Do you believe in immortality for yourself?  I would ask any reader who is not in sympathy with my hope for the animals.  If not, I have no argument with you.  But if you do, why not believe in it for them?  Verily, were immortality no greater a thing for the animals than it seems for men to some who yet profess to expect it, I should scarce care to insist upon their share in it.  But if the thought be anywise precious to you, is it essential to your enjoyment in it, that nothing less than yourself should share its realization?  Are you the lowest kind of creature that could be permitted to live?  Had God been of like heart with you, would he have given life and immortality to creatures so much less than himself as we?  Are these not worth making immortal?  How, then, were they worth calling out of the depth of no-being?  It is a greater deed, to make be that which was not, than to seal it with an infinite immortality:  did God do that which was not worth doing?  What he thought worth making, you think not worth continuing made!  You would have him go on for ever creating new things with one hand, and annihilating those he had made with the other—­for I presume you would not prefer the earth to be without animals!  If it were harder for God to make the former go on living, than to send forth new, then his creatures were no better than the toys which a child makes, and destroys as he makes them.  For what good, for what divine purpose is the maker of the sparrow present at its death, if he does not care what becomes of it?  What is he there for, I repeat, if he have no care that it go well with his bird in its dying, that it be neither comfortless nor lost in the abyss?  If his presence be no good to the sparrow, are you very sure what good it will be to you when your hour comes?  Believe it is not by a little only that the heart of the universe is tenderer, more loving, more just and fair, than yours or mine.

If you did not believe you were yourself to out-live death, I could not blame you for thinking all was over with the sparrow; but to believe in immortality for yourself, and not care to believe in it for the sparrow, would be simply hard-hearted and selfish.  If it would make you happy to think there was life beyond death for the sparrow as well as for yourself, I would gladly help you at least to hope that there may be.

I know of no reason why I should not look for the animals to rise again, in the same sense in which I hope myself to rise again—­which is, to reappear, clothed with another and better form of life than before.  If the Father will raise his children, why should he not also raise those whom he has taught his little ones to love?  Love is the one bond of the universe, the heart of God, the life of his children:  if animals can be loved, they are loveable; if they can love, they are yet more plainly loveable:  love is eternal; how then should its object perish?  Must the very immortality of love divide the bond