Life: its Forms and Varieties.

Hawke's Bay Weekly Times, Volume 1, Issue 38, 16 September 1867, Page 228

Life: its Forms and Varieties.

(Continuedfrom ourlast.),' , Now, -after all this, whatkiiid of animal shall We call man? Some term Mm an animal that cooks his food; others, an animal that uses tools hud-weapons, Some say that he is the only omnivorous creature, feeding on anything that comes in his way;- others, again, that lie is the only animal that Walks upright; physically, I moan, not Morally: Ho has been termed a religious animal, and latterly he has been! designated the only creature that, can talk, , . i .

Tribes of men hare been discovered! which resemble tho aht, both la making slaves and in keeping up, domestic slavery.. The soldier ant, in fighting propensities,, and . in scorn,. .of manual labour, and in killing the .sick and infirm. Wasps emhlate him' in laziness; atid 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 ini the unequalled' combination of all these, in his capacity for self-improvement, in his alterings- of the face 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 bones; that, apart from nil imitation, he will carry out the ideas and designs of God as regards form, shade, symmetry, colour, and that he is thus the great creature worker insensibly carrying out the ideas 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 offispring,” ■ not only made in his image, but also made in his likeness. To sum up, then, we say that, man differs from all animals, in possessing a more highly developed mechanism, in’having, a nobler ordermf mind, and inheriting a disposition to believe in a God. . Unfortunately; many .men attempt to cultivate only their mind, letting their religious instinct go unimproved, imagining that as.they can tell the stars, those eighty millions of wondrous worlds which they can, weigh as in a balance, whose courses they can so well point out, and whose very substance they can analyse and explain. As they take tho 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 life, each wonderful in its minuteness, exquisite in its symmetry, perfect in its adaptation of means to end, and yet so simple in its mechanism. As they travel on the wings of the wind from shore to shore; as they msh with the speed of tho clouds along the iron way; as they flash their thoughts to the uttermost paats of the sea; then, when they take of the earth on which they tread, and analyse its substance, and wonder at the mighty effects produced upon it by the seasons as they come and go; while they scale its mountains and descend into its depths, searching out the hidden treasure; as they ascend into the clouds mile after mile, till the busy noise and clamour of men seems but as the distant hum of bees; till the very hills appear hut 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, unruffled, and so still and yet so deep that the very weight of water permits not the decay of the little shell fish, hut there it lies with the flesh still in it; as they pry into the mystery of life 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, the fruit, or the mighty tree. When they take the plant and fashion it according to their fancy for shape, for colour, or for fragrance, or as they graft , the tree till.the bitter and Scanty fruit becomes luscious and abundant; while they subdue all animals’ under their feet, taming the mighty elephant, and using the fleet horse at their will; as they form the different varieties of animals, destroying one, and carefully nurturing another; when he notes how the fear of him and the dread of him is literally over every beast of the field, over every fish of the sea, and even over all that moveth 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 each other in their. efforts to please him and to render him service, we can hardly wonder at his forgetting his position as a workman in the great workshop of the Creator, and, in the pride of knowledge and power of mind, either ignoring His existence, or prescribing the limits of His power. They little thiuk of the brittleness of the thread of life, or if they talk of a future, its 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! the wisest man has become a fool, or a helpless paralytic, and what then about the great future ? We know of one well authenticated case of a very ordinary-minded though pious man being thus afflicted. Let us hear what is said of him, of George 111. “ All the world knows the history of his malady.; all history pre sents no sadder figure;than that of the old man; blind, and deprived of reason, wandering through the 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 the pleasures of the world of God, were taken from him. Some slight lucid moments he had, in one of which the Queen, desiring to see him, entered the room and found him 1 singing a hymn, and accompanying himself on the harpsichord. When he had flu'shed he knelt down and prayed aloud for her, and then for his 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.. He then burst into tears, and his reason again fled. What kind of life was this? Here was evidently a variety of life, which the surgings of insanity could not o’erwhelm, which , the chemist could not analyse, nor the psychologist interpret, nor the physiologist unfold; incomprehensible to the metaphysician, known only by them to whom it is revealed; a life beside which all other varieties of life are as nothing—a life from above; a life on this earth consisting of a living together with Him who author of life—a life whjcli shall outlive death, and from which death removes all hindrances to full enjoyment—a life where there is no sorrow, no sighing, no tears, no 1 night, a life of light—Life Eternal!