present day.

"Some suppose," says he, "that infants suffer as irrational animals do,
without reference to a moral law or the principles of a moral government.
A strange supposition indeed, that _human beings_ should for a time be
ranked with beings which are not human, that is, mere animals." He is
evidently shocked at such an insult offered to poor little infants. He
will not allow us, for one moment, to take the whole race of man, "during
the interesting period of infancy, cut them off from their relation to
Adam, degrade them from the dignity of human beings, and put them in the
rank of brute animals,--and then say, they _suffer as the brutes do_....
This would be the worst of all theories,--the farthest off from Scripture
and reason, and the most revolting to all the noble sensibilities of man."

Now, it is really refreshing to find these allusions to "the dignity of
human beings" in a writer of this school; and especially in Dr. Woods, who
has so often rebuked others for their pride, when they have imagined that
they were only engaged in the laudable enterprise of asserting this very
dignity, by raising men from the rank of mere machines. It is so
refreshing, indeed, to find such allusions in Dr. Woods, that we could
almost forgive a little special pleading and bad logic in his attempt to
vindicate the "dignity of human beings," which should have been an attempt
to vindicate the goodness of God.

We do not place human beings and brutes in the same rank, except in so far
as both are sensitive creatures, and consequently susceptible of pleasure
and pain. In this particular, the Creator himself has, to a certain
extent, placed them in the same rank, and it is useless to cry out against
his appointment. He will not listen to our talk about "the dignity of
human beings." He will still leave us, in so far as bodily pain and death
are concerned, in the same rank with mere animals. This single point of
resemblance between animals and human beings is all that our argument
requires; and the _fact_ that animals do suffer pain and death cannot be
denied, or swept away by declamation. Let this fact be fairly and openly
met, and not merely evaded. Let it be shown how the suffering of mere
animals may be reconciled with the infinite goodness of God, and we will
undertake to show how the suffering of guiltless "human beings" may be
reconciled with it. Nay, we will undertake to show that the suffering of
infants may be reconciled