God's world was a happy world for the humblest creature of His hand; and if it is now a sad world, where the groan of many a suffering animal goes up to Him who hears the ravens when they cry--whose fault is it? Did you ever think how kind we ought to be to the creatures which, innocent themselves, have shared the sorrow brought into the world by man's disobedience? I heard someone say the other day, "It is terrible to see animals suffer: to see cattle overdriven, and sheep dying for want of water, and defenceless creatures cruelly used. But when I see any of these things, I have to feel--_I_ am to blame for that." When I asked my scholars, "What is the meaning of _abundantly_?" Sharley said, "It means enough and over." Do you like her answer? As the sea everywhere, even down in those depths where the sun's light cannot pierce through the masses of water, is peopled by millions of creatures--every drop of water, as we might say, _alive_ with life--I thought it a good one. A great poet has spoken of the "multitudinous seas," but whether this was in allusion to their wealth of life, or to their myriad waves, I do not know. Certainly in his time very little was known about the dwellers in the deep, deep sea, compared with what we may learn in the present day, when the sounding-line has reached the bottom of the Atlantic, and actually brought up some of the clay that forms its floor--clay which is made up of the skeletons of myriads of creatures. It was once thought that no life could exist in the ocean-depths, but we now know that life is everywhere--in air and water, upon the earth and within it, in the lowest depths of the sea, and on the highest mountain peaks, in hot and cold climates, and in the bodies of animals: all around us--earth, air, and water--teems with life. Now let us read once more the simple words which tell us all we can really know about what is so wonderful: "And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life" (or, as it may be translated, "Let the waters swarm with swarms of living souls"). We will not read farther to-day, as I want to tell you in this chapter something about life in what are called its lower forms, and we shall find that wherever we may look, every creature is perfect in itself, and perfectly suited to the life appointed to it by its Creator, and the home where He has placed it.