For us they toil, for us they die, These humble creatures Thou hast made; How shall we dare their rights deny, On whom thy seal of love is laid? Teach Thou our hearts to hear their plea, As Thou dost man's in prayer to Thee!
O wedding guest! this soul hath been Alone on a wide, wide sea: So lonely 'twas, that God himself Scarce seeméd there to be.
O sweeter than the marriage feast, 'Tis sweeter far to me, To walk together to the kirk With a goodly company!--
To walk together to the kirk, And all together pray, While each to his great Father bends, Old man, and babes, and loving friends, And youths and maidens gay!
Farewell! farewell! but this I tell To thee, thou wedding guest! He prayeth well, who loveth well Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.
Bishop Butler affirmed that it was on the simple fact of a creature being _sentient_, i.e. capable of pain and pleasure, that rests our responsibility to save it pain and give it pleasure. There is no evading this obligation, then, as regards the lower animals, by the plea that they are not moral beings; it is _our_ morality, not _theirs_, which is in question.
"Never," said my aunt, "be mean in anything; never be false, never BE CRUEL. Avoid those three vices, Trot, and I can always be hopeful of you."
Wherefore it is evident that even the ordinary exercise of this faculty of sympathy implies a condition of the whole moral being in some measure right and healthy, and that to the entire exercise of it there is necessary the entire perfection of the Christian character, for he who loves not God, nor his brother, cannot love the grass beneath his feet and the creatures that fill those spaces in the universe which he needs not, and which live not for his uses; nay, he has seldom grace to be grateful even to those that love and serve him, while, on the other hand, none can love God nor his human brother without loving all things which his Father loves, nor without looking upon them every one as in that respect his brethren also, and perhaps worthier than he, if in the under concords they have to fill their part is touched more truly.