Indeed, some of them, in spite of their poor mental endowments, have exhibited a wealth of affection and self-sacrifice such as is rarely found in human beings. What are we to make of their sufferings?

Of course, the old theory that they result from man's fall is worse than worthless. For, in the first place, no reason can be shown why they should be made to suffer for our transgressions; and, in the second place, they began to suffer long before man came into existence. Horace Bushnell, in his Moral Uses of Dark Things,' has an interesting and suggestive chapter upon physical pain; but I cannot accept his solution of the problem. He argues that God foresaw the fall, and prepared the world accordinglythat is, He made it a suitable habitation for sinners. "The very rocks of the world," he says,

are monuments of buried pain, themselves also racked and contorted, as if meant to be lithograph types of general anguish. Making all the world follow the fortunes of man, and in some sense go down with him and groan with him in his evil, carries with it an immense power of moral benefit. No matter if the pains were initiated long ages before his arrival, still they are just as truly of him, and from him, as if they had come after."

But this cannot be the meaning of the sufferings of the animal creation. To make the innocent suffer for the guilty would be unjust and immoral, and could not possibly, therefore, carry with it any power of moral benefit." Bushnell says that animals are merely things, and not in any such relation to God as to have a moral right against pain. To this I reply, that if they are but things, they are in no such relation to us as to have a moral right against pain; and that, therefore, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is engaged in as foolish a work as would be an association for preventing tourists from cutting their initials upon trees, or geologists from breaking the rocks with their hammers.

Justice would seem to require that somehow and somewhere, the brute creation should receive compensation for the vast amount of unmerited suffering which they have been called on to endure. The idea of a future for animals would generally be considered extremely heterodox and absurd. There is nothing, however, in the Bible against it.1 And Bishop Butler (the author of the celebrated Analogy,' a book in which most of the bishops examine candidates for holy

1 For the meaning of the often-quoted verse in Ecclesiastes (iii. 21), see my 'Agnosticism, and other Sermons,' p. 204.

orders) justly says that there is no reason why animals should not be immortal, and that many of the arguments commonly urged in favour of human immortality are equally applicable to theirs. “Even if it were necessary for animals," says Butler, "to arrive at great attainments, and become rational and moral agents, even in this there would be no difficulty, since we know not with what latent powers they may be endowed." In fact, it seems a general law of nature that creatures, endowed with capacities of virtue and religion, should be at first placed in a condition in which they are altogether without the use of these faculties. This is the case, for example, with ourselves in infancy; and since a large proportion of the human species die soon after they are born, it follows that many, capable of becoming moral agents, go out of the present world before they have reached the moral stage of being. And further, contends the Bishop, the lower animals might be immortal even though they were incapable of any high development. The economy of the universe might require that there should always be living creatures of an inferior kind. And all difficulties, he concludes, as to the manner in which they would be disposed of, are so wholly founded in our ignorance,

that "it is wonderful they should be insisted upon by any but such as are weak enough to think that they are acquainted with the whole system of things."

There seems no reason, then, why we should not hope

"That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroy'd,

Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;

That not a worm is cloven in vain ;

That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivel'd in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain."

But it must also be added,

"Behold, we know not anything;

I can but trust that good shall fall
At last--far off-at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.

So runs my dream but what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry."

Leaving, then, what is doubtful, let us sum up the actual results of our investigation. We have seen that evil could not have been prevented without the prevention of a more than compensatory amount of good. The existence of suffering, so far as it is required for the destruc

tion of evil, is manifestly not a curse, but a blessing. We noticed, too, how much there was to be learnt from sorrow that could never be learnt from joy. The world's most inspired teachers have generally been men of suffering. As Shelley finely says,

"Most wretched men are cradled into poetry by wrong; They learn in suffering what they teach in song."

We noticed, again, that battling with adverse circumstances, though painful while it lasts, gives us a self-respect and a claim to the respect of others which we could not otherwise. acquire. We saw that social isolation and want of sympathy threw a man back upon himself, made him self-reliant, taught him something of the infinite possibilities of his nature, and, above all, enabled him more vividly and blessedly to realise the presence of God. We saw, too, that some kind of suffering was absolutely essential to the development of the benevolent affections, such as pity, tenderness, and the spirit of self-sacrifice, without which every character must be contemptible. As a general rule, the men and women who have suffered much are sweeter and nobler than those who have suffered little. Even Christ, we are told in the Epistle to the Hebrews, required the discipline of grief. Now, since a perfect