But that was not so in some respects.
Bodily, as we have seen, the storm bore hardly upon him, since
rabbit-bones and fish-tails can hardly be looked upon as a nutritious or
inviting dietary.
But mentally and spiritually the mighty elemental upheaval was wholly
crushing and uplifting.
As he cowered, with humming head, under the fierce unremitting rush of
the gale, and felt the great stones of his shelter tremble in it, and
watched the huge green hills of water, with their roaring white crests,
go sweeping past to crash in thunder on the cliffs of Sark, he felt
smaller than he had ever felt before--and that, as a rule, and if it
come not of self-abnegation through a man's own sin or folly, is
entirely to his good; possibly in the other case also.
To feel infinitely small and helpless in the hands of an Infinitely
Great is a spiritual education to any man, and it was so to this man.
He felt himself, in that universal chaos, no more than a speck of
helpless dust amid the whirling wheels of Nature's inexplicable
machinery, and clung the tighter to the simple fundamental facts of
which his heart was sure--behind and above all this was God, who held
all these things in His hand.
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