FUTURE IiIFE. 



THAT the Scriptures, contrary to popular tradition, do 

 not deny a future life to the lower animals has already 

 been conclusively shown. But do they declare anything in 

 favor of another world for beast as well as for man ? This 

 is a question which we shall now endeavor to answer. As 

 to man's immortality, the Old Testament Scriptures teach 

 the doctrine by inference rather than by direct assertion, for 

 the reason, as has been presumed, that the writers of the 

 several books, which were selected at a comparatively late 

 period from among many others and formed into the volume 

 popularly designated the Bible, assumed as a matter of 

 course that man was immortal, and therefore did not concern 

 themselves about a matter which they supposed everybody 

 knew. But as far as the Old Testament goes, inference tells 

 more strongly in favor of the beast's immortality than that 

 of man. Although in either case there does not appear to 

 be any definite assertion of a futurity of existence, yet there 

 is no such denial of the immortality of the beast as has 

 already been shown in the case of the man. 



Beasts, as readers of the Old Testament only too well 

 know, were included in the merciful provision of the Sab- 

 bath, which, in its essence, was a spiritual and not simply a 

 physical ordinance. And, again, we find many provisions 

 in the ancient Scriptures against maltreating the lower ani- 

 mals, or giving them unnecessary pain, and these provis- 

 ions stand side by side in the Divine Law with those which 

 apply to man. All are familiar with the prohibition of 

 " seething a kid in its mother's milk," and the non-muzzling 



