoe,’ it would have observed, ‘that you were building a hut and not a palace. We earthquakes come to teach the world simplicity. If men live in hair tents or wooden cabins, we earthquakes never hurt them. But if they live in castles or palaces, we bury them in the wreckage of their splendour!’ If I remember rightly, Gibbon has something to the same effect. In describing the loss of Berytus by volcanic disturbance he remarks that, in the day when the earth reels, the architect becomes the enemy of mankind. The hut of the savage or the tent of the Arab may be thrown down without injury to the inhabitant; but the rich marbles of the patrician are dashed on his own head and an entire people is buried beneath the ruins of their stately architecture. Did not the Incas of Peru deride the folly of the Spaniards who, with so much cost and labour, erected their own sepulchres? An earthquake gives a savage cause to laugh at civilization. 

But there is more in it than this. Robinson Crusoe first began to think seriously about eternal things when he found his island rocking beneath his feet. An earthquake is an eloquent preacher. It sets a man wondering if he ought to build all his hopes on a thing that shakes and reels and twitches. Ought he not, to use Victor Hugo’s simile, ought he not to be 

. . . like the bird
Who, pausing in her flight
Awhile on boughs too light,
Feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings,
Knowing that she hath wings? 

But this screed of mine has already received its baptism of fire. It has run the gauntlet of criticism. Even before the last sheets have been written, the first sheets have been read. And my severest, yet most appreciative, critic demands an explanation of my very first sentence. 

‘What on earth do you mean,’ she asks, ‘by grouping “earthquakes, weddings, sermons, and similar volcanic disturbances” under a common heading? What has an earthquake to do with a wedding ? And what has either of them to do with a sermon?’

I am afraid that on this occasion my grand chief critic is exhibiting something less than her usual insight and perspicacity, for, surely, the connexion between these things is sufficiently clear! If a wedding is not an earthquake, what is it? If a sermon is not a volcanic eruption, what can you call it? I am really surprised that there should be any dubiety on that point. 

To prove that a wedding is an earthquake, and a good one, I shall have to call a pair of witnesses — a lady and a gentleman. And by the time I have done with them I confidently anticipate that all the ladies and gentlemen who know anything about it will clamour for permission to give corroborative evidence. The witnesses whom I have decided to subpoena are Miss Rosaline Masson and Mr. A. C. Benson. 

Whilst Miss Masson is getting her breath we will take the testimony of Mr. Benson. Mr. Benson, as everybody knows, is the son of an Archbishop, and is himself a schoolmaster and a brilliant essayist. A few years ago Mr. Benson gave us a characteristic essay entitled ‘The Search.’ Mr. Benson tells how he had been spending an evening with a rich and elderly bachelor. They had dined ‘with that kind of simplicity that can only be attained by wealth’ at this gentleman’s finely appointed house in London. Then they settled down to talk. Mr. Benson asked why his friend, possessing so much, worked so hard. The reply was startling. He worked so hard because it did not suit him to be unoccupied — to think! ‘And then he suddenly said, with great seriousness, that he felt rather bitterly, now that life was nearly over, that he had somehow lost his way, and that he had always been bustling about on the outskirts of life. He went on to say that the mischief had been that he had never married. “What I feel that I want now,” he said, “is the kind of unavoidable duty which comes from having people whose lives are really bound up with one’s own. To put it at the worst, if I had a fretful, invalid wife and some ill-conditioned, ungainly children, that would be at all events a reality. I should have people to consider, to conciliate, to defend, to help, to keep on good terms with, to make the best of — and I hope, too, that some love would come in somewhere! But —” ’ That is all. But is it not very much? It means that there had been no eruption, no earthquake. The depths had never been broken up. As I said just now, you never hear of an earthquake in a desert; if you did, it would be a desert no longer. That was precisely the tragedy of Mr. Benson’s friend. Was I so very far astray when I included earthquakes and weddings under a common heading? 

But I must apologize to Miss Masson for having kept her waiting so long. Miss Masson has given us a lovely little monograph on Wordsworth. But on the last page she confesses that Wordsworth lacked a certain indefinable something. He could sing, as nobody else has ever sung, of skylarks and linnets, of redbreasts and butterflies, of daisies and daffodils. But, after all, life does not consist of daisies and daffodils. Wordsworth lacked something; what was it, and why was it ? The secret is, Miss Masson declares, that in his own life the poet suffered no overwhelming experience of personal passion; there was no tremendousness in him; he never trailed his clouds of glory through the fire. Wordsworth never experienced an earthquake. 

At a concert one evening I heard a beautiful girl sing a beautiful song. And yet when the last rich note trembled away into silence, I had a vague feeling of discontent. I missed something, I knew not what. I confessed this to a friend on the way home. ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘I noticed it. Some day her heart will be broken, and after that she will sing the song again; and then, if you hear her, you will be satisfied!’ It was the earthquake that was wanting. 

‘Rock of Ages, cleft for me’ —
Thoughtlessly the maiden sung;
Fell the words unconsciously
From her girlish, gleeful tongue;
Sang as little children sing, 

Sang as sing the birds in June,
Fell the words like light leaves down
On the current of the tune —
‘Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee.’
‘Rock of Ages, cleft for me 

‘Twas a woman sang them now,
Pleadingly and prayerfully —
Every word her heart did know.
Rose the song as storm-tossed bird
Beats with weary wing the air,
Every note with sorrow stirred,
Every syllable a prayer —
‘Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee.’

But I shall be reminded that I included sermons in that opening sentence of mine. And what of that ? The sermon that is not a volcanic eruption is not worth hearing. ‘I once heard a preacher,’ Emerson tells us, ‘who sorely tempted me to say that I would go to church no more. Men go, thought I, where they are wont to go, else had no soul entered the temple that morning. A snowstorm was falling around. The snowstorm was real; the preacher was merely spectral, and the eye felt the sad contrast in looking at him and then out from the window behind him into the beautiful meteor of the snow. He had lived in vain. He uttered no word intimating that he had laughed or wept, was married or in love, had been commended or cheated or chagrined.’ 

It is not pleasant to think of poor Emerson sitting in the cold church that wintry morning, longing for some warm word from a human heart and having to go out into the snowstorm disappointed. And it is still more painful to reflect that the whole congregation that bleak morning, like Milton’s ‘hungry sheep, looked up and were not fed.’ What a pity that the spirit of the preacher had never been swept by some wild volcanic fires! What a pity that his heart had never been shattered I What a pity that the depths of the good man’s soul had never been broken up ! In contrast with Emerson’s pitiful experience, let me tell another story : 

God sent six children to the Manse,
And one was crooked and strange,
And often through the hushed, sad house
Half-frenziedly would range. 

And none in such dark time had skill
To calm that spirit wild —
None but the grave, strong minister,
Who fondly loved the child. 

And so through many a weary night
He sat and talked and sang,
And soothed the lad the while his heart
Was torn with many a pang. 

Then, when, with calm face vigil-pale,
He stood before his flock,
And great truths from his struck heart poured
Like streams from Moses’ rock. 

And every hearer owned his grace,
And tears wet every cheek
From pew to pew the whisper went—
‘His lad’s been bad this week.’

Cold-blooded critics may censure me if they will for having linked earthquakes with sermons; but no minister who knows the rapture of his calling will doubt for one moment the essential relationship. He knows that the only religion that has ever moved profoundly the lives of men is the religion of a divine heart that was broken for the healing of the world. 

F.W. Boreham