In fact, Hawaii is a great slag. There is something very
solemn in the position of this crater-house: with smoke and steam
coming out of every pore of the ground, and in front the huge
crater, which to-night lights all the sky. My second visit has
produced a far deeper impression even than the first, and one of awe
and terror solely.
Kilauea is altogether different from the European volcanoes which
send lava and stones into the air in fierce sudden spasms, and then
subside into harmlessness. Ever changing, never resting, the force
which stirs it never weakening, raging for ever with tossing and
strength like the ocean: its labours unfinished and possibly never
to be finished, its very unexpectedness adds to its sublimity and
terror, for until you reach the terminal wall of the crater, it
looks by daylight but a smoking pit in the midst of a dreary stretch
of waste land.
Last night I thought the Southern Cross out of place; to-night it
seems essential, as Calvary over against Sinai. For Halemaumau
involuntarily typifies the wrath which shall consume all evil: and
the constellation, pale against its lurid light, the great love and
yearning of the Father, "who spared not His own Son but delivered
Him up for us all," that, "as in Adam all die, even so in Christ
shall all be made alive.
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