HOW TO FACE DANGER.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2197, 7 August 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

HOW TO FACE DANGER.

Refkiuuxg to the tendency of some people to evpect that they will escape a great danger by praying, instead of exerting themselves to the utmost, the Rev. W. Poole, who was one of tho.se saved from the Ly-ee-raoon, made the following remarks in a sermon preached while he was in Sydney : "God's will is that you and I, and eveiy man, should do bis duty, and I maintain to-night that it was by direct defiance of God, and not by His will, that that calamity occurred." "And," proceeded the reverend gentleman, "If God interfered, as you would have Him do, to prevent accident or rescue those who are in peril, He would be giving a premium to carelessness, indifference, and sloth ; men would feel no responsibility, and life would become chaos." Alluding to the above, the Australasian remarks :—: — " The Highland boatsman who was rowing two Presbyterian ministers across the lake in a .storm— the story is Dean Ramsay's, or Norman M'Leod's — said that the little man might pray if he wanted to, but the big one must fake an oar. Who will question that Mr Poole was doing his duty manfully when using all his intelligence, coolness, and physical strength to help the weak men round about him, including little 'Adams ?3|Mr Hazard, with his wife and family, stood rouivl the harmonium sinking a hymn v» hile Mount Tarawera was in violent eruption, and ashes were falling in showers on the roof. The precious moments thus wasted cost Mr Hazard and four ot hia children their lives. The family were expecting deliverance by a miracle, if they knew they were in danger, instead of availing themselves of the simple means at hand to fly before their dwelling was overwhelmed ; and such of them as were saved owed their rescue to Maoris, stimulated into activity by their human instincts alone."

In showing, during a recent lecture on " Quartz Reefs," how quartz got into the reels, Professor Black said that crevices were formed in the ordinary rocks through shrinkage or volcanic action, and the miners in theLafes district had told him of one of these clefts, which was of great depth, existing m Mount Pisa. It was only some four or five feet wide, but the miners wcic afraid to jump over it because the daik depths below frightened them. Sometimes they Inn led into it great boulders, and, listening for the sound, they could not hear the rock-bounding and rattling and thundering away down below them, the sounds getting fainter and fainter, till by and bye it died away altogether in such a manner that they were convinced it had died— not because the stone had reached the bottom, but because it had got so far down th.it the sound could not be returned to them.