In Christian and Mediaeval Times 323 



Upon the roses of thy wounds, 



May I bear home in my mouth and in my heart 



The virgin honey of thy blood." 



In the church hymns of a later day we find a similar 

 idea, as in a long hymn by Ernest Gottlieb Waltersdorf, com- 

 posed in the middle of the eighteenth century, which takes 

 the bee for its symbolical subject and from which the fol- 

 lowing lines are given in a somewhat free translation, — 



" The bees creep into the deep flower-cup, and what 

 can better be for me and all poor souls than to hide in the 

 wounds of Jesus, which at all hours stand open. 



" The bee builds its little cell from flower sap. My 

 Jesus, the power of thy spirit serves me upon all occasions. 

 I build for myself a strong dwelling from thy grace. 



" The bees never suffer but one king among them. Ah, 

 Jesus, help us all to shun idols, that our hearts may be 

 surrendered in love and truth to thee alone." 



Sometimes, however, the bee was turned as a weapon 

 against the Church, as where Marnix in the sixteenth cen- 

 tury wrote a " A Roman Beehive" as a satire upon the 

 Romish church. 



And every one knows of MandeviUe's "Fable of the 

 Bees," written in 1729. This unfortunate book was consid- 

 ered so anti-Christian that it was burned in London by the 

 hangman, though one reading it to-day would probably 

 cast it aside as being more stupid than dangerous. 



Bees appear upon the coat-of-arms of the house of Bar- 

 berini, to wliich family Pope Urban VIII. belonged, and 

 when he built the church Delia Sapienza in Rome, he is 

 said to have taken the form of the bee for the ground-plan. 



It was believed that at the death of their owner the bees 

 left their hives in search of him, unless his demise was 

 promptly and formally announced to them, and this belief 

 still prevails in the western and northern countries. More- 



