soul should live for ever in happiness or misery, and the soul of animals not do so. It is vain to say, that the souls of men are capable of acknowledging the Divine Being, and are enabled to worship him, because we cannot decide that animals have no knowledge or sense of their Creator, no worship, and no religion.

Again, he speaks of the souls of animals passing into the bodies of other animals which succeed in their room; but very shortly afterwards he states that the soul, when no longer in unison with the body, relapses into an insensible condition, and state of inactivity. If this be not a contradiction, but possible to be reconciled, we may ask, how long this state of insensibility and inactivity continues, for of such a thing as an insensible and inactive immaterial spirit we can hardly conceive; nor, since God doth nothing without a determined purpose, can we imagine the reason of this insensibility even for a limited period. Clearly, the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, whether in man or beast, is surrounded with such difficulties, and such opposition to our common sense and reason, that the very thought only further plunges us into an interminable sea of perplexity and doubt.

Again, when he speaks of souls being "dis

charged out of being, and returning to their first nothing," is he not stepping upon most perilous and unsubstantial ground? Can religion or philosophy sanction such language, and such an idea, even allowing a first nothing, and that God made all things out of nothing? And he speaks of animals having "served the end of their being," and "done their work;" but may we not ask what end? And, what work? And if he means, by these terms, their service to man, and the general welfare of creation, how can he account for the pain and misery they suffer, without one atom of reward in the multitude of cases, without a single hope of future redemption and retribution?

Archbishop Tillotson further adduces as a proof of the immortality of the human soul in its largest signification, the fact that it is capable of a sense of God, and of divine and spiritual things, and sets this forward as that which constitutes a vast and wide difference between the souls of men and beasts. But where is the proof of this difference, and how know we that animals have no sense of God and of spiritual things? When we allow animals a soul or immaterial spirit, is it too much to suppose that they have some impression on those souls of

the Creator of their immaterial spirit, in other words, does it not seem most probable that every particle of immaterial and thinking spirit will have some thoughts of its origin and great Fountain? And cannot we feel that animals in the solemn bearing which seems so often to possess them, and birds in the happy and grateful tone of their songs, may be pondering on, or hymning their Creator's praise, their own gratitude, or, it may be, thinking of their deliverance out of this their miserable existence by Him who gives them souls to act and think in other concerns and things of life? We cannot discern their religion, for we know not even their language, but see how difficult it is to discern the religion of the inferior races of uncultivated men, for observe how the inhabitants of Terra del Fuego run into the water and gabble forth some, to us, unmeaning sounds; and yet we conclude this to be their religion, these their petitions and prayers to appease the great Spirit of the Ocean. In no part of the world, civilised or uncivilised, do we believe that men exist without a sense of the Great Spirit of their spirits; and why may we not believe that wherever there is spirit in organised matter, although such spirit be

inferior to the portion in the human body, there also that spirit carries with it a sense of, and a worship of, the great spiritual Head from whence it emanated?

I say, we have nothing to state in denial of religion to animals, while we may well suppose that the great Creator will exact homage and adoration from every particle of spirit; and since such is the fact in regard to the human soul, a fact which we can know and perceive, so by analogy we may well think that such is the case with the inferior souls, although, from want of understanding their language and their thoughts, we may have no direct and positive means of knowing or perceiving the manner of their religion. The renowned Christian Father, Lactantius, allows to animals every thing in common with man, even a reasonable soul, except a sense of religion. He writes these remarkable words, "Cætera etiam, quæ putantur esse homini propria, in cæteris quoque animalibus reperiuntur-cum enim suas voces propriis inter se notis discernunt, atque dignoscunt, colloqui videntur: ridendi quoque ratio apparet in his aliqua. Jam illa sibi prospiciunt in futurum, et cibos reponunt, habent utique providentiam. Rationis quoque

quæ

signa in multis reperiuntur, nam quando utilia sibi appetunt, mala cavent, pericula vitant, latibula sibi parant in plures exitus disparentia, profecto aliquid intelligunt. Potest aliquis negare illis inesse rationem, cum hominem ipsum sæpe deludant?" This Father of the Latin Church, (who died about the year 325), on account of his pure and eloquent language frequently styled the "Christian Cicero," has many passages of the above import scattered through his works, the most celebrated of which are his seven books, entitled Institutiones Divinæ.

The Rev. John Wesley says, "Man is capable of God, the inferior creatures are not," "and as a loving obedience to God was the perfection of men, so a loving obedience to man was the perfection of brutes." But what becomes of this last sentence if, as geologists assert they can demonstrate, whole generations of animals lived and died previous to the creation of man? Then Wesley's theory is entirely without foundation. And how can he prove his other assertion, that animals are not capable of knowing God? Why may they not be like the heathens who have a God, though they have received no written Revelation of His will? And if obedience to man was to be