Thistles and Nettles 345 



here is the higher being sacrificed to the lower, 

 and the more sentient to the less sentient. 



One can scarcely think of a plant so fertile in 

 defensive devices as an insensate thing, and is half 

 inclined to fancy that the thistle continues to prac- 

 tice in modern times those savage modes of war- 

 fare once used by the Highland chieftains who 

 carried it on their standards. 



Nature is full of problems, and one of the most 

 difficult is to reconcile some of its doings with the 

 Divine Law of love. For we know that " the Lord 

 our God is One" in Nature and in Revelation, 

 and that " if Nature is the garment of God it is 

 woven throughout, without seam"; its loveliness, 

 its terror, its tenderness, its seeming cruelty are all 

 parts of one beneficent and majestic whole. Yet 

 Nature seems to us with our imperfect knowledge 

 a blending of irreconciliable things. 



The solution of one question is but the sugges- 

 tion of another, and the ultimate questions remain 

 wrapped in mystery as deep as that which enfolded 

 them when God spake out of the whirlwind and 

 propounded problems which neither Job nor his 

 friends could solve. 



Meantime a wood-thrush close by is asking over 

 and over again that wistful question which the 



