Sermons, English -- 19th century; Theology -- Sermons
I know of no reason why I should not look for the animals to rise again,
in the same sense in which I hope myself to rise again--which is, to
reappear, clothed with another and better form of life than before. If
the Father will raise his children, why should he not also raise those
whom he has taught his little ones to love? Love is the one bond of the
universe, the heart of God, the life of his children: if animals can be
loved, they are loveable; if they can love, they are yet more plainly
loveable: love is eternal; how then should its object perish? Must the
very immortality of love divide the bond of love? Must the love live on
for ever without its object? or worse still, must the love die with its
object, and be eternal no more than it? What a mis-invented correlation
in which the one side was eternal, the other, where not yet annihilated,
constantly perishing! Is not our love to the animals a precious variety
of love? And if God gave the creatures to us, that a new phase of love
might be born in us toward another kind of life from the same fountain,
why should the new life be more perishing than the new love? Can you
imagine that, if, here-after, one of God's little ones were to ask him
to give again one of the earth's old loves--kitten, or pony, or
squirrel, or dog, which he had taken from him, the Father would say no?
If the thing was so good that God made it for and gave it to the child
at first who never asked for it, why should he not give it again to the
child who prays for it because the Father had made him love it? What a
child may ask for, the Father will keep ready.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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