The earthquake spoken of in the text is, indeed, a small affair in comparison to some that have occurred in this world; and if the same God be living now as then, surely He can rend in twain the little mountain of Olivet. And if we grant to the infidel scientist of to-day the fact that there is no God, still the thing prophesied of is neither unreasonable or impossible, because what has been may be again; and as the demand in this case is small in comparison to what has been, surely this thing may come to pass. In times past Providence and the wants of the Church have been timely aided by convulsions in nature, and if they were only so accidentally, why then accidentally they may all agree again. To the scientist, especially the geologist, there can be no great difficulty in crediting the miracles of the text when we think of the successive revolutions that have taken place. Fires, and floods, and earthquakes, have done sublime service in the past, whether we credit the same to Nature or to God. That an earthquake, or any peculiar expression of nature, should be timed to meet a special condition of the Church or the special purposes of a Providence, is not strange. In such an event there really is no more wonder than that a man should set an alarm on his clock to go off at three minutes past four in the morning. Some men can swallow big things if you will only allow them to make out the author to be Nature. But whether we attribute the things past to Nature or to God, we know that wonderful things have happened.
Seismology, the science of earthquakes, is by no means void of interest. The earthquake catalogue of the British Association takes notice of, and records the occurrence of, over 6,000 that happened between 1606 B.C. and 1842 A.D. Some of these have been terrible in force, destruction, and extent, oftentimes changing the whole face of a country, its climate, and river courses. The great earthquake of 1783 in Calabria, probably caused the death of 100,000 people; it was felt over a great part of Europe. The city of Lisbon was visited on the morning of November 1st, 1755, with an earthquake so severe that in a few minutes 60,000 persons perished, and most of the city was destroyed and buried beneath the water of the bay some 600 feet.