THE GALVESTON DISASTER.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 50, 13 December 1900, Page 7

THE GALVESTON DISASTER.

Commenting on certain generally overlooked phases of the Galveston disaster, Mr. James R. Randall writes entertainingly and instructively in the Catholic Columbian : To our eyes ' looking through a glass darkly,' there were some singular or contradictory events in the Galveston tragedy. Besides the Cathedral only two other churches were spared. One was the Jewish Synagogue and the other a negro Catholic chapel. In one of our grander churches the only stained glass window intact represents St. Peter Claver baptizing a negro. The brewery was practically unharmed and few saloons were blown down. The Secretary of the V.M.C.A. owed his life to the inmates of the Ursnline Convent. Ghouls were spared, to meet later on, an ignominiouriy swift death, while good men who saved many lives perished. The common answer to seeming incongruities is that given to Holy Job, by God Himself, when murmuring ceased at the tremendous question : ' Where wert thou when I built the foundations of the earth /' In portentous calamities death, like rain, falls upon just and unjust alike, and the sacrifice of the just is, in a certain sense, atonement for the unjust, not as to their eternal destiny but humanly speaking. The people of Galveston deliberately built their city on a perilous spot known to be such. Only a miracle could have made them secure permanently under existing circumstances, and God performs miracles in His own way, which is Dot our way. At Lisbon the mighty earthquake killed thousands of persons in the churches while assisting at the adorable Sacrifice of the Mass, and a tidal wave engulfed 30,000 fugitives on the river bank. A record states that not a disreputable house in Lisbon wm overthrown. The staunch of Faith do not get discouraged at such curious happenings. They who keep in constant preparation need not care how or when and where they are to die. Out of this awful visitation at Galveston, God will, in season, draw beneficent results. By a little effort, comparatively, the Catholics of this country, can replace their ruined temples and institutions. Conversions to the true Faith will come, I think, to not a few who would never otherwise gain that crown. If all of the survivors now recognise the emptiness of carnal things and the ineffable importance of thing* eternal, the catastrophe at Galveston will be a salutary lesson, often to be taught in no other manner.