d free beings by moral laws, that is, by laying duties or
moral bonds upon them, which they ought to obey, which He must require
them to obey, enforcing His commands by suitable rewards and
punishments. Thus He establishes and enforces the moral order.

Now the duties He lays upon us are of three classes. First, there are
duties of reverence and honor towards Himself as our sovereign Lord and
Master. These are called the duties of Religion, the study of which does
not belong to Medical Jurisprudence. The other classes of duties regard
ourselves and our fellow-men, with these we are to deal in our lectures.

I. Order requires that the meaner species of creatures shall exist for
the benefit of the nobler; the inert clod of earth supports vegetable
life, the vegetable kingdom supplies the wants of animal life, the brute
animal with all inferior things subserves the good of man; while man,
the master of the visible universe, himself exists directly for the
honor and glory of God. In this beautiful order of creation, man can use
all inferior things for his own benefit.

This is what reason teaches concerning our status in this world; and
this teaching of reason is confirmed by the convictions of all nations
and all ages of mankind. The oldest page of literature that has come
down to us, namely, the first chapter of the first book of Holy Writ,
lays down this same law, and no improvement has been made in it during
all subsequent ages. Whether we regard this writing as inspired, as
Christians and Jews have always done, or only as the testimony of the
most remote antiquity, confirmed by the acceptance of all subsequent
generations, it is for every sensible man of the highest authority.

Here is the passage: "God said, Let us make man to our image and
likeness; and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the
fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every
creeping creature that creepeth upon the earth." And later on in
history, after the deluge, God more explicitly declared the order thus
established, saying to Noe and his posterity: "Every thing that moveth
and liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herbs have I
delivered them to you." But He emphatically adds that the lives of men
are not included in this grant; they are directly reserved for His own
disposal. "At the hand of every man," He says, "will I require the life
of man."

All things then are created for man; man is created d