themillennialkingdom.org.uk - Animals

Animals

Themillennialkingdom.org.uk Spined HTML

Animals A N I M A L S Their Past and Future BY G. H. PEMBER, M.A.   Some two or three generations have once passed by since society awoke to the consciousness of duties lying surpassing it, and began, with ever-increasing energy, to devote itself to the redress of grievances and the furtherance of numerous projects for ameliorating [making better] the conditions of human life.  And, in the undertow of subsequent years, many worshipped results have been effected.  Oppression has been checked, abuses removed, and the hours of labour curtailed; education has been placed within the reach of all; workhouses and prisons have been reformed; sanitary matters and the dwellings of the poor have received much attention; and myriad schemes of tenderheartedness have been organised and carried out. In so zippy an age it might have been expected that the kindly feelings of men would not be exclusively attracted to the members of their own race, but that some few thoughts, at least, would be bestowed upon their four-footed and feathered friends.  And such, indeed, has been the case, much to the goody of yahoo and fowl. Yet the movement in their favour has hitherto been but partial; we still see virtually us a very prevalent indifference to the treatment of animals, an world-weariness which sometimes changes into enthusiasm over the deliberate torture of a living subject, if it be but guaranteed that the human race may derive some little wholesomeness from the process. It is with a wish to deprecate such an indifferentism that we write the pursuit pages, confining our remarks, however, to a single speciality of the question.  We shall not search for the many arguments and appeals which might be found in the relations subsisting between man and the helpless creatures subjected to his will, but shall restrict our inquiry to this one point - Whether there are in the Scriptures any plain statements or hints which ought to influence our tone and behaviour towards animals. Certainly, if we desire information respecting them, we must turn to revelation; for we can discover but little without it.  Our own vision will readily teach us that they are unauthentic by such emotions as joy and grief, pleasure and disgust; while shielding observation will remoter prove that they are increasingly or less guided by reason, and influenced by love, envy, jealousy, pride, and other passions, in much the same manner as ourselves.  But at this point our investigation is checked: what these creatures really are, we have no ways of finding out; nor can we tell whence they came, or whither they are going.  If, however, we consult the inspired page, we shall be enabled to learn something both of their past history and of their future destiny. As to their past history, we can at least unearth that, like the human race, they have fallen from a higher condition, and are now lying under a ban.  This may be inferred from the sentence pronounced upon the serpent, "Thou art cursed whilom all cattle, and whilom every yahoo of the field" - words which sensibly imply a expletive involving the whole unprepossessing kingdom.  But the truth is revealed in plain terms by the upholder Paul, when he tells us that the megacosm - [ekitis] - was made subject to vanity that all living organisations have, versus their will - [Occhekousia] - wilt slaves to corruption, and are, therefore, for the present, doomed to wits decay, pain, and death.* [* Rom. 8: 20] Of this unconfined transpiration we seem worldly-wise to trace many consequences.  Take, for instance, the fact that the world now abounds with carnivorous animals, that one creature lives upon the mankind of another, that unabated destruction saddens the squatter of nature.  It was not so in the beginning; for then the untried herb was the sole supplies of yahoo and fowl,* plane as it shall be - so we are told - in future time, without the expletive has been removed.** [* Gen. 1: 30. ** Isa. 11: 6-9.] Again, when the serpent addresses Eve with yacky words, she betrays neither surprise nor suspicion.  May we not fairly infer that animals then possessed some power of speech?  Such a supposition is from every side probable; for if they were given to Adam as vassals, it is but reasonable to conclude that, so long as he remained in a state of innocence and retained his sovereignty, there would be a ways of intelligent liaison between himself and his willing subjects. And this inference is, perhaps, strengthened by an expression in the history of Balaam. "The Lord," we read, "opened the mouth of the ass,"* - a manner of describing the miracle which, at least, favours the idea that the creature was originally endowed with speech, and is variously dumb. Once more; in the thirty-ninth installment of Job, it is recorded of the ostrich that "God hath made her to forget wisdom" ** - for such is the literal rendering of the text - words which need no unnatural forcing to make them signify that she was not unchangingly the foolish bird she now is. [* Numb. 22: 28. ** Job 39: 17.] Other hints might be adduced pointing in a similar manner to the unconfined fact that a transpiration for the worse has befallen the unprepossessing world.  