Seite:Marsh Hallig 1856.djvu/297

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CONCLUSION.

in every variety of posture, each indicating more or less
exhaustion, all thinly clad from the hurry and confusion
of the preceding night, men without neck-cloths and
their chests exposed, women and girls with their long
wet hair hanging over their shoulders ; some with coun-
tenances as it were transfigured, gazing upward ; others
with an expression of sorrow and distress at the fresh
eight of the annihilation of their earthly fortunes, chil-
dren looking timidly around and clinging to their pa-
rents, as if seeing again the horrors through which they
had just passed. And then the shattered wharf, here
washed into deep cavities, there into steep slides with
heaps of earth below it, like the blown up walls of a
fortress. On one side a half sunk house-frame, the last
remains of the parsonage, on the other a view over the
smooth flats covered with scattered ruins that a light
fall of snow during the morning, had made visible
above the dark, wet earth on which they lay. Beyond,
the sea, whose waves, from the impulse of the late
storm, were still in unusual agitation, proving how
great had been the violence of the tempest. All this
formed a picture whose reality left every creation of
fancy far behind it.

  "Fear not, little flock," exclaimed the pastor. "See !
the Lord is near you ! As the rainbow after the del-
uge, was a sign and a testimony that God's grace should
henceforth be greater than man's sin, so he gives us
this cup which has served so many generations and has
survived so many floods, as a sign and testimony to-day,
that he will take pity upon us in his love and faithful-
ness. Fear not little flock 1 The Lord who hath sent
Jesus Christ into the world that he might fill the