again as soon as
possible. And what so helps one to believe in God as knowledge of the
greatness of man?

Meantime, also, his mind was kept freshly and powerfully exercised. He
had discarded his old way of looking at Nature and man's place in it;
and of this fundamental change in him, no better proof could be given
than the way in which he regarded the storm, as he left the
breakfast-table this morning and went to the woods.

The damage was unreckonable. The trees had not been prepared against an
event like that. For centuries some of them had developed strength in
root and trunk and branch to resist the winds of the region when clad
in all their leaves; or to carry the load of these leaves weighted with
raindrops; or to bear the winter snows. Wise self-physicians of the
forest! Removing a weak or useless limb, healing their own wounds and
fractures! But to be buried under ice and then wrenched and twisted by
the blast--for this they had received no training: and thus, like so
many of the great prudent ones who look hourly to their well-being,
they had been stricken down at last by the unexpected.

"Once," said David reverently to himself, beholding it all, "once I
should have seen in this storm some direct intention of the Creator
toward man, even toward me. It would have been a reminder of His power;
perhaps been a chastisement for some good end which I must believe in,
but could not discover. Men certainly once interpreted storms as
communications from the Almighty, as they did pestilence and famine.
There still may be in this neighborhood people who will derive some
such lesson from this. My father may in his heart believe it a judgment
sent on us and on our neighbors for my impiety. Have not cities been
afflicted on account of the presence of one sinner? Thankful I am not
to think in this way now of physical law--not so to misconceive man's
place in Nature. I know that this sleet, so important to us, is but one
small incident in the long history of the planet's atmosphere and
changing surface. It is the action of natural laws, operating without
regard to man, though man himself may have had a share in producing it.
It will bring death to many a creature; indirectly, it may bring death
to me; but that would be among the results, not in the intention."

He set his face to cross the wood--sliding, skating, steadying himself
against the trunks, driving his heels through the ice crust The
exercise was heating; his b