In keeping with the same consideration felt by Deity towards the kid and ox and bird, as expressed in the Law, we would refer to the few concluding sentences of the Book of Jonah:—
“Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not labored, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night.
“And should I not spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?”
“Every beast of the forest is mine,” saith the Lord, “and the cattle upon a thousand hills.” And again, “I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine.” Similar passages, in which God announces himself as the protector of the beast as well as of man, could be given, for the Scriptures are full of them. Who does not recall the well-known saying of our Lord respecting the lives of the sparrows: “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without the notice of your Father.”
Cowper in his “Task,” makes allusion to this branch of our subject in the following lines:—
“Man may dismiss compassion from his heart,
But God will never. When He charged the Jew
To assist his foe’s down-fallen beast to rise;
And when the bush-exploring boy, that seized
The young, to let the parent-bird go free;