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 
