The bear, to begin with, is a strict vegetarian. While he can find abundance of vegetables and fruit he is little disposed to go far in varying his means of subsistence. His teeth are formed for the purpose. Unlike those of the lion or tiger, which have a scissor-blade appearance, and are incapable of any but an up-and-down motion, the teeth of the bear are true grinders or molars, and the hinge of the lower jaw is so constructed that it can be worked from side to side, so that the bear can actually chew its food.
It is said to be very fond of strawberries—like some little boys we know—and like the blackbird it can walk daintily along the rows and pick out the ripest. But if there be one thing more than any other that throws the bear into an ecstasy of excitement it is the prospect of a feast of honey. A nest of ants is nothing in comparison. The long nose is thrust into the delicious comb, though it be stung and stung again by the infuriated inhabitants.
It is not till other food fails that the bear becomes carnivorous. But then, driven by hunger, it will even descend into the lower pastures and seize upon the goats and the sheep. This habit is referred to by the youthful David in 1 Samuel xvii. 33. King Saul was trying to dissuade him from matching himself against the gigantic Philistine; but David answered: "Thy servant kept his father's sheep, and there came a lion, and a bear, and took a lamb out of the flock: and I went out after him, and smote him, and delivered it out of his hand.... Thy servant slew both the lion and the bear, and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them, seeing he hath defied the armies of the living God." And all the young people know the result. One smooth stone from the brook was placed in David's sling, and yon huge mass of human arrogance was hurled to the ground. They who fight for Jehovah need never fear. A stone cast in His name becomes a thunderbolt.
III.—ITS FEROCITY.
"Let a bear robbed of her whelps meet a man rather than a fool in his folly" (Prov. xvii. 12).
The whelps themselves are not ferocious. Indeed, they are remarkably stupid. They are as confident as they are weak, and do not even try to escape when the hunters come upon them. The young water-fowl by the river-side disappear in an instant if you happen to come upon them; but the cubs of the bear, with a stupid simplicity, just allow themselves to be caught and massacred. They remind one of the lamb mentioned by the poet:—
"Pleased to the last they crop the flowery food,
And lick the hand just raised to shed their blood."
But there is something far worse than this simplicity. There is brazen-faced irreverence and impudence. When Elisha, the man of God, was going up to Bethel, a crowd of young vagabonds came out of the village and mocked the old man, and said: "Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And two she-bears came rushing out of the wood, and tare forty and two of them" (2 Kings ii. 24). These were not little children, but "young lads" (R.V. margin), who had begun to herd at street corners, and to scoff and gibe at those who passed by. And, in our own day, society would be none the worse of a few she-bears to act as a kind of police at all such corners. They might help to rid the streets of a good deal of juvenile profanity. But alas! because this Old Testament punishment does not fall on these young miscreants, the evil, instead of becoming less, is in great danger of being largely increased. And yet, if boys only knew it, a far worse calamity has already fallen. They may not have been attacked by bears, but they themselves have become bears—not growing fairer, nobler, whiter, as they grow in years; but fouler, darker, meaner, with the awful increase of sin—selling themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord. Ah! let every true lad beware as to the company he keeps. "Evil company doth corrupt good manners." "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap;" and "the way of the ungodly shall perish."
The Dove.
"And He said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence."—John ii. 16.