"You know," he said, "when a man lies to your face and steals from you,
that he injures you; and call him bad and wicked. So when you tomorrow
do the same thing, God judges you with the same judgement with which you
judged your fellow-creature yesterday."
"Yes," replied the king, "that is true; that I understand."
We shall think more by-and-by about the great difference which God has put
between man, whom He created in His own image, and every other creature,
but I want you never to forget it.
In reading of the beautiful life which God gave to the fishes and the
birds, and to those beasts that He commanded the earth to bring forth,
about which we are going to speak a little today, we must always remember,
while we admire the wonderful gifts and powers which they have from God,
that He has put the widest possible distance between us and them.
We shall see that many of these animals are much stronger than the
strongest man; that to some of them God has given senses keener than ours;
and to others, in an especial degree, that great gift called instinct, by
which the little swallow finds its way over sea and land, the ants "prepare
their meat in the summer," the beaver makes dams across the stream, and the
little prairie dogs build pleasant towns, where they can all live together,
one of them always keeping watch lest any enemy should surprise the
workers.
All these are beautiful proofs of the kindness and faithfulness of God
towards the creatures He has made; and we may admire them, and learn all we
can from them; but never imagine for one moment, that man is only a grander
and more wonderfully made sort of animal, as a lion is superior to a mole,
and a mole to a worm.
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