EARNESTNESS CONFOUNDED WITH HERESY.

211

throne in Italy. "The Catholic Church," says he, "transmitted by the succession of bishops, ceases to be truly Catholic, as soon as it becomes stained and desecrated, through the fellowship of unworthy men." One feels that it is not going too far to affirm that whatever of heavenly vitality there was in the Church in these days was among the "schismatic " Novatianists. Rome's policy was to confound the distinction between the visible and the invisible Church, and so to rule without Christ, and without the Spirit, and without the Gospel. Novatian and his brave few, taught out of the Book of God and not by man's traditions, protested against such confusion, and maintained the cause of the living against the dead. They were suppressed. The attempt to reform failed. The spirit was quenched, and Rome quietly reseated itself in its old paganism, under a Christian nomenclature, having at length succeeded in throwing off as an incubus the last relics, if not of Apostolic faith, at least of Apostolic life.

We have a great desire to know the real opinions of the Priscillianists, to whom the worthless Damasus of Rome, and the unscrupulous Ambrose of Milan, denied a hearing, and who suffered sorely for their doctrines in an age when to be dissatisfied with the regnant ritualism of high places was to be a heretic. They might be wrong; but their persecutors

were more so.

We have a still greater desire to know more of Apollinaris in the fourth century. He was evidently a man that loved his Bible, and sought the mind of God in it. But he clung to it too closely for his own safety and honour in the Church. He was hated, reviled, misrepresented. At the worst, even according to the showing of his enemies, it was jealousy respecting encroachments on the Supreme Godhead of his Lord, that led to some expressions on which his adversaries founded the charge of heresy. He was the poet

of the Church and the scholar of the age,—yet, withal, a man of godly life and simple faith. But no excellency could save him. He had offended the priesthood; his name must be branded; even his hymns must posterity may know him only as a heretic. Basil did the work of hunting him down. We want to know more of Jovinian too.

perish, so that

Athanasius and

He was abused

by Ambrose and by Jerome; condemned by the Roman

lonely rock of Boa, there to Yet, what were his heresies?

Church, and banished to the expiate his heresies by death. His chief one was, that "the man who lived according to Christ's Gospel in the circle of domestic and social life was a better man than the solitary ascetic!" He wanted men to live as Christ lived, and as His Apostles lived. For this cause it was that Jerome poured out his wicked slanders against him, and that the dominant Church condemned him. Yet who can doubt that it was for the truth that he contended and died?

God did not leave Himself without witnesses in these ages. The cloud was still spreading out its skirts over thee arth. Drops were falling in some places, showers in others. The word of God was not bound. The glad tidings went on their way from land to land. The Spirit of God carried salvation to thousands. Would that we had a fuller record of His work. Would that some one would at least glean out the true from the false, and that we might have a history, however brief, of the living as well as of the dead, a record not of those whom Rome has canonised, but of those whom God has written in the Lamb's Book of Life.

H. B.

THE LION.

(Felis Leo.)

THIS redoubtable animal is not only at the head of the formidable order Carnivora, but has, by common consent, been regarded from the earliest ages as the king of the forest. Its appearance is familiar, especially in our land, where it has for many ages been the national emblem, with its figure emblazoned on our standards, moulded on our coins, and stamped on our public documents. From living specimens till a late period kept as an appendage of royalty, and from its frequent occurrence in menageries and zoological gardens, almost every child knows that the lion is a cat-like quadruped of a tawny yellow colour, and that there is no foundation for its being figured in all the colours of the rainbow on the signs of inns and on the shields of ancient families, except in the fancy of the painter or the secret meaning of the herald.

The lion has acquired its distinguished position, not only from its stately bearing, its great strength, and its tremendous powers of destruction, but from ideas popularly held, that, in this monarch of beasts, we have the portraiture of "might unmingled with ferocity, of courage undebased by guile, of dignity tempered with grace, and ennobled by generosity." It is in vain that nearly all travellers record that the royal beast is as treacherous as any cat, and that except when roused by hunger or brought to bay he sneaks away like a coward. "He may possess," says Mr. Methuen,* "the most noble qualities of any of the feline race, but it is a race distinguished by ferocity, craft, revenge, impatience, not by generosity." "There is something truly regal and magni

*Life in the Wilderness, p. 82.

ficent in his port, his flashing eye, and shaggy mane, but 'fronti nulla fides." The traveller has often to record. that when suddenly roused the lion runs off as timidly as a buck; and that he is a stealthy, cunning brute, who never attacks unless he has the advantage, and, relying on his great strength, feels sure of the victory.

The lion is admirably organised and armed for the purposes of his life; and possesses in the large canine teeth and sharply-pointed molars the most suitable dentition for the laceration of animal food. His very tongue is rough with elevated papillæ, the points of which are directed backwards, so that with this organ he can remove every particle of muscle from the bones of his victim. So rough

is the tongue, that the lick of a lion has been known to abrade the skin of the human hand. The claws, which are five on the fore-feet and four on the hind, are long, and hard, and hooked; they are retractile, within a sheath, which is enclosed in the skin which covers the end of the paws. The muscles which move and hold back these claws are very complicated, and afford a beautiful and very evident instance of adaptive design; for in no other way could these useful organs have the sharpness of their edge and the fineness of their point preserved.

The male lion is distinguished in his adult state by a shaggy mane, which contributes much to his nobleness of look. The mane varies in colour according to his age. Mr. Cumming says that he attains it in his third year; at first it is of a yellowish colour; in the prime of life it is blackest; and when the monarch has numbered many years, but is still in the full enjoyment of his power, it assumes a yellowish grey colour, a kind of mixture as it were of pepper and salt. These old lions are ever deemed the most dangerous. The female has no trace of a mane, and is

The

covered with a short, thick, glossy coat of tawny hair. tawny colour of the lion's skin is a great protection to him, rendering him perfectly invisible in the dark, and in the daytime, from its sandy or stone colour, concealing him well from observation and distinction. Mr. Cumming has often heard lions lapping the water loudly under his very nose without being able to make out so much as the outline of their forms. This traveller observed, too, the unwillingness of lions to visit fountains when the moon was bright. If that luminary rises early, the lions deferred drinking till a very late hour in the morning; while, if it rose late, they drank at a very early hour in the night. The lion is strictly nocturnal in its habits; during the day his usual place of concealment is some low bushy tree or wide-spreading bush, either in the forest or on the mountain-side. He also frequents jungly spots, where there are lofty reeds, or fields of long, rank, yellow grass, among which he lies concealed during the heat and glare of the tropical sun.

The cubs for some time after their birth are obscurely banded with black; and on the head and limbs there are several spots of a similar darkish hue, so that the young by their marking show some affinity both to the tiger and to the leopard, animals closely allied to the lion and belonging to the same natural family.

The lion, though a pigmy compared with the giraffe, can dash this lofty animal to the ground, and in a short time is able to overcome him. He is a constant attendant on the great herds of buffaloes which wander among the vast forests of the interior of Africa; and so long as his teeth are uninjured, a full-grown lion generally proves a match for an old bull-buffalo, an animal which much exceeds in size and strength the largest breed of English cattle. He also preys on the numerous species of antelope, watching for them as they come to drink. It is but very seldom that the lion