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When the morning sun casts the shadow of the sleeping volcano Etna across the fair plains of Sicily, over beautiful fields and smiling gardens and lovely landscapes, the people forbid you to speak of that which casts the shadow. It suggests the awful terrors that slumber in the mountain and that any hour may burst out in fearful destruction. So the people will not speak of the ominous terrors. They go on making their gardens, building their houses, tilling their fields, singing their songs, trying to forget the phantom woe that sleeps in the air above their heads, in the towering cone. But does forgetfulness of it shelter them from the awful peril that hides away in the quiet volcano?
There are many who try to keep peace in their hearts in the same way. Everywhere in this world, over sweetest joy and tenderest beauty and rarest hope, hangs the shadow of divine wrath. The consciousness of guilt casts a deep line of darkness on every life. But many refuse to think of it or to speak of it. They try to have peace by forgetting the curse that slumbers above them, the wrath of God that abides upon them. But this is not the peace that Christ gives. It is no shelter to the soul. It removes no peril. The woe is still there. No peace will do for a human soul which can ever be broken.