say to
Him, those great lean wolves? And what did He say to them? Animals
are such eloquent things, especially at such times. 'The foxes have
holes,' Jesus said, long afterwards, remembering as He said it how He
watched the creatures of the Wild seek out their lairs. 'And the birds
of the air have nests,' He said, remembering the twittering and
fluttering in the boughs above His head as the feathered things settled
down for the night. 'But the Son of Man hath not where to lay His
head,' He concluded, as He thought of those long, long nights in the
homeless Wild. Did He mean that the wolves were better off than He
was? We are all tempted to think so when the conflict is pressing too
hardly upon us. There seems to be less choice, and therefore less
responsibility, among the beasts of the field; less play of right and
wrong. 'I think,' said Walt Whitman--

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so
placid and self-contained;
I stand and look at them sometimes an hour at a stretch.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania
of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived
thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.

Was some flitting, hovering thought like this part of the Temptation in
the Wild? Is that what Mark means when he says so significantly that
'He was with the wild beasts'? Surely; for He was tempted in _all_
points like as we are, and we have all been tempted in this. 'Good old
Carlo!' we have said, as we patted the dog's head, looking down out of
our eyes of anguish into his calm, impassive gaze. 'Good old Carlo,
you don't know anything of such struggles, old boy!' And we have
fancied for a moment that Carlo had the best of it. It was a black and
blasphemous thought, and He struck it away, as we should strike at a
hawk that fluttered in front of our faces and threatened to pick at our
eyes. But for one moment it hovered before Him, and He caught its ugly
glance. It is a very ugly glance. Our capacity for great inward
strife and for great inward suffering is the one proof we have that we
were made in the image of God.

IV

Was He thinking, I wonder, when He went out to the wolves in the Wild
of tho