Numbers 22:1-40 - On Cruelty To Animals

I. THE WRONG DONE TO THE CREATURES

II. THE EFFECTS ON OURSELVES .

I. 1 . They are our inferiors, therefore magnanimity and sympathy should protect them.

2 . They are often helpless to defend themselves; cruelty is then unutterably mean.

3 . Some of these animals are part of our property, and of great value to us, though absolutely within our power.

4 . If they are not "wont to do so" when they provoke us, some good reason may exist which we should seek to discover. Therefore—

5 . When tempted to harshness, short of cruelty, it is our duty to consider whether they need it, and in this sense deserve it. For—

6 . Past misconduct of ourselves or of others may have occasioned their present obstinacy, through timidity or some other cause.

7 . Animals suffer too much already, directly or indirectly, through men's sins (war, famines, &c.;) without the addition of gratuitous cruelties.

8 . No future life for them is revealed, so that we have the more reason for not making them miserable in this life.

II. 1 . It fosters a despotic habit of mind, as though might and right were identical.

2 . It hardens the heart and tends to nurture cruelty to men as well as brutes. E.g; the child Nero delighting in killing flies.

3 . It still further alienates us from the mind of Christ, the character of "the Father of mercies."

4 . It is a sign of unrighteousness ( Proverbs 12:10 ), against which God's wrath is revealed, and from which we need to be saved by Christ ( Romans 1:18 ; 1 John 1:9 ).—P.