singers were dead, and would slide into Timothy Whitebonnet's ear, when the air seemed stillest, and pretend to him that they came from God. Often, just as a sentence was completed, he would realize its origin, and have to expectorate it in the form of a toad—a dangerous exercise, but it taught him discernment, and fitted him to play his part in the world. He learned with horror of the riots in the metropolis, and of the elevation of the heretical Cat. For he knew that Christ has two Natures, one human, the other divine: how can it be otherwise?
At Constantinople there seems to have been a little doubt. Leo, the reigning emperor, was anxious not to drive Egypt into revolt, and disposed to let Alexandria follow the faith she preferred. But his theologians took a higher line, and insisted on his sending a new garrison. This was done, the Cat was captured, and Whitebonnet dragged from Canopus and consecrated in his place. There matters rested until the accession of Basiliscus, who sent a new garrison to expel Whitebonnet. Once more the Cat ruled bloodily until the Emperor Zeno took the other view, and sending a
However, the curtain may drop now. The controversy blazed for two hundred years, and is smouldering yet. The Copts still believe, with Timothy the Cat, in the single Nature of Christ; the double Nature, upheld by Timothy Whitebonnet, is still maintained by the rest of Christendom and by the reader. The Pharos, the Temple of Serapis—these have perished, being only stones, and sharing the impermanence of material things. It is ideas that live.
