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If we look in the final, total, and eternal teachings of Scripture for our moral standard, nothing is more clear than that mercy is one of the chief duties of man, as it is one of the main attributes of God. In the deluge provision is made that the animals should be saved as well as man; and in the renewed covenant we know that God said (Genesis 9:2). Thus early is attention called to the connection of animals with man, the use of animals to man, and the dominion over animals by man. God's care for them, man's duty to them, are constantly inculcated. Take, for instance, the Mosaic law. How exquisite is the consideration which it shows for the creatures of God's hand! "If a bird's nest chance to be before thee, thou shalt not take the dam with the young, that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days." Did any other lawgiver like the mighty Moses thus care for the curlew in the furrow and the mother-linnet in the brake? "Thou shalt not seethe the kid in its mother's milk. I am the Lord." "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn." Why? Doth God care for oxen? Assuredly He does, for His are "the cattle upon a thousand hills." "Thou shalt not plough with an ox and an ass together." Why not? Because it is contrary to the law of natural justice, since, if the two animals be yoked together, an unfair share of the burden must fall upon the one or upon the ether. Could God have taught more clearly to us than He thus did by the mouth of the great leader of His people that we must be merciful because our Father in heaven is merciful? Turn again to the fresh, bright, vivid poetry of the Psalmist of Israel. How beautiful, how tender, throughout the Psalms, are the repeated allusions to the world of creatures! Or turn again to that magnificent, dramatic, and philosophic poem of the Book of Job. The care of God and the love of God for the creatures He has made convince Job of God's care for him. Turn again to the calmer and graver wisdom of the wise King Solomon. "There be four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise" (Proverbs 30:24-28). And when we turn to the New Testament we find, as we should have expected, that this perfect love for all God's creatures appears most fully and tenderly in the words and teaching of the Lord Himself. The lessons of the wise earthly king are taught us with creeping and laborious creatures. He made the bee and the ant teach their lessons to us; but the heavenly King taught us rather from those birds of the air, which "toil not, nor spin," but are employed, like angels, in offices of love and praise. There is nothing in all human language more touching and more beautiful than Christ's illustration of God's tenderness in the works of nature, the flowers of the field, and the creatures of the air. Here is a legend of Christ, which may be no legend, but a true story: By the hot roadside, in the blistering sunlight, the vultures eyeing it, and ready in a moment to sweep down upon it with their foetid wings, lay a dead dog — one of the hated, despised, ownerless dogs of an Eastern city — a dead pariah dog, the most worthless thing, you might think, that all creation contained — a pitiable and unlovely spectacle; and round it were gathered a crowd of the wretched, loathing idlers of the place — coarse, pitiless, ready, like all the basest of mankind, to feed their eyes on misery and on ugliness, as flesh-flies settle on a wound. And one kicked it, and another turned it over with his foot, and another pushed it with his staff, and each had his mean, unpitying gibe at the carcase of the dead, helpless, miserable creature which God had made. Then, suddenly, there fell an awe-struck silence on these cruel, empty triflers; for they saw One approach them whom they knew, and whom, because He was sinless, many of them hated while yet they feared. And He came up, and, for a moment, the sad kingly eyes rested on the dead creature in the blistering sunlight with the vultures hovering over it, and then He turned His eyes for a moment to the pitiless, idling men who stood there looking at it, and, breaking the silence, He said: "Its teeth are as white as pearls"; and so He went His way. Where they in their meanness could gloat on what was foul, and see nothing but its loathliness, His holy eye — because it was the eye of loving mercy — saw the one thing which still remained untainted by the deformity of death, and He praised that one thing. And, leaving them smitten into silent shame before His love and His nobleness, He once more went His way. Turn to the most ancient Greek poems, the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" of Homer. In the "Iliad" the horses of the great hero Achilles weep human tears for their great master's death. In the "Odyssey" we have the return of Ulysses, ragged, unknown, desolate, after his twenty years of wanderings. He is in the guise of a beggar. No one recognised him of all whom his bounty fed — not his servants, not his wife, not his only son; but Argus knows him — Argus, the dog with which he has hunted as a boy — Argus cannot forget him as human beings can. Outstretched, neglected, before the hall door lies the poor old hound, and he no sooner hears the footsteps of his master whom he had known as a boy long years before, than he looks up and strives to crawl to his feet, licks his hand, and dies. And at the saddest moment of Athenian history, when the people of Athens were flying to Salamis from the mighty hosts of Xerxes, leaving their desolate homes to be spoiled and burned, the one great nation which raised an altar to pity had time to remember and to record how one poor dog swam all the way across the straits of the salt sea after the boat which carried his master to the island shore. And the Jews, too, had well learned this lesson of their great books. The historian of the book of Tobit is not afraid to tell us that when the Jewish boy left his father's house for his long and perilous journey his dog went with him; and how, when he returned with the friendly angel, the dog still followed the angel and the youth. One of the most celebrated of all the rabbis, the writer of the earliest.and most sacred part of the Talmud, was Rabbi Judah the Holy. He was afflicted with intermittent agonies, and the Talmud tells us this legend of him: On one occasion a calf destined for sacrifice fled lowing to him, and thrust his head upon the rabbi's knees. "Go," said the rabbi, pushing the animal from him; "for sacrifice is thy destiny." "Lo!" said the angels of God, "the rabbi is pitiless; let suffering come upon him." And he was smitten with sickness. But on another occasion, when his servant was dusting his room, she disturbed a brood of young kittens. "Let them alone," said the rabbi, kindly; "disturb them not, because it is written, 'God's tender mercies are over all His works.'" "Ah," said the angels, "he has learned pity now; and, therefore, let his sufferings cease." All the best Christian history is full of the spirit of mercy; all the saints of God, without exception, have been kind to animals, as most bad men have been unkind. It was observed in the earliest centuries of Christianity that the hermits living in the desert their pure and simple and gentle lives had strange power over the wild creatures. Those quiet and holy men so controlled them that the creatures near them lost their wildness, and the fawn would come to them, and the lion harmed them not. Some of God's holiest saints in later times had this strange, sweet gift of inspiring animals with the confidence which they had before — to our shame — they had been taught distrust by the cruelties and treacheries of fallen man. So it was with St. . He called all creatures his brethren and his sisters. "My little sisters," he said to the twittering swallows who disturbed him by chasing each other through the blue Italian sky, as he preached in the open air in the market-place of Vercelli — "my little sisters, you have said your say; now be silent, and let me preach to the people." We are told how on one occasion he gave up his own robe to save two lambs which were being led to the slaughter; how a little lamb was one of his daily companions, and how he sometimes preached upon its innocence to the people. At Gubbio a leveret was brought to him, and when he saw the little creature his heart at once was moved. "Little brother leveret," he said, "why hast thou let thyself be taken?" And when the little trembler escaped from the hands of the brother who was holding it and fled for refuge to the folds of the robe of St. Francis, he set it free. A wild rabbit which he took, and afterwards set free, still returned to his bosom as though it had some sense of the pitifulness of his heart. On another occasion he put back into the water a large tench which a fisherman had given him, and he bade it swim away; "but," says the legend, "the fish lingered by the boat until the prayers of St. Francis were ended, for the saint obtained great honour from God in the love and obedience of His creatures."

(Dean Farrar.)

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KJV: A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.

WEB: A righteous man respects the life of his animal, but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.