MEANS OF PREVENTING CRUELTY 27 1 



Wanton, cowardly, and cruel in an inexcusable de- 

 gree is the judgment to be passed upon this relic of 

 barbarism." 



It must be far from giving any pleasure to a good 

 man, to see poor animals sacrificed as victims to a 

 love of amusement, or to gratify the idle curiosity 

 of unfeeling spectators. I wonder when men are 

 cruelly torturing harmless doves, if they ever think 

 that it was a dove that went forth from the ark, 

 at the bidding of Noah, and brought in an olive 

 branch as a token of the deliverance of man from 

 the flood, and that it was the form of a dove, 

 or an angel dove, which descended from heaven 

 as a means of ushering in the Christian dispensa- 

 tion. 



David makes a pathetic plea against such sports 

 in the following words : " Remember this, that the 

 enemy hath reproached, O Lord, and that the fool- 

 ish people have blasphemed Thy name. O deliver 

 not the soul of Thy turtle-dove unto the multitude of 

 the wicked : for the dark places of the earth are 

 full of the habitations of cruelty." 



Let the man who is in the habit of furnishing 

 birds for shooting matches read and ponder over 

 this passage of Scripture, and let those who deny 



