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And in that primeval account of Creation which the second chapter of Genesis gives us, the first peculiar characteristic of the Human Being is that he assumes the rank of the Guardian and Master of every fowl of the air and every beast of the field. They gather round him, he names them, he classifies them, he seeks for companionship from them. It is the fit likeness and emblem of their relation to him in the course of history. That "earnest expectation of the creature" which the Apostle describes, that, "stretching forth the head" of the whole creation towards a brighter and better state as ages have rolled on, has received even here a fulfilment which in earlier times could not have been dreamed of. The savage animals have, before the tread of the Lord of Creation, gradually disappeared. Those creatures which show capacity for improvement have been cherished and strengthened and humanized by their intercourse with man. The wild horse has been brought under his protecting care, has become a faithful ministering servant, rejoicing in his master's voice, fondled by his master's children. The huge elephant has had his "half-reasoning" powers turned into the faculties of a gentle, benevolent giant, starting aside from his course to befriend a little child, listening with the docility of a child to his driver's rebuke or exhortation. The light, airy, volatile bird seems to glow with a new instinct of affection and of perseverance under the shelter of the firm hand and eye of man. The dog, in all Eastern nations, even under the Old Testament itself, represented as an outcast, the emblem of all that was unclean and shameful, has, through the Gentile Western nations, been admitted within the pale of human fellowship. Truly, if man has thus, as it were, infused a soul into the dumb, lawless animals, what a community of feeling, what tenderness should it require from him in dealing with them. What a heartless, in one word, what an inhuman spirit is implied by any cruelty towards those, his dependents, his followers, his grateful, innocent companions, placed under his charge by Him who is at once their Father and ours. Remember our common origin and our common infirmities. Remember that we are bound to feel for their hunger, their thirst, their pains, which they share with us, and which we, the controllers of their destiny, ought to alleviate by the means which our advancing civilization enables us to use for ourselves. Remember how completely each of us is a god to them, and, as a god, bound to them by godlike duties.

Dean Stanley.