Meantime it may be observed that these theologians affect a concern for the Divine honor which even revelation itself does not confess. It teaches that all the operations of nature are the operations of God, and no apologies are offered for consequences which, to short-sighted men, may appear to conflict with righteousness or love. Does the earthquake tear the mountain asunder, and spread devastation and death throughout the surrounding country? it is the Lord who roareth from Zion, and uttereth his voice from Jerusalem; He causeth the habitation of the shepherds to mourn, and the top of Carmel to wither.[232] The people bow their heads with reverence, and in their chastening sorrows see the hand of God. But these philosophic theologians must correct the language of Scripture, and tone it down in harmony with the capricious demands of modern scientists. The language of the ancient Prophet of God is simply the expression of a childlike and subjective conception of nature which modern science has emptied of all its significance. The earthquake was the product of "secondary causes"--of inherent nature-forces which now exist and act independent of the agency and control of God. To maintain the consistency of their hypothesis, they will even affirm that the catastrophe was unforeseen, and did not come within the purview of the creative plan. The exuberance of the Oriental imagination has thrown a haze of unreality over all the descriptions of natural phenomena, and therefore the language of the inspired Psalmist must be amended. When he tells us that God "covereth the heavens with clouds, and prepareth rain for the earth," we must paraphrase after the following fashion: "In the beginning God gave to water those properties, and determined those cosmical conditions which, when coincident, result in the formation of clouds and the descent of rain!" This, we are told, is the interpretation which modern science demands. Conservation is simply "the indestructibility of matter and the persistence of force," and Providence is "the uniformity of natural law." We must no longer believe that God is a present, immanent, and diffusive Power and Life in nature. To find the connection between God and nature we must remount by a process of regressive thought to the first, and, indeed, the last act of creation--the primal origination of matter and motion. So that if now piety would stand face to face with its supreme object, it is compelled to fling itself back into the abyss of duration, before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were formed.