Animals can be happy without self-denial; man cannot. Man excels
in the gift of reason, yet commits mistakes, and perpetrates crimes,
which we look for in vain among the beasts of the field. Man, with a
thousand times more power than the brutes, and with immensely greater
capacities and opportunities for happiness, is frequently the most
miserable being on earth. On the supposition that man was made for a
different end, and endowed with a different nature from the brutes--on
the supposition that man was made for virtue, for piety, for rational,
religious self-government, for voluntary obedience to God, for the joy
of a good conscience, for heaven--in a word, on the supposition that the
Scriptural and Christian doctrine about man is true, all this is
explained; but on the infidel theory all is a torturing, maddening
mystery.
And let infidels do what they will, and say what they please, the world
at large will hold to the religious theory. Mahometans, Pagans, and
Christians all insist that man is made for higher work, and meant for a
higher destiny, than the lower animals. The Christian theory is accepted
by the highest of our race. They regard it with the deepest reverence.
The books that unfold it they regard as divine. They read them in their
families.
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