Others will tell us that St Paul has said so, where he says that “by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin.”  But I must very humbly, but very firmly, demur to that.  St Paul shews that when he speaks of the world he means the world of men; for he goes on to say, “And so death passed upon all men, in that all have sinned.”  By mentioning men, he excludes the animals; he excludes all who have not sinned:  according to a sound rule of logic which lawyers know well.  What St Paul meant, I believe, is most probably this:  that Adam, by sinning, lost his heavenly birthright; and put on the carnal and fleshly likeness of the animals, instead of the likeness of God in which he was created; and therefore, sowing to the flesh, of the flesh reaped corruption; and became subject to death even as the dumb beasts are.

Be that as it may, we know—­as certainly as we can know anything from the use of our own eyes and common sense—­that long ages before Adam, long ages before men existed on this earth, the animals destroyed and ate each other, even as they are doing now.  We know that ages ago, in old worlds, long before this present world in which we live, the seas swarmed with sharks and other monsters, who not only died as animals do now, but who did devour—­for there is actual proof of it—­other living creatures; and that the same process went on on the land likewise.  The rocks and soils, for miles beneath our feet, are one vast graveyard, full of the skeletons of creatures, almost all unlike any living now, who, long before the days of Adam, and still more before the days of Noah, lived and died, generation after generation; and sought their meat—­from whom—­if not from God?

Yes, that last is the answer—­the only answer which can give a thoughtful and tender-hearted soul comfort, at the sight of so much pain and death on earth—­In every unknown question, to take refuge in God.  And that is the answer which the inspired Psalmist gives, in the 104th Psalm—­“The lions roaring after their prey do seek their meat from God.”  And if they seek it from God, all must be right:  we know not how; but He who made them knows.

Consider, with respect and admiration, the manful, cheerful view of pain and death, and indeed of the whole creation, which the Psalmist has, because he has faith.  There is in him no sentimentalism, no complaining of God, no impious, or at least weak and peevish, cry of “Why hast Thou made things thus?” He sees the mystery of pain and death.  He does not attempt to explain it:  but he faces it; faces it cheerfully and manfully, in the strength of his faith, saying—­This too, mysterious, painful, terrible as it may seem, is as it should be; for it is of the law and will of God, from whom come all good things; of The God in whom is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.  Therefore to the Psalmist the earth is a noble sight; filled, to his eyes, with the fruit of God’s works.  And so is the great and wide sea likewise.