se who, before so very long, would be torn to pieces by hungry
beasts for His dear sake?

'To-day,' said Amplonius, a teacher of the persecuted Roman Christians,
'to-day, by the cruel order of Trajan, Ignatius was thrown to the wild
beasts in the arena. He it was, my children, whom Jesus took, when as
yet he was but a little child, and set him in the midst of the
disciples and said, "Except ye be converted, and become as little
children, ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven." And now, from the
same Lord who that day laid His sacred hands upon his head, he has
received the martyr crown. But Ignatius did not fear the beasts, my
children. I have seen a letter which he wrote but yesterday to the
aged Polycarp, the angel of the Church of Smyrna. In it he says that
the hungry creatures have no terrors for him. "Would to God," he said,
"that I were come to the beasts prepared for me. I wish that, with
their gaping mouths, they were now ready to rush upon me. Let the
angry beasts tear asunder my members so that I may win Christ Jesus."
Thus Ignatius wrote but yesterday to the beloved Polycarp; and to-day,
with a face like the face of an angel, he gave himself to the wolves.
We know not which of us shall suffer next, my children. The people are
still crying wildly, "The Christians to the lions!" It may be that I,
your teacher, shall be the next to witness for the faith. But let us
remember that for forty days and forty nights Jesus was Himself with
the wild beasts, and not one of them durst harm Him. And He is still
with the wild beasts wherever we His people, are among them; and their
cruel fangs can only tear us so far as it is for our triumph and His
glory.' So spake Amplonius, and the Church was comforted.

And at this hour there is, in the catacomb at St. Callixtus, at Rome, a
rude old picture of Jesus among the untamed creatures of the Wild. The
thought that lions and leopards crouched at His feet in the days of His
flesh, and were subject unto Him, was very precious to the hunted and
suffering people.

V

Sometimes, too, I fancy that He saw, in these savage brutes that harmed
Him not, a symbol and a prophecy of His own great conquest. For they,
with their hateful fangs and blooded talons, were part of His vast
constituency. 'The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain
together,' Paul declares. Richard Jefferies pointed to a quaint little
English cottage beside a glorious bank of violets. Bu