the creatures? Alas, they are crowding in; they cannot help
themselves; their misery is awaiting them! Would those Christians have
me believe in a God who differentiates creatures from himself, only that
they may be the prey of other creatures, or spend a few hours or years,
helpless and lonely, speechless and without appeal, in merciless hands,
then pass away into nothingness? I will not; in the name of Jesus, I
will not. Had he not known something better, would he have said what he
did about the father of men and the sparrows?

What many men call their beliefs, are but the prejudices they happen to
have picked up: why should such believers waste a thought as to how
their paltry fellow-inhabitants of the planet fare? Many indeed have all
their lives been too busy making their human fellows groan and sweat for
their own fancied well-being, to spare a thought for the fate of the yet
more helpless. But there are not a few, who would be indignant at having
their belief in God questioned, who yet seem greatly to fear imagining
him better than he is: whether is it he or themselves they dread
injuring by expecting too much of him? 'You see the plain facts of the
case!' they say. 'There is no questioning them! What can be done for the
poor things--except indeed you take the absurd notion into your head,
that they too have a life beyond the grave?'

Why should such a notion seem to you absurd? I answer. The teachers of
the nation have unwittingly, it seems to me through unbelief, wronged
the animals deeply by their silence anent the thoughtless popular
presumption that they have no hereafter; thus leaving them deprived of a
great advantage to their position among men. But I suppose they too have
taken it for granted that the Preserver of man and beast never had a
thought of keeping one beast alive beyond a certain time; in which case
heartless men might well argue he did not care how they wronged them,
for he meant them no redress. Their immortality is no new faith with me,
but as old as my childhood.

Do you believe in immortality for yourself? I would ask any reader who
is not in sympathy with my hope for the animals. If not, I have no
argument with you. But if you do, why not believe in it for them?
Verily, were immortality no greater a thing for the animals than it
seems for men to some who yet profess to expect it, I should scarce care
to insist upon their share in it. But if the thought be anywise precious
to you, is i