school greater differences than there are betwixt the highest
of the animals and the lowest of the humans. If you plead for time for
the boy to develop his poor rudimentary mollusk of a conscience, take it
and heartily welcome--but grant it the animals also. With some of them
it may need millions of years for any thing I know. Certainly in many
human beings it never comes plainly into our ken all the time they walk
the earth. Who shall say how far the vision of the apostle reached? but
surely the hope in which he says God Himself subjected the creature to
vanity, must have been an infinite hope: I will hope infinitely. That
the Bible gives any ground for the general fancy that at death an animal
ceases to exist, is but the merest dullest assumption. Neither is there
a single scientific argument, so far as I know, against the continued
existence of the animals, which would not tell equally against human
immortality. My hope is, that in some way, concerning which I do not now
choose to speculate, there may be progress, growth, for them also. While
I believe for myself, I _must_ hope for them. This much at least seems
clear--and I could press the argument further: if not one of them is
forgotten before God--and one of them yet passes out of being--then is
God the God of the dead and not of the living! But we praise Thee, we
bless Thee, we worship Thee, we glorify Thee, we give thanks to Thee for
Thy great glory, O Lord God, heavenly King, God the Father almighty! Thy
universe is life, life and not death. Even the death which awoke in the
bosom of Sin, Thy Son, opposing Himself to its hate, and letting it
spend its fury upon Him, hath abolished. I know nothing, therefore care
little, as to whether or not it may have pleased God to bring man up to
the hill of humanity through the swamps and thickets of lower animal
nature, but I do care that I should not now any more approach that
level, whether once rightly my own or not. For what is honor in the
animals, would be dishonor in me. Not the less may such be the
punishment, perhaps redemption, in store for some men and women. For
aught I know, or see unworthy in the thought, the self-sufficing
exquisite, for instance, may one day find himself chattering amongst
fellow apes in some monkey-village of Africa or Burmah. Nor is the
supposition absurd, though at first sight it may well so appear. Let us
remember that we carry in us the characteristics of each and every
animal. There i