But, says the querist, “Your remarks have a tendency towards the conclusion,—upon the supposition that Adam was created with a perfect, or rather with a very high order of physical organization and mental development,—that the facts of the greater or less degeneration of the people of the world, since his fall, now exhibited by the different species of man upon the earth, had their origin in his transgression. Now, by parity of argument, we may conclude, if such high physical elevation was the original condition of Adam, that each genus of the brute creation also was originally created on a proportional scale. If so, their degeneration is quite as visible as that of man. Yet we have no account that they committed sin and ‘fell.’”
We do not say that such was the original condition of the first man. We say, the creation of the animal world was upon principles compatible with progressive improvement; and that as far as these principles are not obeyed, but changed or reversed by the practice of the animal world, that the effect is to remain stationary, or to retrograde and deteriorate.
It is a matter of no importance to our argument what was the first condition of Adam. But allow it to be as querist has stated: We answer, the Bible was given to man for his moral government; not to teach him geology, chemistry, or other sciences. Such matters were left for him to attain by progressive improvement. A minute history of the brute creation, or any portion of it, from the earliest dawn of animal life up to the time of revelation, other than the announcement of their creation and subjection to him, was irrelevant. But man was the very head and governor of the whole animal race. Now, who is to say that the degeneration of the ruler will not produce a change of conduct in the ruled? Who is to say that the poisoned moral feeling of him in command, breaking forth in acts of violence on all around, will not produce a corresponding effect on the animate objects under him? Witness the effect, we need not say on children, but on domestic animals, of the rash, cruel, and crazy treatment of a wicked and inconsistent man?
The idea that the brute creation were injured in condition by the fall of man is put forth by St. Paul, in Rom. viii. 9–22, where the word “creature” is translated from the Greek term that implies the whole animal or the whole created world. But no answer to querist is necessary. The fact is sufficient that animals, under habits ill-adapted to their organization, do degenerate.
LESSON III.
However insensible individuals themselves may be of the fact, some men, and those of quite different character, find it unpleasant to submit themselves to the great Author of animal life. For they, in substance, make a continual inquiry, How is it to be reconciled that a Being so perfectly good should have admitted into the midst of his works, as a constant attendant of all his sentient creations, so large an admixture of what we call evil?
We might continue the inquiry by adding, Why, in a mere drop of water, do we find the animalculæ manifesting all the agonies and repeating the outrages upon one another strikingly visible among the larger animal developments of the great ocean and of the land? Why such an admixture of pain and misery among men? Why the male of all animals making destructive war on their kind? Why exterminating wars among men? And why the numberless, nameless evils everywhere spread through the world?
And do we forget that the great Creator of animal life brought forth his works and sustains each thing by the unchangeable exercise of his laws? Laws which are found to have a direct tendency to progressive improvement? Will rational beings expect God to change their actions to suit their disregard of them? Will fire cease to burn because we may choose to thrust in the hand? And what if, even in all this, we shall discover his wisdom and goodness by making what we may call punishment for the breach of the law, a pulling back from deeper misery, a powerful stimulus for a change of direction from a downward to an upward movement in the path of progressive improvement? Do we find no satisfaction in this view of the constitution of nature, of the wisdom of God?
These men seem desirous that the works of God should have been on a different footing, or that every thing should have been at once perfect to the extent of his power. Would they then desire to be his equal too? But, at least as to man, the mind incapable of error, the body of suffering! It is possible that under such a dispensation, our mental enjoyments would have been on a par with a mathematical axiom, and our bodies have about as much sympathy for the things around them as has a lump of gold. And how do they know that the rocks, minerals, and trees, yea, the starry inhabitants of the firmament, are not the exact manifestations of what would have been creations of that order? We will not stop here to inquire how far the complaints of these men operate to their own mental and physical injury.