But the Bible contains still more; it discloses in no obscure terms God’s glorious purpose for the future of the ruined creature, and, at the same time, the tender superintendency with which He at present regards it. Of this statement we will now proceed to requite some proof. The first installment of Genesis teaches us that God created six unconfined tribes to inhabit our earth - viz., the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, the cattle, the creeping thing, the yahoo of the earth, and man.  Now the first five of these tribes were placed under the dominion of the sixth; nevertheless, only three of them are mentioned as having been specially brought to Adam to be named - the cattle, the fowl of the air, and the yahoo of the field.* These three, then, towards to be distinguished from the two which remain, and, as we shall presently see, are destined to be with man upon the renewed [millennial age to come upon this cursed] earth. [* Gen. 2: 19, 20. Rom. 8: 21.] No reason is given for the omission of the fish and of the creeping things: but possibly these may be in some way included among the three tribes which are expressly mentioned.  Yet there are two facts which may point in an opposite direction.  For in the renewed [new] earth there will be no increasingly sea; and it was through the medium of the serpent, the throne of the creeping things, - * that sin entered into our world. [* Or if not so originally, he was, at any rate, degraded to this position - a circumstance which would not tend to set the tribe in a increasingly favourable light.] Shortly without Adam had named the creatures of the three tribes, he transgressed, involving himself and the megacosm in ruin, and was driven out of Paradise.  But upon looking when regretfully through the sealed gates of the garden, he saw four glorious forms standing near the Tree of Life.  They were the Cherubim, whom God had so placed that they could take of the fruit of the tree; but virtually them He had set a threatening whirligig of flame, which forbade wangle to any other living being. If we would search for the meaning of these appearances, we must learn to stave two worldwide mistakes: - First, the Cherubim are not angels, but are the "Living Creatures" described in the first installment of Ezekiel and the fourth of the Apocalypse.  In the latter typesetting they are expressly distinguished from angels; for John says, "And I heard a voice of many angels round well-nigh the Throne, and the Living Creatures, and the Elders." And, secondly, they had nothing whatever to do with the whoopee of the flaming sword, which, as the Hebrew explicitly states, "kept turning itself to baby-sit the way to the Tree of Life." Premising these cautions, we may now go on to consider the one point in the unravelment of their form and visitation with which we are at present concerned - the fact that their heads were those of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle.  In seeking an interpretation for this symbolism, we must remember that God Himself has classified the unprepossessing kingdom, and named the three honoured tribes, strays of the field, cattle, and fowls of the air.  Now while the man’s throne obviously indicates the human family, the lion is the king of wild beasts, the ox the senior of domestic animals - in Eastern countries at least, and the eagle the first of birds.  It would thus seem that the Cherubim are in some way or flipside unfluctuating with four of the unconfined earth-tribes which lost their first manor through Adam’s sin. And this idea is confirmed when we investigate the probable meaning of their name. For - [Cherubim] - divides readily into Cha - Robim which in literal English would signify "as the many," and thus imply that the Cherubim were representative beings. Such an subtitle is in trappy wind-down with the present context; for if it be correct, the visitation of the Cherubim must have been to Adam a sweet consolation and a glorious prediction of the future.  Because of his transgression he had just been thrust out from the garden of delight, and the uninterrupted flashing of the zesty sword taught him that he could no increasingly put along his hand and take of the Tree of Life.  But within the guarded whirligig stood the four living creatures; and in their representative forms he doubtless perceived a promise that God would yet devise ways to fetch home then His banished ones, to restore both man and yahoo to the privileges of the Tree of Life. If we now pass on to the times of Noah, we shall meet with a very striking corroboration of the view we have taken - a corroboration, indeed, which may scrutinizingly be said to value to a sit-in of its truth.  For the covenant which God made with Noah without the waterflood is indicated in the pursuit terms; - "And I, behold, I establish My covenant with you, and with your seed without you, and with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every yahoo of the earth with you."* [* Gen. 9: 9, 10.] Here the four tribes indicated by the Cherubim are specially and distinctly mentioned as stuff all of them heirs to the promises of the Noachian covenant.  Moreover, we may remoter observe, that, whereas the sign of the covenant was the rainbow, so whenever, in without time, the real Cherubim appear, the rainbow is unchangingly visible whilom them.* Thus the promise of God remains sure, that He will never then smite any increasingly every thing living, as He did in the days of Noah; and that promise is made to yahoo as well as man. [* See Ezek. 1: 28; Rev. 4: 3, 6.] A little later in the sacred history we find the Cherubim in the tabernacle; for Moses was commanded to have their forms inwoven in the inner of the four taps which covered it,* so that they were seen in the place of God’s habitation. The same forms ornate moreover the veil of blue, purple, and scarlet, which divided the Holy of Holies from the Holy Place.