That man should love his fellow-man may not seem strange. Certain social and gregarious and family instincts exist among the lower animals, and Darwin very ably adduces these as akin to the similar affections of man; yet even in the law of love of our neighbour, as enforced by Christ's teaching, it is easy to see that we have something beyond animal nature. But this becomes still more distinct in the love of God. Man was the "shadow and likeness of God," says the old record in Genesis--the shadow that clings to the substance and is inseparable from it, the likeness that represents it visibly to the eyes of men, and of the animals that man rules over. Primeval man could "hear in the evening breeze the voice of God, walking to and fro in the garden." What mere animal ever had or could attain to such an experience? But if we turn from the Edenic picture of man in harmony with Heaven--"owning a father, when he owned a God"--to man as the slave of superstition; even in this terrible darkness of mistaken faith, of which it may be said, "Fear mates her devils, and weak faith her gods, Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust, Whose attributes are rage, revenge, or lust," we see the ruins, at least, of that sublime love of God. The animal clings to its young with a natural affection, as great as that of a human mother for her child, but what animal ever thought of throwing its progeny into the Ganges, or into the fires of Moloch's altar, for the saving of its soul, or to obtain the favour or avoid the wrath of God? No less in the vagaries of fetichism, ritualism, and idolatry, and in the horrors of asceticism and human sacrifice, then in the Edenic communion with and hearing of God, or in the joy of Christian love, do we see, in however ruined or degraded condition, the higher spiritual nature of man.