Rev.  Dr. Hedge.

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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.

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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.

MACKENZIE’S Nineteenth Century.

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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?