Read Ebook: Voices for the Speechless Selections for Schools and Private Reading by Firth Abraham Editor

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The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed; It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes: 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown: His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings. But mercy is above this sceptred sway: It is enthroned in the hearts of kings; It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likest God's When mercy seasons justice. Therefore,... Though justice be thy plea, consider this,-- That, in the course of justice, none of us Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy; And that same prayer doth teach us all to render The deeds of mercy.

RESULTS AND DUTIES OF MAN'S SUPREMACY.

DEAN STANLEY.

JUSTICE TO THE BRUTE CREATION.

The rights of all creatures are to be respected, but especially of those kinds which man domesticates and subsidizes for his peculiar use. Their nearer contact with the human world creates a claim on our loving-kindness beyond what is due to more foreign and untamed tribes. Respect that claim. "The righteous man," says the proverb, "regardeth the life of his beast." Note that word "righteous." The proverb does not say the merciful man, but the righteous, the just. Not mercy only, but justice, is due to the brute. Your horse, your ox, your kine, your dog, are not mere chattels, but sentient souls. They are not your own so proper as to make your will the true and only measure of their lot. Beware of contravening their nature's law, of taxing unduly their nature's strength. Their powers and gifts are a sacred trust. The gift of the horse is his fleetness, but when that gift is strained to excess and put to wager for exorbitant tasks, murderous injustice is done to the beast. They have their rights, which every right-minded owner will respect. We owe them return for the service they yield, all needful comfort, kind usage, rest in old age, and an easy death.

CAN THEY SUFFER?

The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withheld from them but by the hand of tyranny. It may come one day to be recognized that the number of legs, or the villosity of the skin, are reasons insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the caprice of a tormentor. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational as well as a more conversable animal than an infant of a day, a week, or even a month old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what could it avail? The question is not "Can they reason?" nor "Can they speak?" but "Can they suffer?"

BENTHAM.

GROWTH OF HUMANE IDEAS.

The disposition to raise the fallen, to befriend the friendless, is now one of the governing powers of the world. Every year its dominion widens, and even now a strong and growing public opinion is enlisted in its support. Many men still spend lives that are merely selfish. But such lives are already regarded with general disapproval. The man on whom public opinion, anticipating the award of the highest tribunal, bestows its approbation, is the man who labors that he may leave other men better and happier than he found them. With the noblest spirits of our race this disposition to be useful grows into a passion. With an increasing number it is becoming at least an agreeable and interesting employment. On the monument to John Howard in St. Paul's, it is said that the man who devotes himself to the good of mankind treads "an open but unfrequented path to immortality." The remark, so true of Howard's time, is happily not true of ours.

MORAL LESSONS.

And let us take to ourselves the moral lessons which these creatures preach to all who have studied and learned to love what I venture to call the moral in brutes. Look at that faithful servant, the ox! What an emblem in all generations of patient, plodding, meek endurance and serviceable toil! Of the horse and the dog, what countless anecdotes declare the generous loyalty, the tireless zeal, the inalienable love! No human devotion has ever surpassed the recorded examples of brutes in that line. The story is told of an Arab horse who, when his master was taken captive and bound hand and foot, sought him out in the dark amidst other victims, seized him by the girdle with his teeth, ran with him all night at the top of his speed, conveyed him to his home, and then, exhausted with the effort, fell down and died. Did ever man evince more devoted affection?

Surely, something of a moral nature is present also in the brute creation. If nowhere else we may find it in the brute mother's care for her young. Through universal nature throbs the divine pulse of the universal Love, and binds all being to the Father-heart of the author and lover of all. Therefore is sympathy with animated nature, a holy affection, an extended humanity, a projection of the human heart by which we live, beyond the precincts of the human house, into all the wards of the many creatured city of God, as He with his wisdom and love is co-present to all. Sympathy with nature is a part of the good man's religion.

Whenever any trait of justice, or generosity, or far-sighted wisdom, or wide tolerance, or compassion, or purity, is seen in any man or woman throughout the whole human race, as in the fragments of a broken mirror we see the reflection of the Divine image.

DEAN STANLEY.

DUTY TO ANIMALS NOT LONG RECOGNIZED.

MISS F. P. COBBE.

NATURAL RIGHTS.

But what is needed for the present is due regard for the natural rights of animals, due sense of the fact that they are not created for man's pleasure and behoof alone, but have, independent of him, their own meaning and place in the universal order; that the God who gave them being, who out of the manifoldness of his creative thought let them pass into life, has not cast them off, but is with them, in them, still. A portion of his Spirit, though unconscious and unreflecting, is theirs. What else but the Spirit of God could guide the crane and the stork across pathless seas to their winter retreats, and back again to their summer haunts? What else could reveal to the petrel the coming storm? What but the Spirit of God could so geometrize the wondrous architecture of the spider and the bee, or hang the hill-star's nest in the air, or sling the hammock of the tiger-moth, or curve the ramparts of the beaver's fort, and build the myriad "homes without hands" in which fish, bird, and insect make their abode? The Spirit of God is with them as with us,--consciously with us, unconsciously with them. We are not divided, but one in his care and love. They have their mansions in the Father's house, and we have ours; but the house is one, and the Master and keeper is one for us and them.

