Section LXXVIII. The Inner Revelation and the Conscience. (Concl'd) · SECTION CXXVII.

(a) The moral sparing to which nature, in virtue of its essence as God’s perfectly created work, and as an expression of the divine love and wisdom, has a right, requires that man, in the exercise of the moral dominion over nature to which he is called, regard this, its divine phase, with due respect,—that he avoid all purposeless and wanton changing or destroying of natural objects, and that, on the contrary, he exercise toward nature a considerate love, especially in its higher manifestations, by preserving them in their peculiarity. The duty of considerate sparing rises in proportion as the nature-creature comes into actual relation to human life, and enters into the sphere of his moral activity as a helping factor.

Moral love to nature is thankfulness to God who gave it to us for moral enjoyment and for moral dominion; to man, as pure, God gave not an uncongenial and fear-awakening nature, but a Paradisaical nature. God loves nature as he made it, and from its bosom God’s creative love beams out toward us, and he has even impressed manifold natural suggestions of the moral upon it; Christ himself requires respect for nature, for the heavens are God’s throne and the earth is his footstool [Matt. v, 34, 35], and it is in virtue of this religious conceiving of nature that there can be moral duties also toward nature (as against Rothe, Ethik, 1. ed., iii, § 866). With the exception of the Indians, who adore nature as the revealed divine essence itself, no people has manifested so high a respect for nature as the Israelites; the legislation of the Old Testament surpasses all other systems in a considerate sparing of nature. Domestic animals especially are placed under the sparing protection and care of the law [Prov. xii, 10]; the mouth of the threshing ox is not to be muzzled [Deut. xxv, 4]; on the cattle, also are given rest Exod. xx, 10]; and in the Sabbatical year both cattle and beasts are to pasture on the fallow lands [Exod. xxiii, 11; Lev. xxv, 6, 7, in the original text]; the beast of another that falls under its burden, or loses its way, is to be helped [Exod. xxiii, 5; Deut. xxii, 1 sqq.; comp. Matt. xii, 11]; animals may not be castrated or otherwise maimed [Lev. xxii, 24; even the crossing of animals of different kinds is, in high moral recognition of the rights of nature-creatures, forbidden [Lev. xix, 19]. With the greatest tenderness of feeling, a merely symbolical cruelty is not allowed; “thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk” [Exod. xxiii, 19; xxxiv, 26; Deut. xiv, 21]; it makes the impression of cruel mockery when the milk which is destined to nourish the young is used in connection with its death. Under the same category falls the prohibition of killing the calf, the kid, and the lamb, on the same day with its mother [Lev. xxii, 28], and of taking an incubating mother-bird at the same time with the nest [Deut. xxii, 6, 7]. The touching account of the care of God for the animals at the time of the deluge, is an emphatic illustration of the moral sparing of animals as it should be exercised by man; God includes also animals in his with Noah, and promises to spare them [Gen. ix, 10, 15]. Christ himself illustrates his own relation to the body of believers in a gracious picture of a shepherd loving his flock [John x; comp. Matt. xviii, 12, 13].

The piety-inspired careful sparing of whatever contributes to the nourishment of man, is so natural an expression of the moral consciousness that it prevails among almost all, and even barbarous, nations. Christ sanctions this significant carefulness [John vi, 12]. This sparing has essentially a symbolical meaning,—is an evidencing of thankfulness for the good gifts of God,—a thankfulness which suffers not that these gifts of love be destroyed in wanton thoughtlessness and in purposeless waste, or contemptuously thrown away.