No beast will have to give an account of itself to God; for to these creatures of a day, He has given their bodies, so wonderful and beautiful, and the breath by which they live; but not that deathless part, the spirit, because of which every man is responsible to God, and knows that he is, even though he may never have read in God's Word that "every one of us shall give account of himself to God." Let me tell you how a missionary explained this, not long ago, to a king far away in the heart of Africa. He had been talking to him about the stars and the sun; and the king presently asked where God, who had made the sun, dwelt, and what He did with people after they were dead. The missionary says, "I answered that God was not confined to one place as we are; that when man's body died, the spirit of him who was a child of God went above, and dwelt for ever in the presence of God, and those whom God knew not here in this life were cast out into a place of sorrow and burning." "But why does God do so?" the king asked. "What reason has He for putting man from Him?" The missionary explained that God is righteous, and must punish those who are guilty in His sight. "But," said the king, "_we_ did not know the laws of God _here_. How can He punish _us_ for not keeping them?" [Illustration: KAFFIRS OF VARIOUS TRIBES.] The missionary answered that God had put His law in their hearts, so that they all knew what was right and what was wrong. "You know," he said, "when a man lies to your face and steals from you, that he injures you; and call him bad and wicked. So when you tomorrow do the same thing, God judges you with the same judgement with which you judged your fellow-creature yesterday." "Yes," replied the king, "that is true; that I understand." We shall think more by-and-by about the great difference which God has put between man, whom He created in His own image, and every other creature, but I want you never to forget it. In reading of the beautiful life which God gave to the fishes and the birds, and to those beasts that He commanded the earth to bring forth, about which we are going to speak a little today, we must always remember, while we admire the wonderful gifts and powers which they have from God, that He has put the widest possible distance between us and them. We shall see that many of these animals are much stronger than the strongest man; that to some of them God has given senses keener than ours; and to others, in an especial degree, that great gift called instinct, by which the little swallow finds its way over sea and land, the ants "prepare their meat in the summer," the beaver makes dams across the stream, and the little prairie dogs build pleasant towns, where they can all live together, one of them always keeping watch lest any enemy should surprise the workers.