serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died." (Num. xxi. 6.) When a prophet was sent to Bethel, to bear testimony against the idolatry which Jeroboam had introduced among the ten revolted tribes of Israel, and "was disobedient to the word of the Lord," "the Lord delivered him unto a lion, which tore and slew him," as the punishment of his sin. (1 Kings xiii. 26.) At a later period, the people that took possession of the country from which the ten tribes were carried away captives "feared not the Lord: therefore the Lord sent lions among them, which slew some of them." (2 Kings xvii. 25.) In the time of the prophet Joel the sins of the Hebrew people were punished by the palmerworm, the cankerworm, and the caterpillar, which to a fearful extent devoured the produce of the country, and produced a terrible scarcity of food. As the nation still remained impenitent, the Almighty threatened to send among them clouds of locusts, which should darken the heavens, strip every tree of its leaves and fruit, consume every blade of grass, and leave the country, rich before them as the garden of Eden, a desolate wilderness. The prophet called the nation to repentance, as the only means of averting the calamity; and in case of their refusal declared, "The Lord shall utter His voice before His army for His camp is very great for He is strong that executeth His word: for the day of the Lord is great and very terrible; and who can abide it?" (Joel ii. 11.) In our own times it occasionally happens that a man loses his life from the blow of a vicious horse, or a push : from the horn of an infuriated bull; but such calamities are not of frequent occurrence. The inferior animals are rather employed as the instruments of a benevolent providence. To the labour of the horse we are mainly indebted for the bread which is daily placed upon our tables for it is this noble animal that draws the plough, and brings the harvest home; and without him the most skilful and laborious husbandman, in the cultivation of the soil, would be a pitiable object of helplessness and misery. The most substantial part of our clothing is derived from the sheep; and how much we are indebted to them, to the ox, and to other animals, for our daily supplies of food, let the shambles of every town, and the arrangements of every family, declare. And from whom are all these benefits, and ten thousand others of a similar kind, really derived? God Himself has supplied the answer, in the announcement which He made to mankind immediately after the deluge. "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered. Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things." (Gen. ix. 1-3.) For benefits of such inestimable value, so widely dif fused, and so freely given, the gratitude of all mankind is justly due to the Giver of all good; and, at the same time, a humane treatment of the inferior animals is imposed upon us as matter of absolute duty. To treat them with cruelty, by inflicting upon them pain beyond ་ what is strictly necessary, to withhold from them the quantity of food which their nature requires, or to extort from them an amount of labour beyond their strength, is not only cruel to them, but an act of impiety to God, whose creatures they are, who claims the proprietorship of them all, and who has subjected them. to the use of man, but not to the wantonness of his tyrannic will. "A righteous man," mindful of his responsibility, "regardeth the life of his beast;" (Prov. xii. 10;) for such is the Creator's requirement; and all who violate it must answer to Him for their misconduct. Many precepts in the Mosaic code enjoin a kind and considerate treatment of the inferior creatures. The ox, when treading out his master's corn, was not to be muzzled, but allowed freely to eat of it; (Deut. xxv. 4;) an ass that had fallen under its burden was to be promptly relieved, even if its owner were an enemy; (Exod. xxiii. 4, 5;) and the absolute rest of the Sabbath was to be given to every animal that was employed in labour. (Exod. xx. 10; xxiii. 12.) Such is the care of God for even the irrational animals,—a care which men are bound devoutly to observe, and conscientiously to imitate. CHAPTER V. THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD WITH RESPECT TO Ir Almighty God is pleased to extend His providential regard to inanimate nature and to brute creatures, much more does He extend it to the human race, who were originally formed in His own image, are redeemed by the blood of His incarnate Son, and are destined to an immortal existence. On this subject the testimony of the sacred writers is most explicit, and is repeated in almost every page of the Bible. His care for mankind, individually considered, begins before they are born; as David gratefully acknowledges to have been the case with respect to himself. Addressing his Maker, he says, "My substance was not hid from Thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in Thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.” (Psalm cxxxix. 15, 16.) The facts which are here delicately expressed in enigmatical language had been previously confessed by the patriarch Job, who for a time wondered how it was that God, who had so kindly formed him, should afflict him with such severity. (Job xxxi. 15.) With respect to her son 1 Samuel, Hannah also said, "For this child I prayed; and the Lord hath given me my petition." (1 Sam. i. 27.) The Holy Scriptures no less explicitly acknowledge the hand of God in the births of children than in their secret formation. "Thou art He," says the psalmist, "that took me out of my mother's bowels: my praise shall be continually of Thee." (Psalm lxxi. 6.) The uninterrupted preservation of the relative numbers of the sexes can be justly ascribed to nothing but the superintending providence of God. Provision is thus made in every land, in every age, under every form of government, and in every state of society, for the maintenance of that original law of the great Creator, that " "should"have his own wife, and every man every woman have her own husband." (Gen. i. 27; Matt. xix. 4; 1 Cor. vii. 2.) Such is the law of God, with respect to mankind; and such is the provision which He makes in perpetuity for the practical observance of it. Concubinage and capricious divorce are violations of this law, and as such are condemned by God's word, and rebuked by the arrangements of His providence. "From the beginning it was not so." It is not by any human determination, but solely by the will of God, that a mother gives birth to a son or a daughter, as the case may be. The providence of God is seen in all its tenderness and condescension in the case of infants. A new-born child is destitute of intelligence, of experience, and of all ability to provide for its own wants, or to ward off the dangers to which it is exposed; and must therefore immediately perish, but for the means which are providentially supplied for its preservation. Parental affec |