bject could they have been created
here? Perhaps the matter were better left where that other was just now.
We can only seek the shelter that is common to us in such circumstances.

"He knows, who gave that love sublime;
And gave that strength of feeling, great
Above all human estimate."

Once again, for ourselves, there is no definite answer. The whole
question forms but one more problem added to an interminable sequence,
and in the face of which the man and the dog are both dumb.

Yet when we look back, and ask ourselves, "Are all these for naught?" is
it still man's province to be mute? Many further questions crowd up to
the mind here, as they ever do in yet graver issues. In our weakness and
our anxiety we cannot suffer our case to go by default, even though we
confess our inability to answer the questions one by one as they appear.
We can only turn away our heads and say, "Such things can _not_ be." This
close relationship cannot be cut off and cease for ever. This touching
interdependence cannot be brought to a sudden and a final end. The
sparrows cannot be cared for and the dogs cast out. In other words,
living things among animals, not directly associated with human beings in
their lives, cannot, surely, be singly preserved and those which have won
our love and loved us in return be lost to us for ever and condemned.

Is it possible that all these marvellous qualities and characteristics,
gathered together into one dumb animal, are to pass away and to have no
place in the larger circuit of life? Are all these consolations that this
animal, and this animal alone among the so-called dumb, is capable of
bringing--are all the influences for good that he is granted the power of
exercising upon the mind, the spirit, and the very soul of man--to be
accounted of no worth; to be merely so many items to be used up in the
furtherance of a great scheme and plan; to be dissipated even as the
mists of the dawn when the day shall at last break? Surely,--can such
things be? Human judgment and human justice are for ever fallible, and
rough expedients at best. But that other judgment for which we look, and
that other justice upon which we are wont mentally to lean, cannot
possibly be either one or the other.

Something, then, of our case may assuredly be left there. We cannot
answer the questions; but, as we confront them, we yet cannot cut
ourselves free from that spirit of int