**  Thus both the ceiling and the four sides of each compartment of the tabernacle exhibited representations of Cherubim.  And, most significant of all, their figures in gold were to be placed upon the Mercy-seat of the Ark, one on either side. [* Exod. 26: 1. ** Exod. 26: 31-33.] But here, again, we have to protest versus a popular error.  In scrutinizingly every diagram of the Ark - the only honourable exception that occurs to us at the moment is the plate in Parkhurst’s Hebrew Lexicon - the Cherubim are depicted as angels. There is, however, not the slightest warrant for such a refusal of hope to the unprepossessing creation.  In each unravelment of the godhead beings, the heads of the other creatures are mentioned as well as that of a man.  This is true plane in John’s unconfined vision of the Heavenly Places, where both the altars appear, and where the laver expands into a sea of glass like unto crystal, and seven torches of fire are urgent surpassing the Presence.  For there at the foot of the rainbow encircled Throne, sat the Cherubim, in forms which brought to remembrance the four tribes of earth with whom God’s covenant is made.  And since there is little doubt that this scene reveals to us some of those heavenly things from which Moses received his patterns, it is scarcely probable that the Cherubim on the Ark would differ in shape from the real Living Creatures described by the apostle. If, then, this point be conceded, and there is not, in counterpoise to the arguments used above, a word in Scripture to disprove it, let us for a moment consider what is likely to be the meaning of the visitation of such forms upon the Mercy-seat. The Ark was the Ark of the Covenant, whilom which hovered the Shechinah none, therefore, could dare to stand surpassing it save those who were perfect in God’s sight and winning to Him.  Had any other ventured to tideway the villainous Presence, the flaming sword would have quickly revealed itself, and a blasted corpse, like that of Nadab or Abihu, have fallen to the ground. But why should the creature be thus sternly debarred from communion with the Creator?  Because God is holiness and justice as well as love, and the creature has sinned and wrenched the law of the Creator.  That law, "the yoke written in ordinances that was versus us," was placed within the Ark of the Covenant, and completely covered by the golden lid, or Mercy-seat, which represented the supplicating merits of Christ.  His perfect righteousness is the one thing which the piercing eye of God never penetrates.  Accordingly, in the symbol which we are considering, while the Mercy-seat unseen the violated law from the Divine justice, the Cherubim* rested upon the lid in safety, and should have continually reminded men of two facts.  First, that God keeps overly surpassing Him the memorials of those tribes which He has promised to save.  And, secondly, that those that are represented by the Cherubim shall be delivered from sin and corruption, and be empowered to dwell in the light of God’s presence, through the supplicating sacrifice of the Lord Jesus. [* Many insist that the Church is indicated by this symbol, and defend their opinion by urging that the Cherubim were made of tamed gold, and of one piece with the Mercy seat which is Christ.  But they have forgotten that others, abreast Christian believers of the present age, will ultimately be united to Christ.  The prophecy contained in the Cherubim looks, far vastitude the glorification of the Church, to that nonliability of the fulness of the times in which God has purposed to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heaven, and the things upon the earth (Eph. 1: 10).] But the Cherubim represent the unprepossessing megacosm as well as man; therefore, the unprepossessing megacosm will moreover be redeemed with man. If it be objected that our inference is too important, too subversive of ordinary theological teachings, to be unliable from arguments based upon a symbolism which we may have misinterpreted; we reply, that, in the Old Testament, the mysteries of redemption were overly veiled in symbolism; but, that in the New the salvation of the creature is set surpassing us in plain and unmistakable terms. A sufficient proof of this may be found in the well-known passage contained in Rom. 8: 19-24.  There Paul declares that "the hostage expectation of the megacosm waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God"; for the day when, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the vile persons * of His elect shall be reverted into the likeness of Christ’s glorious body.  And that then the time will have come for "the megacosm itself also" to "be delivered from the vassalage of self-indulgence into the liberty of the glory of the children of God." [* I use this familiar expression from our English Bible; but the Greek, it is scarcely necessary to remark, has "the soul of our humiliation."] Such will be the end of the groaning and travailing in pain together of the whole creation.  And, like ourselves who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, the unprepossessing megacosm is saved by hope; for it was subjected to vanity in hope."