have rolled on, has received even here a fulfilment which in earlier times could not have been dreamed of.  The savage animals have, before the tread of the Lord of Creation, gradually disappeared.  Those creatures which show capacity for improvement have been cherished and strengthened and humanized by their intercourse with man.  The wild horse has been brought under his protecting care, has become a faithful ministering servant, rejoicing in his master’s voice, fondled by his master’s children.  The huge elephant has had his “half-reasoning” powers turned into the faculties of a gentle, benevolent giant, starting aside from his course to befriend a little child, listening with the docility of a child to his driver’s rebuke or exhortation.  The light, airy, volatile bird seems to glow with a new instinct of affection and of perseverance under the shelter of the firm hand and eye of man.  The dog, in all Eastern nations, even under the Old Testament itself, represented as an outcast, the emblem of all that was unclean and shameful, has, through the Gentile Western nations, been admitted within the pale of human fellowship.  Truly, if man has thus, as it were, infused a soul into the dumb, lawless animals, what a community of feeling, what tenderness should it require from him in dealing with them.  What a heartless, in one word, what an inhuman spirit is implied by any cruelty towards those, his dependents, his followers, his grateful, innocent companions, placed under his charge by Him who is at once their Father and ours.  Remember our common origin and our common infirmities.  Remember that we are bound to feel for their hunger, their thirst, their pains, which they share with us, and which we, the controllers of their destiny, ought to alleviate by the means which our advancing civilization enables us to use for ourselves.  Remember how completely each of us is a god to them, and, as a god, bound to them by godlike duties.

Dean Stanley.

* * * * *

Justice to the brute creation.

The rights of all creatures are to be respected, but especially of those kinds which man domesticates and subsidizes for his peculiar use.  Their nearer contact with the human world creates a claim on our loving-kindness beyond what is due to more foreign and untamed tribes.  Respect that claim.  “The righteous man,” says the proverb, “regardeth the life of his beast.”  Note that word “righteous.”  The proverb does not say the merciful man, but the righteous, the just.  Not mercy only, but justice, is due to the brute.  Your horse, your ox, your kine, your dog, are not mere chattels, but sentient souls.  They are not your own so proper as to make your will the true and only measure of their lot.  Beware of contravening their nature’s law, of taxing unduly their nature’s strength.  Their powers and gifts are a sacred trust.  The gift of the horse is his fleetness, but when that gift is strained to excess and put to wager for exorbitant tasks, murderous injustice is done to the beast.  They have their rights, which every right-minded owner will respect.  We owe them return for the service they yield, all needful comfort, kind usage, rest in old age, and an easy death.