FUTURE LIFE. 
HAT 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 
