With such juggling as this of facts and phrases, the author of Calvinism has written his History of England, the delight of circulating library subscribers because it is "as interesting as a novel."
And so it is, for the best of reasons.
LOVE FOR ANIMALS.
"He prayeth well who loveth well
Both man, and bird and beast;
He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all."
In reading the lives of the saints, I have been particularly struck with their love for, and their power over, the animal world. They seemed to live nearer the heart of nature than other mortals, and perceived there diviner harmonies. Perhaps this sympathetic relation sprang from the belief that, as the whole natural, world participated in the fall of man, so it has its part in the fruit of our Saviour's Passion. At least, they believed that animals, in common with man, received life from God and exist through him. "All creatures," says Denis the Carthusian, "partake of the divine, eternal, and uncreated beauty." The saints respected in animals that divine wisdom which Albertus Magnus tells us, in his book on animals, is to be recognized in their instinct. Dr. Newman says: "Men of narrow reasoning may smile at the supposition that the woods and wild animals can fall into the scheme of theology and preach to the heart the all-pervading principles of religion; but they forget that God's works have a unity of design throughout, and that the author of nature and of revealed religion is one."
Dr. Faber saw throughout creation a threefold manifestation of God, typifying his being, the generation of the Son, and the procession of the Spirit.
Sanctity seems to restore man to his primeval relation to nature, and give him back the power he possessed in Eden over the animal world. The Holy Scriptures tell us of beasts and birds sent to minister to the wants of man, and how the very lions reverenced the prophet Daniel. Animals were submissive to man before his fall, and they went obediently into the ark at the command of Noah. Such things are renewed and repeated in the lives of the Christian saints. It is not more wonderful that a raven should bring St. Paul the Hermit half a loaf every day for sixty years, and a whole one when visited by St. Anthony, than that one should feed the prophet. St. Gregory of Nazianzen relates that St. Basil's grandmother, St. Macrina, having taken refuge with her husband in the forests of Pontus during a persecution, was miraculously fed by stags. St. Bega, when a hermitess in a cave on the Cumberland coast, lived in supernatural familiarity with the sea-birds and the wolves of Copeland forest, and they in part supplied her with food. St. Roch is usually represented with the dog that used to accompany him in his pilgrimages. When St. Roch had the plague, the dog went daily into the city and returned with a loaf of bread for his master.
Among the old legends that embody the popular idea of the veneration of the animal world for holiness, is that of the Flight into Egypt. It is said the lions and leopards crept out of their lairs to lick the baby hands of the infant Jesus. When Christians, in the times of persecution under the Roman emperors, were thrown to the wild beasts in the amphitheatre, there are many examples of these usually ferocious animals refusing to touch the holy victims, as in the well-known instances of Andronicus and Tarchus.
St. Blaise is depicted surrounded by a variety of animals, such as the lion and the lamb, the leopard and the hind, who seem to have laid aside their animosity. This saint was obliged, in the persecution of the reign of Diocletian, to take refuge in a cave of the mountains. It was the haunt of wild beasts, whose ferocity he so disarmed that they came every morning, as if to ask his blessing, says the old legend. One day, he met an old woman in distress for the loss of her only earthly possession, a pig, which had been carried off by a wolf. Such power had St. Blaise over the animal world, that when he ordered the wolf to bring back the pig he obeyed.