Life: its forms and Varieties.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume XII, Issue 508, 12 September 1867, Page 1

Life: its forms and Varieties.

(Continued from our taut.) Xow, after all this, wlmt kind of animal shall we call man? Some term him an animal that ■cooks his rood; others, an animal that uses tools ana weapon;?, Sumo any that ho is the only oivruiyorous creature, feeding on anything that conies in his i'ay; others, again, that lie is the only animal that walks upright, physically, 1 mean, not morally. Ho has boon termed a religious aiiiu-! and latterly he has been designated the only creature that can talk.

tribes of men have been discovered, which resemble the ant, both in making slaves and in keeping up domestic slavery. Tim soldier ant, in lighting propensities, and in scorn of manual labour, and tn killing the sick and infirm. Wasps emulate him in laziness, and in picking and stealing. Other insects enjoy cannibalism as much as he does. Many animals surpass him in strength in swiftness, in instinct, in sagacity, in the perfection of the senses; none can approach him in the uueiiuaUed combination of all these, in his capacity for self-improvement, in his altering* of tue race of nature. Some have gone so far as to say that man—the last created being—is the type, the pattern of construction of all animals, even to the number of his hones; that, apart from all imitation, he will carry out the idee* aud de-i-ng o* God as regards form, shade, symmetry, colour, ami that he is thus the great creature worker insensibly carrying out the ide;is of the Creator; that there is therefore a correspondence of nature and intelligence between man and God, or, to go back to the words of the old heathen, that “ we are his offspring,” not only made in his image, but also made in his likeness. To sum up, then, we sav that man difiers Irum all animals, in possessing a uiore highly eloped mechanism, in iutviii» r u nobler order of mind, and inheriting a disposition to believe in a God. Unfortunately, many men attempt to cultivate only their mmd, letting tlicir religious instinct go unimproved, imagining tout as they can tell the stars, those eighty millions of wondrous worlds which they can weigh as in a balance, whoso courses they can so well point out, and whose very substance they can analyse aud explain. As they take the tiny dew drop and show that that, too, is a world of creatures, each of which is known and seen to go through all the phases of its little file, each wonderful in its mi* nuteness, exquisite in its symmetry, perfect in its adaptation of means to cud, and yet so simple in its mechanism. As they travel on the wiims or the wind from shore to shore; as they rush with the speed of the clouds along the iron way • as they flash their thoughts to the uttermost pArts of the sea; then, when they take of the earth on which they tread, and analyse its substance, aud wonder at the mighty effects produced upon it oy the seasons as they come aud go; while they scale its mountains and descend into its depths searching cut the hidden treasure sis they ascend into the clouds mile after mile, til) the busy noise and clamour of men seems but as the distant hum of bees; till the very hills appear but as a little thing, and the majestic river a silver streamlet; as they pass down into the depths of the sea, and gaze upon that vast and mysterious burial place, so calm, unrufiled, and so still and yet so deep that the very weight of water permit* not the decay of the little shell fish, hut there it lies with the fiesli still in it; as they pry into the mystery of file in the plant, watching the opening of the seed, the far deep searching of the root, the upward growing of the stalk, till it bursts from its earthly tenement, and the sun stoops to paint it a beauteous hue; and so to the flower, tin; fruiter tho mighty tree. When they take the plant aud fashion it according to their fancy for shape, for colour, or for fragrance, or as they grail the i tree till the bitter and scanty fruit becomes luscious aud abundant; while they snbduo ..n animals under their feet, taming the mighty elephant, and using Hie fleet horse at their will; as they form the different varieties of animals, de- 1 slroyiug one, and carefully nurturing another; when he notes how tho fear of him and the dread of him i* literally over every beast of the field, over every fl-h of the sea. and even over all Unit movetli upon the earth; witnessing the selfdenying attachments of many animals to him as a superior being; observing how they copy and strive to reproduce many of his actions ; how they vie with caeli oilier m then- efforts to please • him aud to ronder him service, we can hardiv wonder at his forgetting his position as a workman in the great workshop of tho Creator, and, in the pride of kn iwledge and power of mmd, cither Ignoring His existence, or prescribing the limbs of His power. They little think of the brittleness of the thread of life, or if they talk of a future. Us annihilation, or the great unknown ; the simple blocking up of a little blood canal in the brain, hardly of a hair's breadth, and lo I the wisest man has become it fool, or a helpless paralytic, and what then about the great future 't We know of one well authenticated case of a very ordinary-minded though pious man being thus afflicted, ’bet us hear what is said of him, of George 111. “ All the world knows the history of his malady ; all history pre souls no sadder figure than that of the old man, blind, and deprived of reason, wandering through tho rooms of his palace, addressing imaginary parliaments, reviewing fancied troops, holding ghostly courts. He was not only sightless, he became utterly deaf. All light, all reason, all sound of human voices, all tho pleasures of the world of God, were taken from him. Some slight lucid moments ho had, in one of which the Qneee. desiring to see him, entered the room and found him singing a hymn, and accompanying himself | on the harpsichord. When ho had’finished he knelt down and prayed aloud for her, and then for Ids family, and then for the nation, concluding! with a prayer for himself, that it might please,' God to avert this heavy calamity from him, but if not, to give him resignation to submit. Uc then burst into tears, and his reason again fled. 11 hat kind ol life was this Here was evidently a variety of life, winch the surging* ol insanity could not o'envhclm, which me encmist could not anayse, nor tho psychologist interpret, nor the physiologist unfold; incomprehensible to the metaphysician, known only by them lo whom if is revealed; a file beside which alt other varieties of life are as nothing—a life from above; a life on this earth consisting of a living together with Him who is tho author of life—a life which shall outlive death, and from which death removes all hindrances to full enjoyment—a life where there is no sorrow, no signing, no tears, no mgut, a life of light—Life Hemal;