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General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1838 Original Publisher: J. Mardon Subjects: Animal welfare Nature / Animals Nature / Mammals Nature / Animal Rights Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III. DOES CHRISTIANITY INCULCATE THE DUTY OF HUMANITY TO ANIMALS ? Here is a question which could be proposed by no one who was not either an enemy to Christianity, or altogether ignorant of its principles; for no one, though but superficially acquainted with that divine religion, can for a moment question that humanity to animals is a duty accordant with its whole spirit; and that every act of cruelty, though to a reptile or a fly, is in direct hostility to its nature. Christianity is throughout a religion of mercy -- of mercy not limited to any tribe or nation, nor to the sphere of rationality itself, but extending to the extreme limit of life and sense. If humanity was taught by the Jewish law, much more is it included in the dictates of him who came not to destroy but to fulfil -- not to abolish the moral law but to confirm it, by lending it additional sanctions, and arming it with new authority from heaven. He who said, Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy, and Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father in heaven is merciful, could never have meant that the animal creation should be excluded from the sweet influences of that virtue. We can conceive nothing more abhorrent from his nature, or that would have called forth his more indignant reprehension than cruelty to animals. Why then, it may be asked, do we not find some of that indignant reprehension in his numerous discourses ? Why ? Wherefore reprehend what did not exist ? The Jews, though chargea...

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