ir ancestors, while
animals suffer and die without sin being the cause. Surely the cause
must be the same for all the creation? and still less is it possible to
believe that the suffering and death of creatures is caused by the sin
of man, because they suffered and died for thousands of centuries
before man came upon the scene.

If God is omnipotent and all-loving, we are bound to believe that
suffering and death are sent by him deliberately, and not cruelly. One
single instance, however minute, that established the reverse, would
vitiate the whole theory; and if so, then we are the sport of a power
that is sometimes kind and sometimes malignant. An insupportable
thought!

Is it possible to conceive that the law of sin works in the lower
creation, and that they, too, are punished, or even wisely corrected,
for sinning against such light as they have? Had the little beetle
that sailed across my path acted in such a way that he had deserved his
fate? Or was his death meant to make him a better, a larger-minded
beetle? I cannot bring myself to believe that. Perhaps a
philosophical theologian would say that creation was all one, and that
suffering at one point was remedial at some other point. I am not in a
position to deny the possibility of that, but I am equally unable to
affirm that it is so. There is no evidence which would lead me to
think it. It only seems to me necessary to affirm it, in order to
confirm the axiom that God is omnipotent and all-loving. Much in
nature and in human life would seem to be at variance with that.

It may be said that one is making too much of a minute incident; but
such incidents are of hourly occurrence all the world over; and the
only possible method for arriving at truth is the scientific method of
cumulative evidence. The beetle was small, indeed, and infinitely
unimportant in the scheme of things. But he was all in all to himself.
The world only existed so far as he was concerned, through his tiny
consciousness.

The old-fashioned religious philosophers held that man was the crown
and centre of creation, and that God was mainly preoccupied with man's
destiny. They maintained that all creatures were given us for our use
and enjoyment. The enjoyment that I derived from the beetle, in this
case, was not conspicuous. But I suppose that such cheerful optimists
would say that the beetle was sent to give me a little lesson in
patience, to teach me not to think so much a