t he could never
bring himself to pluck the fragrant blossoms, for, in the cottage, the
dreaded small-pox had once raged. 'It seemed,' says Jefferies, 'to
quite spoil the violet bank. There is something in disease so
destructive; as it were, to flowers.' And as the violets shared the
scourge, so the creatures shared the curse. And as they stared dumbly
into the eyes of the Son of God they seemed to half understand that
their redemption was drawing nigh. 'In Nature herself,' as Longfellow
says, 'there is a waiting and hoping, a looking and yearning, after an
unknown something. Yes, when above there, on the mountain, the lonely
eagle looks forth into the grey dawn to see if the day comes not; when
by the mountain torrent the brooding raven listens to hear if the
chamois is returning from his nightly pasture in the valley; and when
the rising sun calls out the spicy odours of the Alpine flowers, then
there awake in Nature an expectation and a longing for a future
revelation of God's majesty.' Did He see this brooding sense of
expectancy in the fierce eyes about Him? And did He rejoice that the
hope of the Wild would in Him be gloriously fulfilled? Who knows?

In his _Cloister and the Hearth_, Charles Reade tells of the temptation
and triumph of Clement the hermit. 'And one keen frosty night, as he
sang the praises of God to his tuneful psaltery, and his hollow cave
rang with his holy melody, he heard a clear whine, not unmelodious. It
became louder. He peeped through the chinks of his rude door, and
there sat a great red wolf moaning melodiously with his nose high in
the air! Clement was delighted. "My sins are going," he cried, "and
the creatures of God are owning me!" And in a burst of enthusiasm he
sang:

Praise Him, all ye creatures of His!
Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord!

And all the time he sang the wolf bayed at intervals.' Did Jesus, I
wonder, see the going of the world's sin and the departure of its
primal curse in the faces of the wild things that howled and roared
around Him? As the fierce things prowled around Him and left Him
unharmed, did He see a symbol of His final subjugation of all earth's
savage and restless elements? Who shall say?

VI

'He was with the wild beasts,' says Mark, 'and the angels ministered
unto Him.' Life always hovers between the beasts and the angels; and
however wolfish may be the eyes that affright us in the day of our
temptation, we ma