instinct impelling them constantly to seek for human flesh; and instances are related of slaves who have massacred and eaten the children confided to their charge.

"I have seen a man of the same race, who had a tail an inch and a half long, covered with a few hairs. He appeared to be thirtyfive years old; he was robust, well built, of an ebon blackness, and had the same peculiar formation of jaw noticed above, that is to say, the tooth sockets were inclined outwards. Their four canine teeth are filed down, to diminish their power of mastication.

"I know also, at Constantinople, the son of a physician, aged two years, who was born with a tail an inch long; he belonged to the white Caucasian race. One of his grandfathers possessed the same appendage. This phenomenon is regarded generally in the East as a sign of great brute force."

About ten years ago, a newspaper paragraph recorded the birth of a boy at Newcastle-on-Tyne, provided with a tail about an inch and a quarter long. It was asserted that the child when sucking wagged this stump as token of pleasure.

According to a North-American Indian tradition

all men were created originally with tails, tails. long-haired, sleek, and comely. These tails were their delight, and they adorned them with paint, beads and wampum. Then the world was at peace, discord and wars were unknown. Men became proud and forgot their Maker, and He found it necessary to disturb their serenity by sending them a scourge which might teach them humility, and make them realize their dependence on the Great Spirit. Then He amputated their tails, and out of these dejecta membra fashioned women— who, say the Kikapoos, retain traces of their origin, for we find them ever trailing after the men, frisky and impulsive *.

Yet, notwithstanding all this testimony in favour of tailed men and women, I profess myself dubious; and shall yield only when a homo caudatus has been caught and shown to me.

+ Atherne Jones, Trad. N. American Indians, iii. 175.

Antichrist and Pope Joan

ROM the earliest ages of the Church, the

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advent of the Man of Sin has been looked forward to with terror, and the passages of Scripture relating to him have been studied with solemn awe, lest that day of wrath should come upon the Church unawares. As events in the world's history took place which seemed to be indications of the approach of Antichrist, a great horror fell upon men's minds, and their imaginations conjured up myths which flew from mouth to mouth, and which were implicitly believed.

Before speaking of these strange tales which produced such an effect on the minds of men in the Middle Ages, it will be well briefly to examine the opinions of divines of the early ages on the passages of Scripture connected with the coming of the last great persecutor of the Church. Antichrist

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was believed by most ancient writers to be destined to arise out of the tribe of Dan, a belief founded on the prediction of Jacob, “Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path" (conf. Jeremiah viii. 16), and on the exclamation of the dying patriarch, when looking on his son Dan, "I have waited for Thy Salvation, O Lord," as though the long-suffering of God had borne long with that tribe, but in vain, and it was to be extinguished without hope. This, indeed, is implied in the sealing of the servants of God in their foreheads (Revelation vii.), when twelve thousand out of every tribe, except Dan, were seen by S. John to receive the seal of adoption, whilst of the tribe of Dan not one was sealed, as though it, to a man, had apostatized.

Opinions as to the nature of Antichrist were divided. Some held that he was to be a devil in phantom body, and of this number was Hippolytus. Others again believed that he would be an incarnate demon, true man and true devil; in fearful and diabolical parody of the Incarnation of our Lord. A third view was that he would be merely a desperately wicked man, acting upon diabolic inspirations, just as the saints act upon divine inspirations. S. John Damascene expressly asserts that he will

not be an incarnate demon, but a devilish man, for he says, "Not as Christ assumed humanity, so will the devil become human, but the Man will receive all the inspiration of Satan, and will suffer the devil to take up his abode within him." In this manner, Antichrist could have many forerunners, and so S. Jerome and S. Augustine saw an Antichrist in Nero, not the Antichrist, but one of those of whom the Apostle speaks-" Even now are there many Antichrists." Thus also every enemy of the faith, such as Diocletian, Julian, and Mahomet, has been regarded as a precursor of the Archpersecutor, who was expected to sum up in himself the cruelty of a Nero or Diocletian, the show of virtue of a Julian, and the spiritual pride of a Mahomet.

From infancy the evil one is to take possession of Antichrist, and to train him for his office, instilling into him cunning, cruelty, and pride. His doctrine will be—not downright infidelity, but a

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show of godliness," whilst "denying the power thereof," i.e. the miraculous origin and divine authority of Christianity. He will sow doubts of our Lord's manifestation "in the .flesh," he will allow Christ to be an excellent Man, capable of teaching the most exalted truths, and inculcating