THE WORLD OF BRUTE ANIMALS. 203 



we do not know more than about the angelic hosts, 

 the world of brute animals. Can anything be more 

 marvellous or startling, unless we were used to it, than 

 that we should have a race of beings about us whom we 

 do but see, and as little know of their state, or can 

 describe their interests or their destiny, as we can tell of 

 the inhabitants of the sun and moon ? It is, indeed, a 

 very overpowering thought, when we get to fix our 

 minds on it, that we familiarly use, I may say hold in- 

 tercourse with, creatures who are as much strangers to 

 us, as mysterious as if they were the fabulous, unearthly 

 beings, more powerful than man, yet his slaves, which 

 Eastern superstitions have invented. We have more 

 real knowledge about the angels than about the brutes. 

 They have, apparently, passions, habits, and a certain 

 accountableness, but all is mystery about them. We do 

 not know whether they can sin or not, whether they 

 are under punishment, whether they are to live after 

 this life. We inflict very great sufferings on a portion 

 of them, and they in turn, every now and then, seem to 

 retaliate upon us, as if by a wonderful law. We depend 

 on them in various important ways ; we use their labour, 

 we eat their flesh. This, however, relates to such of 

 them as come near us. Cast your thoughts abroad on 

 the whole number of them, large and small, in vast 

 forests, or in the water, or in the air, and then say whe- 

 ther the presence of such countless multitudes, so various 

 in their natures, so strange and wild in their shapes, 

 living on the earth without ascertainable object, is not 

 as mysterious as anything which Scripture says about 

 the angels ? Is it not plain to us that there is a world 



