Proved He not plainly that His meaner works,
Are yet His care, and have an interest all—
All in the universal Father’s love?”
One passage there is which certainly does point to a future for the beast as well as for man, and which places them both on the very same plane. It is found in Genesis, ninth chapter and fifth verse, and constitutes a part of the law which was delivered to Noah, and which was subsequently incorporated in the fuller law given through Moses. “And surely your blood of your lives will I require,” said God to Noah and his sons, “at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of every man; at the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life of man.” In Exodus, chapter twenty-one and twenty-eighth verse, we read, “If an ox gore a man or a woman, that they die: then the ox shall be surely stoned, and his flesh shall not be eaten; but the owner of the ox shall be quit.”
While there are no passages of Scripture, as has been seen, which deny immortality of life to the lower animals, yet there are certainly some which tend to show it by inference. But the Scriptures were written for human beings, and not for the lower animals, and therefore it could hardly be expected that any information could be gained therefrom on the subject. As we find so few direct references to the future state of man, it is not at all to be expected that we should receive direct instruction upon the after-life of the beast.
But just as man has had within himself for untold ages an intuitive witness to his own immortality, yet there are those, lovers and friends of the so-called brute, who have an instinctive sense that animals, some of whom surpass in love, unselfishness, generosity, conscience and self-sacrifice many of their human brethren, must share with him in addition to these virtues an immortal spirit in which they take their rise. No more eminent personage than Bishop Butler was a believer in this idea. Substantially he asserts that the Scriptures give no reasons why the lower animals should not possess immortal souls. Similar sentiments have been voiced by equally distinguished writers.
Southey, writing of the death of a favorite spaniel that had been the companion of his boyhood, says:—
“Ah, poor companion! when thou followedst last
Thy master’s parting footsteps to the gate
Which closed forever on him, thou didst lose