Wild nature, too, he knew and loved. The wild lily, which the women used to burn in their ovens never thinking of its beauty, was to him something finer than King Solomon, and he probably had seen Herodian princes on the Galilean roads. (It is a curious thing that he has more than one allusion to royal draperies.) He bade men study the flowers (_katamanthanein_). It is perhaps worth remark that flower-poetry came into Greek literature from regions familiar to us in the life of Jesus; Meleager was a Gadarene. The Psalmist long ago had said of the birds that they had their meat from God; but Jesus brought them into the human family--"Your Heavenly Father feedeth them." Even his knowledge of weather signs is recorded. Not all flowers keep in literature the scent and colour of life; they are a little apt to become "natural objects." But if they are to retain their charm in print, something is wanted that is not very common--the open heart and the open eye, to which birds and flowers are willing to tell their secret. There are other things which point to the fact that Jesus had this endowment,--and not least his being able to find in the flower a link so strong and so beautiful between God and man. Here as elsewhere he was in touch with his environment, for he loved Nature as Nature, and was true to it. His parables are not like AEsop's Fables. His lost sheep has no arguments; his lily is not a Solomon, though it is better dressed; and his sparrows are neither moralists nor theologians--but sparrows, which might be sold at two for a farthing, and in the meantime are chirping and nesting. And all this life of Nature spoke to him of the character of God, of God's delight in beauty and God's love. God is for him the ever-present thought in it all--real too, to others, whenever he speaks of him.