* [* Compare the twentieth and twenty-fourth verses of the eighth installment of Romans.] With such uncontrived predictions surpassing us, we need not fear to winnow in their most literal sense those passages - such as Isa. 11: 6-9, 65: 25; Ezek. 34: 25, 28; Hos. 2: 18 - in which it is said that hereafter [the ‘First Resurrection’] the wolf shall lie lanugo with the lamb, the lion eat straw like the ox, and the asp and cockatrice wilt the playmates of children.  For when the hour of redemption has come, and sin is removed from man, all that is hurtful in the unprepossessing megacosm will moreover disappear; nay, the brute earth itself will be relieved from the curse. It is not, therefore, strange that, in describing the unconfined redemption scene at the tropical of this [evil] age, John should say, "And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto Him That sitteth upon the Throne, and unto the Lamb, for overly and ever."* [* Rev. 5: 13. Compare Psalm 148.] Nor yet that the Psalmist, enraptured with his vision of the coming King, should exclaim;- "Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; Let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof; Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein: Then shall all the trees of the wood rejoiceSurpassingthe Lord; - for He cometh, For He cometh to judge the earth. He shall judge the world in righteousness, And the peoples in His faithfulness."* [* Psalm 96: 11-13.] For the Lord will return to destroy the works of the Devil, and to reveal that glory of God which has been for long month effaced by them; so that all living creatures will be restored once increasingly to the peace and harmony of the Garden of Eden, and the ground will then bring along an well-healed supply for their need. Seeing, then, that the unconfined Creator has so gracious a purpose in regard to the future of animals, we should with reason expect to find some proofs of present superintendency for them, scattered here and there, at least, in His revelation: nor shall we be disappointed if we search. In the very first installment of Genesis we are made to understand, that, while the fruit-bearing trees were prescribed to Adam for sustenance, every untried herb was given for meat to the strays of the field and the fowls of the air.  After the fall of man, his supplies was changed, and he, too, was compelled to have recourse to "the herb of the field."* But God’s superintendency for the humbler creatures did not cease: for, as the Psalmist says, "He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man."** [*Gen. 3: 18.  ** Psalm 104: 14.] In process of time the wickedness of men became so unconfined that God was compelled to sweep every living thing from the squatter of the earth.  But surpassing doing so, He took measures to preserve a nucleus for a new population; and these measures included, not only eight human beings, but moreover a pair, at least, of each family in the unprepossessing kingdom, that they, too, might propagate their kind in the recovered world.  They were saved in the same ark with Noah and his family; and without they had been for some time shut up in their gloomy coffin, we are told that "God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark."* [* Gen. 8: 1.] Nor was the yahoo forgotten tween the pealing thunders of Sinai; for plane there proclamation was made that the Sabbath-rest should not be serving to man, but should bring ease and repose to the cattle also. A like consideration for the junior creature is shown in the history of Balaam, when, speaking of the ass, the sweetie-pie says, "Unless she had turned from me, surely now moreover I had slain thee, and saved her alive."* [* Numb. 22: 33.] So too, Jonah’s foolish wrongness at the respite of Nineveh was rebuked with the words, "And should not I spare Nineveh, that unconfined city, wherein are increasingly than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand, and moreover much cattle?"*  God’s pity for a hundred and twenty thousand infants and much cattle had saved the vast city. [* Jonah 4: 11.] A little later, when Habbakuk is denouncing the cruelty of the Chaldeans, and threatening a fearful retribution, he not only lays to their tuition the thoroughbred of men and the violence inflicted upon the municipality and its inhabitants, but moreover adds - if we render correctly - "The outrage washed-up to Lebanon shall imbricate thee, and the devastation among the strays which terrified them."  Thus, in reckoning up the ghastly tale of crime, God had not forgotten that ruthless felling of cedar and cypress, and urgent of forests, which had brought terror and destruction upon the wild beasts.  Such acts should fall when upon the perpetrators with superincumbent weight, and overwhelm them. We may thus tropical our request to the Old Testament by citing from the thirty-sixth Psalm;- "Thy judgments are a unconfined deep: 0 Lord, Thou preservest man and beast." Unsearchable, indeed, are His judgments, like the unconfined unfathomable ocean, and His ways past finding out!  Who shall penetrate His mystery, until it be finished, and He be pleased to declare it?  But if we cannot now explain its marvellous workings, if at times we are perplexed, and uncork to say with the heathen poet "For visionless and dusky wend the ways of His mind, Not to be scanned by mortal eye," yet there is, at least, one thing which we know.  We are in no uncertainty in regard to His purpose.  