Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/768

732 50,000 Hill Damara, 2500 Namaqua, 2000 Bastards, 20,000 Bushmen, and 300 whites. Hereroland has a coast-line of 460 miles, but the only point where it offers shelter and access to ships is Walfish Bay, a safe but comparatively shallow harbour formed by Pelican Pvint immediately to the south of the mouth of the Kuisip. The country consists of three distinct physical regions—first, a long and narrow coast district backed by a very regular line of hills, of which the highest point appears to be Mount Messum or Dourissa ; secondly, a broad moun- tuinois tract, containing in the south such peaks as Omatako, 8800 feet, Ombotozu (Diambotodzu), 7300, Etyo, 4000, and far in the north Etendeka, 4000 ; and thirdly, a steppe region which stretches away into the Kalahari desert. The rivers of Hereroland, of which the most important, passing from south to north, are the Tsoachaub, the Eisib or Omaruru, the Ugab, and the Huab, are mere wadies, which only at intervals succeed in bringing water as far as the sea. Except in the half-dry river-beds, the coast dis- trict is almost destitute of vegetation, the only edible fruit being the nara, which grows on the sand-downs, and is, according to Anderson, eaten by oxen, mice, men, ostriches, and lions. In the mountainous tract there are places of considerable fertility ; large trees, as sycamores, &c., grow along the river-beds, and euphorbias, tamarisks, and a variety of strong-spined bushes prevail. In a few favoured spots wheat can be cultivated, and from a single grain as many as 150 stalks may be produced. The coast range and many of the mountains, such as Okonyonyo and Amatako, are composed of granite and gneiss, broken by intrusive quartz and porphyry; further east limestone formations, both Carboniferous and Oolitic, are predominant; and these again give place to sandstone strata, which are weathered into table-shaped eminences. The granite and gneiss are being disintegrated with great rapidity. Both iron and copper are said to occur in considerable abundance, though the mineral exploitation of the country has had no satisfactory result. About 25 mineral springs, both hot and cold, are kuown to exist among the mountains.

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1em  HERESY is the English equivalent of the Greek word aipeots, Which has had a somewhat varied ecclesiastical use. The first employment of the word in the New Testament is to denote a sect or school of opinion among the Jews. We read of the heresy of the Sadducees (atpeots tov Zaddovxaiwy, Acts v. 17), the heresy of the Pharisees (aipeots Tov Papiocaiwy, Acts xv. 5), and St Paul speaking to Agrippa says, “ After the straitest heresy of our religion I lived a Pharisee” (xara thv dxpiBeoraryy aipeow Ths Hyerepas Opnoxeias, &c., Acts xxvi. 5). Christianity itself was in the beginning looked upon as one of those sects or schools of Jewish opinion, and the “heresy” of the Nazarenes (Acts xxiv. 5) is spoken of as well as the heresy of the Pharisees (cf. Acts xxiv. 14, Acts xxviii, 22). This use of the term is plainly borrowed from classical Greek, where atpects frequently means a school of Roman jurists or a school of philosophy (cf. Cic., Epis. ad Fam. xv. 16; Diog. Laert., Procm., 13). In the New Testament the word is used in another sense which is purely ecclesiastical. Thus in Titus ili. 10 the apostle says ; “A man who is an heretic after the first and second admonition reject”; in 2 Tet. ii. 1 the church is warned against false teachers, “ who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them,” and these heretics and false teachers are evidently the same as those of whom Paul, in the Epistle to the Galatians, says that they are to be anathematized. They are men who in the name of Christ preach such doctrines as tend to frustrate the grace of Christ, who preach ‘another gospel ” (Gal. i. 8, 9); they are compared to the false prophets of the Old Testament Scriptures ; they cause divisions and schisms in the church (1 Cor. xi. 18, 19); and the heresies they are guilty of are classed along with grave moral offences (Gal. v. 20). It is this second New Testament use of the word which was taken over into ecclesiastical terminology, and it is in this sense that the early Christian writers speak of heresy and heretics, This early ecclesiastical use has continued down to the present, save that in earlier times schism was gencrally included under heresy, the names and the things not being separated by definition. It is interesting, however, to notice that the earlier New Testament use of the word seems to have lingered on. Tertullian (Apolog., c. 1) calls the church a sect, which is the Latin equivalent for heresy, and in the same way Constantine called the church (Eusebius, /7.£., x. 5, &§ 21-22) 7 aipeors 7 KabodArKy, q aywTdTy aipects. i Heresy means a grave error in matters of faith, but it is much more than a theological or ecclesiastical term. From the days of the emperor Theodosius at the latest, the Christian religion has been intimately connected with law, and heresy is a legal term, with a definite meaning attaching 