“All go to one place; all are of the same dust, and all turn to dust again.
“Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?
“Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his own works; for that is his portion; for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?”
Every page of Ecclesiastes breathes of the self-reproach of the Preacher for a wasted life. Speaking from his own sad, bitter experience, he shows that riches, glory, pleasure and even wisdom are nothing but utter emptiness. The same theme pervades the forty-ninth Psalm, but the Psalmist treats it with grave solemnity, admonishing his hearers of the shortness of human life, and showing that if a man forgets the glory of his manhood, made in the image of God, he puts himself on the level of the dumb brutes. Though reaching the same conclusion, yet the Preacher views the subject from a different standpoint. Employing biting sarcasm rather than solemn warning, he exposes the vanity of all worldly and selfish pleasures, and the miserable fate that awaits the voluptuary, and then ironically advises his readers to place in such their entire happiness.
So palpable is the bitter irony of the author throughout the book, and even in the twenty-first verse of the third chapter, yet by no manner of interpretation can this specialized text be made to mean that beasts are annihilated after death, while men rise again and soar above earthly things to honor and glory. Ironically the writer assumes in it that his readers do not know the difference between the spirit of man and that of beast, and, reasoning from that position, advises them that “there is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labor.”
From what has been shown, it is evident that the passage from Psalms does not even contain the idea of annihilation as regards beasts, and that the one from Ecclesiastes is entirely misapprehended. That they have no bearing upon the subject must now be manifest. We cannot, therefore, resist the conclusion that the Scriptures do not deny future life to the inferior animals.
This admission gives courage for a step still further forward. Man’s latest achievement is to conceive that all existence is a unit. One spirit pervades the whole natural world, an emanation from the Spirit of Him who sitteth enthroned in the Eternal Heavens, and who not only is, as Moses declares, “God of the spirits of all flesh,” but God of the spirits of all animate nature. We cannot divorce the two great kingdoms of nature. If there is a futurity of existence for man, whom we are told was “made a little lower than the angels,” but who in these latter days seems to have deteriorated, and who in thousands of instances displays a character far less noble and honorable than that of the dog which he kennels and feeds, then there must be for the so-called brute, the companion of his joys and his sorrows. If for beast, bird, reptile, fish and insect, and none can be so foolish in the face of the most indubitable evidence to deny it, then there must be for tree, shrub and flower, for God, who is infinite in love, mercy and charity, would not be God if solely concerned with the future of the smallest fractional part of His children. Man is psychically related to all life. There is soul, in some sort of development, in everything; and certainly God meant in His grand scheme of redemption to lift the world, not a portion of it, but the entire world, out of its lower ideas into its higher beauties and realities.
FUTURE LIFE.
That the Scriptures, contrary to popular tradition, do not deny a future life to the lower animals has already been conclusively shown. But do they declare anything in favor of another world for beast as well as for man? This is a question which we shall now endeavor to answer. As to man’s immortality, the Old Testament Scriptures teach the doctrine by inference rather than by direct assertion, for the reason, as has been presumed, that the writers of the several books, which were selected at a comparatively late period from among many others and formed into the volume popularly designated the Bible, assumed as a matter of course that man was immortal, and therefore did not concern themselves about a matter which they supposed everybody knew. But as far as the Old Testament goes, inference tells more strongly in favor of the beast’s immortality than that of man. Although in either case there does not appear to be any definite assertion of a futurity of existence, yet there is no such denial of the immortality of the beast as has already been shown in the case of the man.
Beasts, as readers of the Old Testament only too well know, were included in the merciful provision of the Sabbath, which, in its essence, was a spiritual and not simply a physical ordinance. And, again, we find many provisions in the ancient Scriptures against maltreating the lower animals, or giving them unnecessary pain, and these provisions stand side by side in the Divine Law with those which apply to man. All are familiar with the prohibition of “seething a kid in its mother’s milk,” and the non-muzzling of the ox in treading out the corn lest he should suffer the pangs of hunger in the presence of the food which he may not eat. Even bird’s nesting was regulated by Divine Law. “If a bird’s nest chance to be before thee in the way in any tree, or on the ground, whether they be young ones, or eggs, and the dam sitting upon the young, or upon the eggs, thou shalt not take the dam with the young: But thou shalt in any wise let the dam go, and take the young to thee; that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days.” Moreover, as many animals must be killed daily, some for sacrifice and others solely for food, the strictest regulations were enjoined that their death should be sharp and quick, and that the whole of their blood should be poured out upon the ground lest they suffer lingering pain.