Do animals sin?

People pretend that they do not mean evil when they say man is but a developed monkey. But such ideas originate from the desire in man to get rid of responsibility and of God. None of that folly! You are moral beings; you have souls, you have consciences. You know very well that you are not brute beasts. You consciously have in your souls, in spite of all efforts, a dread of God, a fear of punishment for sins. A hare does not sin, nor a horse or cow; and you would be shocked at the philosopher who tried to prove that a horse, cow, or hare, had a sense of right or wrong, no less than a man. You might not be able to answer the sophistry, but you would feel that he was deceiving you.

There is a very great distinction between man and the lower creation. The lower creation is not responsible. Their lives are purely animal, governed by instinct, and therefore without responsibility. Man, the highest creation of God on this earth, was created with a will, and therefore carrying with it responsibility, and capable of communing with his Creator. If God had created man in such wise that he were unable to depart from the path of dependence and obedience, He would have created mere automatons, will-less creatures, with no power of choice. Man so created would have been merely a superior animal with no responsibility attaching to him. We shrink from the thought of such a creation as unworthy of God, and entailing terrible loss to mankind.

The law can but kill fallen man. Yea, here we are told of the proclamation at Sinai: if so much as a beast touch the mountain it shall be stoned or thrust through with a dart. Yet, a beast having neither guilt nor conscience, is incapable of moral responsibility to God. Hence if a beast devours another beast none thinks of murder in the case. But God would mark at Sinai that the law overflowed with the threat of death all round, and that sinful man under it stood in the worst case of all: for who can deny that he is most guilty, and not a beast? Fallen man has a conscience which habitually bears witness against him and his sins.

Here is the ground of man's immortal soul; and the body alone is called "mortal," never the soul. Hence is man responsible to God, as no lion, or whale, or eagle; which animals cannot therefore be said to sin like man, any more than to repent; nor do they need life eternal or atonement, nor rise to give account to God for the things done through the body. Think of an error among professing Christians, not only so baseless but so debasing as to put "God's offspring" as the apostle recognised even the idolatrous Athenians to be, on the same level as a dog or a pig! The unsophisticated soul, certainly one born of God, feels (awful as it is to confess it) that his sins deserve everlasting punishment. Nor does scripture weaken but give certainty and power to that overwhelming conviction. And the Saviour in particular says, "Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will warn you, whom ye shall fear; Fear him who, after he hath killed, hath power to cast into Gehenna; yea I say to you, Fear him." Think of the reckless unbelief that rejects the Lord's warning under cover, or through the doctrine, of conditional immortality!

The soul as the motive, emotional faculty full of the unreasoning contrasts which we find in passion; comes fully under this number two. But in its relation to instinct proper, it seems to transcend this. Instinct, within a certain range, does, as we know, the work of mind, more promptly and satisfactorily than mind itself will do it. Reason will pause, waver, get perplexed and blunder, where instinct will at a dash and almost unfailingly accomplish its end. If it were mind, it were a higher mind than man's; and yet man's mind rectifies its mistakes and rises above instinct, and into spheres into which it is impossible for this to enter. The wisdom of the beast in its lower sphere seems more divine than that of man, which has marked upon it in its readiness to err, the creatureliness which is for him so wholesome an admonition. The beast, in fact, as having no personality to distract it, acts from its own God-given nature, unperverted by the fall; and laws of nature have, as we all realize, the same character of promptness, certainty and effectiveness which we recognize in the instinct of the beast. Its Maker has (as we may reverently say) the responsibility of its actions in a way that cannot be said of man with his free personality: hence it is necessarily, what man should be freely, weakness which withal testifies of an energy beyond itself. And this is just what would be covered by the number 5, which, as 4 and 1, speaks of creature weakness allied with divine strength. This as applied to man suggests of necessity responsibility as we have elsewhere seen, while in the beast it would speak only of an energy which wrought in it beyond its own.

Thus the tree of knowledge of good and evil was no arbitrary or cruel test applied to an unsuspecting, guileless being. It was absolutely essential, if man was to be man in any true sense of the word. He was to be bound to God, not by the rigid links of a blind necessity over which he had no control and to which he could not say aught. He must be left to the exercise of the freedom of a will which separates him from the beasts about him. These indeed may and do act in accordance with the instincts implanted within them, may devour flesh or feed upon the herb according to their natural endowment, but they are irresponsible because devoid of that individuality and freedom of will which distinguishes man from them for, as a matter of fact, it is not merely reason which distinguishes man from the lower animals, but that moral endowment which enables him to choose, which makes him to a certain degree the master of his surroundings and of his future.

The soul of the beast carries out its desires through its body without any check. It shows itself in the gratification of its desires and well-being without any thought of all else. The beast is incapable of the thought of God, of the knowledge of right and wrong as right and wrong; it lives for itself and its offspring, instinct being strong in this direction. But fallen man’s soul renders him the prey of many sinful desires. Abstractly not all the soul’s desires are wrong. For instance, “natural affection” is a right emotion, yet sin has come in and poisoned everything. Yet the spirit in man is ever in the place of mentor and conscience, and checks soulish excesses if listened to.

Next we find men tested by their treatment of the creation which God put into subjection to the race. Indifference to one's beast is unworthy; cruelty is worse. Hence the righteous is concerned for his beast's life, while even the wicked's tender mercies are cruelty. Jehovah's tender mercies are over all His works, and the day comes when everything that has breath shall praise Him.

And not only does creation groan under the outward effects of sin, but the poisonous influence of it has affected its inmost parts. Sin has permeated the whole creation and corrupted everything. The passions of anger and strife, envy, greediness, vengeance and violence, we perceive throughout the whole animal world around us, from the ferocious lion down to the little angry bee, from the tame dog to the rapacious wolf. Through the microscope we perceive in a single drop of water thousands of tiny animalculae, invisible to the naked eye, pursuing and consuming each other. The "right of the stronger" exists not only amongst men, but amongst animals, from the eagle amid air and the mute tribes of the deep down to the animalcule in a drop of water. In the millennial kingdom, beneath the sceptre of the "Prince of Peace" and "King of Righteousness," at the time of the "liberty of the glory of the children of God," the whole creation, now groaning and travailing together in pain, and "in earnest expectation waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God," shall be "delivered from the bondage of corruption. Then "the wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play at the holes of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den," whilst Satan himself, "that old serpent," shall be "shut up in the bottomless pit."

The fruits of sin, i.e., sins, are easily perceived by men, and judged and punished too, as far as they become injurious to human society. But it is astonishing to see, how little, even amongst Christians, sin in its real nature and its in every way pernicious effect is being recognised and judged and condemned. The edict of the king of Nineveh and his nobles might serve us for an example in this respect. For that decree, extending even to the cattle in the city, showed at all events how deep and real was the feeling of repentance, wrought in them by God through His prophet, and how true the sense and judgment of sin in its nature and extensive effect.

Ans. — Yes, and more besides. “The whole creation groans” under present conditions — the human, the animal, and the vegetable—all that has life. Disease without end, oppression, corrupt governments, insubjection, afflict the human. Cruelty, man's greed, distempers, afflict the animal. Insects, fungi, all manner of enemies, are increasingly affecting the vegetable, destroying whole species, curtailing production, making extraordinary care necessary for man to obtain fruit. Even we Christians, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan within ourselves, waiting for the redemption of our suffering, decaying, dying bodies.