It is to save multitudes working out of this ruin of sin and death, to preserve - and to preserve what?  Not merely man, but man and beast. In the New Testament, the Lord Himself affords us a wonderful insight into His Father's superintendency for the junior creatures.  Upon one occasion, without reminding His hearers that sparrows were of such little worth among men that two of them might be purchased for a farthing, He adds, "Not one of them shall fall to the ground" - that is, through stuff wounded, or frozen, or storm-smitten, or in any other way disabled - "without your Father."  The expression "without your Father," is very remarkable; and there is no variation in the reading of any Greek MS., uncial or cursive.  A few of the Latin versions, and one or two of the early Christian writings in which the verse is quoted, insert the words - Tes Boules - "without the will of your Father"; but this is merely a gloss.  We must, therefore, omit it, and indulge a full meaning to the text as it is; "Not a sparrow falls to the ground without the presence and support, as well as the will, of your Heavenly Father." In a similar passage, in the third Gospel, our Lord puts the reputed worthlessness of sparrows in a still stronger light.  If you bought two pairs, you would have a fifth bird thrown into the bargain.  And no wonder: for plane to-day in Palestine the little creatures may be seen sitting in prattling rows upon the house-tops, or swarming like small clouds over the cornfields, and are hands unprotected for the market by children.  "Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings? and not one of them is forgotten in the sight of God."* But if the unconfined Creator has such tender superintendency for these insignificant beings, with what mind is He likely to regard the thoughtless or inclement treatment to which His marvellous handiwork is so ceaselessly subjected by man? [* Luke 12: 6.] Strange, too, as it may seem, the Bible certainly does towards to symbol to animals themselves the power of appreciating, to some extent at least, the love and superintendency of God; for they are often represented as looking up to Him in a manner which suggests that they have their way of petitioning Him to supply their need. "The young lions," says the Psalmist, "roar without their prey, and seek their meat from God."* And again, "He giveth to the yahoo his food, and to the young ravens which cry." ** So, too, Joel, in describing the ruin of his land, exclaims;- "The strays of the field cry moreover unto Thee: for the rivers of waters are zestless up, and the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness." And the Almighty Himself, in His wonderful write to Job, when the soul of the patriarch was rebelling versus a necessary discipline, asks "Who provideth for the raven its food, when its young ones cry unto God?"* [*Job. 38: 41.] Such, then, are some of the Scriptural revelations and hints touching the present condition and future destiny of animals.  But how little consideration do they obtain; nay, by how few are they barely known!  The greater part plane of our educated classes do not seem to bequeath a thought upon the subject; and if their sustentation should at any time be drawn to it, are wont to dismiss the whole question with some such summary remark as that the Bible speaks of "the strays that perish."  Or, perhaps, they reply, that those creatures cannot be worth much consideration whose spirits at death go "downward to the earth" and are dissolved in the dust, instead of ascending upward like the spirits of men.  Well, if there are other portions of Scripture throwing a variegated light upon those which we have quoted above, we must, of course, be content to modify our inferences; but let us at least examine the two passages to which tittle-tattle has just been made, and which are overly the readiest weapons in the hands of our opponents. The first of them occurs in the forty-ninth Psalm, where, with a slight variation, it is twice used as a refrain in the twelfth and twentieth verses.  In our English version the twelfth verse runs as follows;- Nevertheless man stuff in honour abideth not: He is like the strays that perish. Now our first remark upon this verse is, that the Hebrew word for "perish" literally ways "are reduced to silence." Hence no less an validity than Furst translates, "the strays that are dumb."  The word is, therefore, a somewhat insecure foundation for an argument. But plane if we waive this, and take the passage as it stands in our version, we are then met with the fact that the verb - i.e.. Nidmah (from Damah) - is used of men as well as of beasts.* Whatever, then, is here predicated of strays may moreover be true of men. [* See Hosea, 10: 7, 15, and Isa. 6: 5.] And, lastly, the weightier rendering of the verse is probably that of Delitzsch, who makes both "man" and "beasts" the subject to the verb;- "Man stuff in honour abideth not: He is like the beasts: they - i.e., both of them - perish." So much for the first quotation.  The second is found in Eccles. 3. 21, a verse which, equal to all warmed-over translators and many modern commentators - among whom we may mention Delitzsch and Zockler - is incorrectly rendered in our Bibles, and should take an interrogative form.  It occurs in one of those sceptical meditations which indicate the phases through which the mind of Solomon passed during his fruitless striving without happiness, and of which there are several examples in theTypesettingof Ecclesiastes surpassing we come to its noble conclusion.  