made and rules this earth. This is the end and duty of our mortal life:-
-to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, and subdue it. But
is that all? Is there no hint in this blessing of God of something more
than our mortal life--something beyond our mortal life? Surely there is.
Those words--"in the image of God made He man," must mean, if they mean
anything, that man can, if he will but be a true man, share the eternal
life of God. But I will not speak of that to-day, but rather of a
question about his mortal life in this world, which is this:--What is the
reason why man has a right over the lives of animals? why he may use them
for his food? and at the same time, what is the reason why he has not the
same right over the lives of his fellow-men? why he may not use them for
food?

It is this--that "in the image of God made He man." Man is made in the
image and likeness of God, therefore he is a sacred creature; a creature,
not merely an animal, and the highest of all animals, only cunninger than
all animals, more highly organised, more delicately formed than all
animals; but something beyond an animal. He is in the likeness of God,
therefore he is consecrated to God. He is the one creature on earth whom
God, so far as we know, is trying to make like Himself. Therefore,
whosoever kills a man, sins not only against that man, nor against
society: he sins against God. And God will require that man's blood at
the hand of him who slays him. But how? At the hand of every beast will
He require it, and at the hand of every man.

What that first part of the law means I cannot tell. How God will
require from the lion, or the crocodile, or the shark, who eats a human
being, the blood of their victims, is more than I can say. But this I
can say--that the feeling, not only of horror and pity, but of real rage
and indignation, with which men see (what God grant you never may see) a