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Kindness To Dumb Animals

Kindness To Dumb Animals image
Parent Issue
Day
28
Month
November
Year
1902
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

A CHILDREN'S SERMON BY REV DR. PATTON SUNDAY

Preached From the Text of Balaam and His Ass - A Sympathetic Strike in Indiana

The children's sermon by Dr. C. S. Patton at the Congregational church Sunday morning was from the text concerning "Balaam and His Ass," and was as follows: One of the surest tests of the character of people, old or young, is to be found in their treatment of dumb animals. A boy who will abuse a pony is a mean boy. A man who cannot keep his temper with a horse is certainly not fit to live with people. Whatever Balaam may be known for among scholars, he is known among ordinary people as the man who abused a faithful animal. You will find a good many cases much like the case of Balaam - where the beast knows better than the man. Not that the beast could read or write or talk, as the man can; but that for a beast he knows more than the man does for a man. And whenever you get a beast of this kind into the hands of a man of this kind the man usually tries to get even by abusing the beast. On the other hand it is an indication of a fine nature, to be on good terms with the dumb animals of the earth. It is said that when Thoreau lived in the woods at Walden, he was on as good terms with the birds and squirrels as if they had been so many children. Robert Burns wrote one of his most beautiful poems to a mouse whose nest he had unintentionally plowed up in the field. But one of the best illustrations I have ever seen of a care for the comfort of dumb animals occurred last week down in Indiana. There was a mine there in which mules were used to haul the underground cars. Last week the miners went on a strike. Now, when miners go on a strike it is usually because they want something for themselves. The want higher wages, or else they want shorter working hours, or they want the owner to recognize the union, or something of that sort. But when the owners of this mine in Indiana came to ask the miners what was the matter, they found it was no such thing as any of these. The miners said they had struck on account of the mules. They said that the mules were often put to work in the morning without being curried or watered or fed. They said they would go back to work when the owners promised that the mules should be well treated. It was a sympathetic strike; but the sympathy was not for some other workmen who had struck, but for the dumb workmen who could not strike for themselves. Such things as this, unless I am mistaken, are a more sure sign of the progress of civilization than phonographs and automobiles. We do not grow better or wiser any faster than we grow more kind; and our kindness is of a very shallow sort unless it reaches down beneath our boy and girl friends, to our friends and playmates of the lower world.