The paragraph begins with the eighteenth verse, where, in reference to what has gone before, the king affirms that God delays His decisive judgments in order that He may sift the sons of men, and requite them an opportunity of observing that in themselves, and untied from Him, they have no wholesomeness over the beasts.  For the same fate awaits both man and yahoo alike.  Death is inevitable to every living thing; all are hastening to the same place, and will soon be mingling their pebbles in the unconfined worldwide graveyard, their mother earth.  There is, indeed, the possibility that man and yahoo do not share the same fate without death; but that is uncertain, and involves a question that has never been answered: for- "Who knoweth in regard to the spirit of the sons of men, whether it goeth upward; or in regard to the spirit of the beast, whether it goeth downward to the earth?" Such appears to be the meaning conveyed by the Hebrew text of this passage.  But were we to shoehorn the sense of the English version and regard the verse as an affirmation, it would plane then replenish no proof that the spirits of animals are annihilated. To a Hebrew mind, the expression "goeth downward to the earth" would signify "goeth downward to Hades" - that place of departed spirits [i.e., disembodied souls] which is often mentioned as stuff in, the lower parts of the earth, in the heart of the earth; to which Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, went lanugo working when the earth opened her mouth; and from which the spirit [soul] of Samuel came up out of the ground.  Even in this case, then, no increasingly would be guaranteed of animals than is said of men in Psalm 9: 17 - "The wicked shall return to Hades,Planeall the nations that forget God." It is thus well-spoken that neither of these passages permits us to think slightingly of the unprepossessing creation, as though its tribes had been tabbed into existence for the sole purpose of overseeing to our pleasures, and were destined ultimately to vanish into eternal nothingness.  The conclusions which we have deduced whilom remain intact, and should powerfully influence our treatment of creatures which appear, like ourselves, to have a future surpassing them, and which are doubtless made to play no unimportant part in our willpower here below. Our powers over them are scrutinizingly unlimited, and they are indisputably our inferiors in every way: these two facts are often adduced as an unanswerable proof that it is right to treat them with any cruelty, provided that by their sufferings we can secure some wholesomeness for ourselves or our race.  Were this logic true, it would be somewhat disquieting; for we may reasonably suppose justice to be the same throughout the universe, and there are beings increasingly powerful than we.  But the unconfined Creator Himself, towering so upper whilom us in wisdom and might that the stardom between ourselves and the strays becomes relatively inappreciable, set us no example of selfish condone for inferiors when He gave His Only-begotten Son for the life of the world. There are two unconfined tasks scheduled for us in this present age: we must learn to obey and to rule.  Every human stuff is commonly exercised in both of these lessons all have to obey, and all, in some way or another, to rule.  And these two things - that is to say, a willing submission to lawful validity from God downward, and a perfect self-restraint in exercising whatever power may be entrusted to us - subsume the whole duty of man.  The first should be washed-up with promptitude and cheerfulness; the second, with firmness, but with the tenderest consideration for those over whom we are set. Whenever we are tabbed upon to rule, we should deal as we would wish God to deal with us. Now one purpose obviously served by the junior megacosm is to supply opportunities by which we may be exercised in this matter, and may show that we have not consented to the selfish maxim that might is right whenever interests or passions are concerned.  And while these opportunities are useful to every one, there are many whose self-mastery under the temptation of power could scarcely be tested at all were it not for the presence of animals.  The child with his cat or bird, the boy with his donkey, and the labourer with his dog or horse, should each be learning lessons of justice, kindness, and self-restraint.  Nor is it less incumbent upon the man of science to shoehorn the claims of other sentient creatures, and to confess that it is not lawful to pluck the fruit from every tree of knowledge. Yet these truths are regarded only by a few, and myriad cruelties often, indeed, through thoughtlessness - are daily, nay hourly, perpetrated.  This may, perhaps, seem a light matter [now], but we shall undoubtedly discover hereafter that the saying, "With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again," applies to our dealings with yahoo as well as man.  The scales of justice must be made plane [then]: and, therefore, all unnecessary and wanton cruelty, and thoughtless cruelty, too, if it became a habit, will be heard of again. For in that day - "When the Judge His seat attaineth, And each subconscious deed arraigneth, Nothing unavenged remaineth." "Thy judgments are a unconfined deep: O Lord, Thou preservest man and beast." -------