"DUMB."

I can hardly express to you how much I feel there is to be thought of, arising from the word "dumb" applied to animals. Dumb animals! What an immense exhortation that is to pity. It is a remarkable thing that this word dumb should have been so largely applied to animals, for, in reality, there are very few dumb animals. But, doubtless, the word is often used to convey a larger idea than that of dumbness; namely, the want of power in animals to convey by sound to mankind what they feel, or, perhaps, I should rather say, the want of power in men to understand the meaning of the various sounds uttered by animals. But as regards those animals which are mostly dumb, such as the horse, which, except on rare occasions of extreme suffering, makes no sound at all, but only expresses pain by certain movements indicating pain--how tender we ought to be of them, and how observant of these movements, considering their dumbness. The human baby guides and governs us by its cries. In fact, it will nearly rule a household by these cries, and woe would betide it, if it had not this power of making its afflictions known. It is a sad thing to reflect upon, that the animal which has the most to endure from man is the one which has the least powers of protesting by noise against any of his evil treatment.

ARTHUR HELPS.

UPWARD.

His parent hand From the mute shell-fish gasping on the shore, To men, to angels, to celestial minds, Forever leads the generations on To higher scenes of being; while supplied From day to day with His enlivening breath, Inferior orders in succession rise To fill the void below.

CARE FOR THE LOWEST.

I would not enter on my list of friends the man Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm. An inadvertent step may crush the snail That crawls at evening in the public path; But he that has humanity, forewarned, Will tread aside, and let the reptile live. The creeping vermin, loathsome to the sight, And charged perhaps with venom, that intrudes, A visitor unwelcome, into scenes Sacred to neatness and repose, the alcove, The chamber, or refectory, may die: A necessary act incurs no blame. Not so when, held within their proper bounds, And guiltless of offence, they range the air, Or take their pastime in the spacious field: There they are privileged; and he that hunts Or harms them there is guilty of a wrong, Disturbs the economy of nature's realm, Who, when she formed, designed them an abode. The sum is this: If man's convenience, health, Or safety, interfere, his rights and claims Are paramount, and must extinguish theirs. Else they are all--the meanest things that are-- As free to live, and to enjoy that life, As God was free to form them at the first, Who in his sovereign wisdom made them all. Ye, therefore, who love mercy, teach your sons To love it too.

COWPER.

TRUST.

Oh, yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill, To pangs of nature, sins of will, Defects of doubt and taints of blood;

That nothing walks with aimless feet; That not one life shall be destroyed, Or cast as rubbish to the void, When God hath made the pile complete;

That not a worm is cloven in vain; That not a moth with vain desire Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire, Or but subserves another's gain.

TENNYSON.

SAY NOT.

Say not, the struggle naught availeth, The labor and the wounds are vain, The enemy faints not, nor faileth, And as things have been they remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars; It may be, in yon smoke concealed, Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers, And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, Seem here no painful inch to gain, Far back, through creeks and inlets making, Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only, When daylight comes, comes in the light; In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly! But westward, look, the land is bright.

A. H. CLOUGH.

SEE, THROUGH THIS AIR.

See, through this air, this ocean, and this earth, All matter quick, and bursting into birth. Above, how high progressive life may go! Around, how wide! how deep extend below! Vast chain of being! which from God began, Natures ethereal, human, angel, man, Beast, bird, fish, insect, which no eye can see, No glass can reach; from infinite to thee; From thee to nothing. On superior powers Were we to press, inferior might on ours; Or in the full creation leave a void, Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroyed: From Nature's chain whatever link you strike, Tenth, or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike. All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul; That, changed through all, and yet in all the same, Great in the earth, as in the ethereal frame; Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees; Lives through all life, extends through all extent, Spreads undivided, operates unspent; Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part, As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart; As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns, As the rapt seraph that adores and burns: To Him no high, no low, no great, no small; He fills, He bounds, connects, and equals all.

POPE.

THE RIGHT MUST WIN.

Oh, it is hard to work for God, To rise and take his part Upon this battle-field of earth, And not sometimes lose heart!

Ill masters good; good seems to change To ill with greatest ease; And, worst of all, the good with good Is at cross purposes.

It is not so, but so it looks; And we lose courage then; And doubts will come if God hath kept His promises to men.

Workman of God! Oh lose not heart, But learn what God is like; And in the darkest battle-field Thou shalt know where to strike.

For right is right, since God is God; And right the day must win; To doubt would be disloyalty, To falter would be sin!

FABER.

ANIMATED NATURE.

Nature inanimate employs sweet sounds, But animated nature sweeter still To soothe and satisfy the human ear. Ten thousand warblers cheer the day, and one The livelong night: nor these alone whose notes Nice-fingered art must emulate in vain; But coying rooks, and kites that swim sublime In still repeated circles, screaming loud, The jay, the pie, and ev'n the boding owl That hails the rising moon, have charms for me. Sounds inharmonious in themselves and harsh, Yet heard in scenes where peace forever reigns, And only there, please highly for their sake.

COWPER.

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