We have before noticed that by instinct and memory all the wants of the brute creation are met; God has given them all that they need to teach them to live, each in its own life, after its kind, and to provide for their young ones; but He has not given to the "beasts that perish" the power of, as we sometimes say, "putting this and that together," nor, as far as we know, of learning by experience; although it does seem as if the spiders, in making their webs, improve by practice.
Instinct teaches every living thing to get its own food, choosing that which is suited to itself, and rejecting that which is not. It teaches the bird or the insect to seek out a fit place in which to deposit its eggs, or to make a nest or "homie" for them, even before they are laid; and it can teach even such a free creature as a bird to leave for a time its airy life, and to sit patiently upon its eggs, even carefully turning them, as if it knew that the life of the unfledged nursling within the shell-wall depended upon its being kept warm.
Instinct leads the butterfly, as we have seen, to lay its eggs upon the leaf of the very tree upon which the caterpillar, when hatched, will feed—though its own food has been taken from flowers.
Instinct guides the swallow in its flight, as it leaves us in the autumn for the shores of Africa; and the redwing on its way from its summer home in the far North to winter in our warmer country—each arriving in its appointed season.
[Illustration: THE SWALLOW.]
And so, as we study the habits of birds and beasts, we see how instinct everywhere guides and directs them; but what this sense is we cannot tell. It has been well remarked, that all that can rightly be said of it is, that it is "a guide which God, in His care for His creatures, has given them, and caused them to obey."
We also noticed in reading these verses that until man was formed, there was no lord over the Creation, but that to Adam God gave dominion over all; nothing was expected, and he was owned as head, God Himself bringing the creatures to him that they might receive their names from him, though Adam himself was still under God, and every benefit with which the Creator loaded him, only left him so much more bound to own His right over him.
As God has made us for Himself, He has given to every man, even the rudest savage, something within him which reminds him of One to whom he of right belongs; however far he may have got away from Him, or may have tried to satisfy his conscience—that "eye of the soul"—by seeking to please some idol-god which he has made for himself.
God has also given proof of His "eternal power and Godhead" by "the things that are made"—His glorious works in Creation.
Listen to what a Red chief, far away in North America, said to a missionary the other day:—