OF THE BRUTE CREATION. 
755 
That creatures such as these, constructed with the utmost care 
and the most perfect design by the omnipotent hand that formed 
them, were only created to perish, and to have no future existence ! 
What could be the use of all this elaborate design without an 
ulterior object ? Can it be possible that the Intelligent Creator 
formed such a world, peopled it with inhabitants furnished with 
instincts necessary to their existence, simply for the purpose of 
devouring each other. You, surely, cannot believe that a Creator 
evidently as benevolent as he is wise, would have done this with-* 
out a reference to a future state. We tremble while we write; 
but we cannot believe that so many myriads of animated creatures, 
fulfilling the utmost purpose of their span of being in the young 
world, as surely and truly as the sun in his career accomplishes 
the glorious end of his, only existed but to shew that life had been, 
but is no longer — any more than we can believe the cold and heart- 
less philosophy which teaches that death is the tend of our existence. 
The more that we discover of creation, the more conspicuously 
does uniformity of design appear to pervade its every department. 
Each animal has its proper place, and its proper locality ; “ from 
the whale in the ocean to the chamois on the mountain rock.” Each 
is the foremost of material beings in its own proper place ; and, while 
none of them are the servants of any other race, we cannot say 
that any of them are the servants of their fellows. Their history is 
the record of warfare waged by one species of inhabitants on another, 
fulfilling the general law of nature, which bids all eat, and be eaten 
in their turn ; but still we cannot say that the ultimate purpose for 
which they were created was that they might devour each other. 
Men and wolves devour sheep ; but we cannot suppose that the 
purpose for which sheep were created is simply that they might be 
devoured by wolves and men, any more than we could say that the 
purpose for which men and wolves exist is, that they might eat 
sheep. 
The system of living nature is too mighty in its extent, and too 
wonderful in all its parts for us to suppose, that because we know 
the carnivorous animals prey indiscriminately on their weaker 
brethren, the climax of the whole is, that a lion shall be fed in the 
wild woods of Africa, or a tiger in the jungles by the Ganges. 
This would be but a sorry conclusion ; and, if we come only thus 
prepared, and proceed only thus far, the cut bono ? will stand up 
like a lion in our path, and demand of us, Wherefore all this dis- 
play of wisdom, of power, and of goodness, which bears the inde- 
lible impress of Divinity upon its every step, if the ultimatum to 
be reached is nothing more than the feeding of a ravenous beast in 
the wilderness! 
Can we, for a moment, suppose that this scene of moral disorder 
