Such and such-like--for we learn from AEsop (Fable eighty-eight, to wit) that trumpeters deserve to be unpopular--is my physical zeal in the cause of poor dumb brutes: nor is my regard for them the less in matters metaphysical.

Bishop Butler, we may all of us remember, in 'THE _Analogy_' argues that the objector against a man's immortality must show good cause why that which exists, should ever cease to exist; and, until that good cause be shown, the weight of probability is in favour of continual being.

Now, for my part, I wish to be informed why this probability should not be extended to that innocent maltreated class, whom God's mercy made with equal skill, and sustains with equal care, as in the case of man, and--dare we add ?--of angels.

Doth He not feed the ravens?
Do the young lions not gather what He giveth?
Doth a sparrow fall to the ground without Our Father?
and is not the unsinning multitude of Nineveh's young children climaxed with "much cattle ?" It is true, there may be mighty difference between "the spirit of a man that goeth upward, and the spirit of a beast that goeth downward in the earth:" but mark this, there _is_ a spirit in the beast; and as man's eternal heaven may lie in some superior sphere, so that temporarily designed for the lower animals may be seen in the renovated earth.

It is also true, that St.Paul, arguing for the temporal livelihood of Christian ministers from the type of "not muzzling the ox that treadeth out the corn," asks, "Doth God care for oxen ?"--or, in effect, doth He legislate (I speak soberly, though the sublime treads on the ridiculous,) for a stable ?--and the implication is, "To thy dutiful husbandry, O man! such lesser cares are left." Sorry, righteously sorry, would it make any good man's heart to think that the Creator had ceased to care for the meanest of his creatures: in a certain sense "He sees with equal eye, as God of all, A hero perish, or a sparrow fall;" and, assured that carelessness in a just Creator of his poor dependent creatures must be impossible, I submit that, critically speaking, some laudable variation might be made in that text by the simple consideration that [Greek: melei] is not so strictly rendered "care for" as [Greek: kedetai].