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CHAP. VI.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.

A SEPARATE objection to the doctrine that God is Love has been deduced from the physical sufferings experienced by the inferior orders of animal existence upon the earth. "Man," exclaims the objector, "Man, according to your statement, has sinned and is punished; and you justify his punishment as merited by his guilt. But what say you

to the lot of the innumerable millions of millions of the classes which you term irrational in animated life? How will you attempt to reconcile with your doctrine the pains endured by the beast, by the bird, by the fish, by the insect, by the very zoophyte in its atom of incipient sensation? How, on your principle, will you vindicate the ordained system, general, nay almost universal, throughout those various tribes, that they are to be from day to day sustained in existence by mutually preying one upon another; by the ceaseless infliction,

on the part of the stronger upon the weaker, of terror, anguish, and death? Will you pretend that these beings have sinned; that their sufferings are penal retribution? Prove the sufferings consistent, if you are able, with justice. Dream not of their compatibility with love."

Whatever may be the compatibility, or the incompatibility with justice or with love, points remaining for examination, of the distresses and pains which pervade the ranks of animated nature subordinate to man; the cause of all those sufferings is incontrovertible. All had their origin in human transgression.

When the Great Author of the world, at the close of successive days in the progress of creation, surveyed that which He had made; He testified that all was excellence, without blemish, without spot. When He had said, Let there be light and there was light; God saw the light, and it was good.1 When he had formed the firmament, and had collected the dry land, and had gathered the seas into their place; God saw that it was good. When he had clothed the earth with herbage, and with trees yielding fruit; God saw that

it

was good.3

1 Gen. i. 3, 4

2 Gen. i. 9, 10.

9 Gen. i. 12.

When he had formed the sun,

and the moon

and the stars, and had stationed them in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years; God saw that it was good.' When he had replenished the waters and the air with living creatures severally adapted to the element which they were appointed to occupy: God saw that it was good; and God blessed them.2 When He had made the beast of the earth after its kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after its kind; God saw that it was good.3 And how were these countless multitudes to be sustained? Not by blood, not by mutual warfare, not by the infliction of pain. All were to be supported, like man their lord, by the vegetable productions of the earth. And God said, unto the human pair, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree, yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the

1 Gen. i. 14. 18.

2 Gen. i. 20. 22. 3 Gen. i. 25.

earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat. And it was so.1 The food assigned to the animal inhabitants of the waters is not specified: from analogy, however, we cannot but infer that they were to be nourished by means of subaqueous vegetation. The work of creation being now completed, the Almighty Maker of all things contemplated every part of his work. God saw every thing that he had made: and behold, it was very good.2 All was perfect in its kind, and for its purpose. All was unbroken peace, unsullied excellence, uninterrupted happiness.

Thus it was in Paradise. Thus, had man retained his abode in Paradise, it would have now been over the whole earth. But when man transgressed, and like the Angels who sinned, kept not his first estate; not only was the ground cursed for his sake3, but the animal inhabitants of the earth, of the air, and of the waters, experienced a momentous change in their condition, extensive privations, and a

1 Gen. i. 29, 30.

2 Gen. i. 31. s Gen. iii. 17.

very large accession of unknown difficulties and sorrows. Though they had not partaken with man in sin, they became subjected through the sin of man to physical sufferings, similar in kind to those which were entailed upon man: to the severity of hunger and thirst, to bodily diseases and infirmities, to pain and danger in the production of their offspring, to laborious exertions in the search for food, to mutual hostility and devastation. I do not add that they become also subjected, by human transgression, to death; because the Scripture contains no intimation that they were originally designed for a perpetuity of existence. Another part of their change of position consisted in the arrangement ordained very generally respecting them, that the life of each individval should be supported by preying upon the lives of others. Of the precise time when this new appointment commenced, we are ignorant. But perhaps we may not unreasonably suppose that it did not precede the deluge. For it was not until the waters of the flood were dried up, that God, addressing Noah and his sons as the representatives of the future generations of mankind, said unto them, Every moving thing that liveth