Now, one is inclined to believe that such an incident is what we call fortuitous; but the only hope we have in the world is to believe that things do not happen by chance. One believes, or tries to believe, that the Father of all has room in his mind for the smallest of his creatures; that not a sparrow, as Christ said, falls to the ground without his tender care. Theologians tell us that death entered into the world by sin; but it is not consistent to believe that, whereas both men and animals suffer and die, the sufferings and death of men are caused by their sins, or by the sins of their ancestors, while animals suffer and die without sin being the cause. Surely the cause must be the same for all the creation? and still less is it possible to believe that the suffering and death of creatures is caused by the sin of man, because they suffered and died for thousands of centuries before man came upon the scene. If God is omnipotent and all-loving, we are bound to believe that suffering and death are sent by him deliberately, and not cruelly. One single instance, however minute, that established the reverse, would vitiate the whole theory; and if so, then we are the sport of a power that is sometimes kind and sometimes malignant. An insupportable thought! Is it possible to conceive that the law of sin works in the lower creation, and that they, too, are punished, or even wisely corrected, for sinning against such light as they have? Had the little beetle that sailed across my path acted in such a way that he had deserved his fate? Or was his death meant to make him a better, a larger-minded beetle? I cannot bring myself to believe that. Perhaps a philosophical theologian would say that creation was all one, and that suffering at one point was remedial at some other point. I am not in a position to deny the possibility of that, but I am equally unable to affirm that it is so. There is no evidence which would lead me to think it. It only seems to me necessary to affirm it, in order to confirm the axiom that God is omnipotent and all-loving. Much in nature and in human life would seem to be at variance with that. It may be said that one is making too much of a minute incident; but such incidents are of hourly occurrence all the world over; and the only possible method for arriving at truth is the scientific method of cumulative evidence. The beetle was small, indeed, and infinitely unimportant in the scheme of things. But he was all in all to himself. The world only existed so far as he was concerned, through his tiny consciousness.