Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/204

190 of help, and watch there until the sun of righteousness rises with healing power and removes thy spiritual blindness."

Mixed in with real animals come those whose existence is more doubtful. Great stress was laid upon the unicorn, and John of Herse, in his pilgrimage to Jerusalem toward the end of the fourteenth century, declares regarding the river Mara, whose bitter waters Moses made sweet, that "even now, evil and unclean beasts poison it after the going down of the sun; but in the morning, after the powers of darkness have disappeared, the unicorn comes from the sea and dips his horn into the stream, and thereby expels and neutralizes the poison, so that the other animals can drink of it during the day. This fact, which I describe, I have seen with my own eyes."

Naturally, among the animals which first attracted the attention of those who thus expounded the ways of God to man was the elephant. First, as to its birth, we are told that it takes place in the water, and that this fact symbolizes baptismal regeneration. Then, too, we are told that the elephant "always sleeps standing, and leans for support against a tree. The hunters take advantage of this fact and saw the tree almost asunder, so that the tree gives way, the elephant falls, and is captured. This evidently symbolizes Adam, whose fall was caused by a tree."

The serpent, of course, comes in for a large share of this kind of interpretation, and therefore appears most frequently among the carvings in wood and stone, both within and without the cathedrals.

As to the lessons thus taught, one of the first is that "when the serpent has grown old it fasts forty days and forty nights until its skin shrivels and loosens. Thereupon it squeezes itself through a narrow crevice in the rocks, and thus casts its skin and renews its youth. And thou, O son of man, if thou desirest to put off the old Adam and be regenerated, must pass through the strait gate and walk in the narrow way which leadeth unto life."

And again: "When the serpent goes to a spring to drink water, it leaves its venom behind in its den; so he who would refresh his soul with the waters of eternal life must leave behind him every sin of his carnal heart."

Of course, in any such pious treatises the eagle naturally came in for a considerable share of attention, and we are informed that "the eagle, when it has grown old and its eyes become dim, flies upward toward the sun until it has purged away the film from its eyes; it then descends to the earth, plunges three times into a spring of pure water, and thus recovers its sight and renews its youth"; so the Christian should "fly aloft on the wings of the