Is all this lost in nothingness, Such gladness, love, and hope, and trust, Such busy thought our thoughts to guess, All trampled into common dust?
Or is there something yet to come From all our science all concealed, About the patient creatures dumb A secret yet to be revealed?
Writing of the death of a favourite spaniel, Southey expresses the same faith:
... Mine is no narrow creed, And he that gave thee being did not frame The mystery of life to be the sport Of merciless man. There is another world For all that live and move—a better one, Where the proud bipeds who would fain confine Infinite Goodness to the little bounds Of their own charity, may envy thee.
Mrs. Mary Somerville wrote these words at the age of eighty-nine: “If animals have no future, the existence of many is most wretched. Multitudes are starved, cruelly beaten, and loaded during life; many die under a barbarous vivisection. I can not believe that any creature was created for uncompensated misery; it would be contrary to the attributes of God’s mercy and justice. I am sincerely happy to find that I am not the only believer in the immortality of the lower animals.” Lamartine has the same thought in an address to his dog, and many other wise men have hoped that such a future was a reality.
The Rev. Henry Storrs says it is wisest to treat animals kindly, because, if we are ever to meet them again, it will be pleasanter to have them on our side.
Henry Ward Beecher many times owned his love for horses, as in his one novel, Norwood:
“I tell you,” said Hiram, turning slightly toward the doctor, “these horses are jest as near human as is good for ’em. A good horse has sense jest as much as a man has; and he’s proud, too, and he loves to be praised, and he knows when you treat him with respect. A good horse has the best p’ints of a man without his failin’s.”
“What do you think becomes of horses, Hiram, when they die?” said Rose.
“Wal, Miss Rose, it’s my opinion that there’s use for horses hereafter, and that you’ll find there’s a horse-heaven. There’s Scripture for that, too.”
“Ah!” said Rose, a little surprised at these confident assertions. “What Scripture do you mean?”
“Why, in the Book of Revelation! Don’t it give an account of a white horse, and a red horse, and black horses, and gray horses? I’ve allers s’posed that when it said Death rode on a pale horse, it must have been gray, ’cause it had mentioned white once already. In the ninth chapter, too, it says there was an army of two hundred thousand horsemen. Now, I should like to know where they got so many horses in heaven, if none of ’em that die off here go there? It’s my opinion that a good horse’s a darned sight likelier to go to heaven than a bad man!”