Why did God create mosquitoes?

When you see a tree, you do not require a philosopher to tell you that, when it is complete, it has all its parts with striking appropriateness — that the deep root, which penetrates the soil and gathers the materials of nourishment for the trunk and its offshoots, is as necessary for its growth as the branches and the leaves — that what is unseen is as thoroughly ordered by One who perfectly knew, as that which is visible; and that from the tree man reaps benefit, and even the cattle, for God takes in everything. Not a little tiny insect, not the greatest of quadrupeds, not a human being, that does not in some way or another reap all suited good from God; and even those things that might seem to be obnoxious in themselves form part of a vast scheme of God's contrivance, of His forethought, of His abundant provision for the wants of men or beasts here below. There is no stinginess, if I may say so, about God. He does not merely give us the things we absolutely need. This is not the way God treats man or any creature. You have only to look when the sun shines, you have but to think of the rich beauty of the earth around you — though it be a groaning creation — to see what pleasure God takes in goodness abounding. He did not make things to die, but to live in endless variety. He declares that He is not the God of the dead but of the living — this no doubt said in the highest sense is in every other way true. You see a blighted earth now; but even the blighted earth everywhere bears its testimony to the beneficent wisdom of its Maker.

For why should not God bring back the creatures that He has made, and about which He takes a far greater interest than men suppose, to a state at least as good as that in which they were created? Why should not God root out all the evil consequences that sin has brought in, physically as well as morally? Because the sin of Adam had effects far beyond his own race: all that was put under his dominion got into ruin and disorder. And this is not a mere imaginative notion of ruin, nor a fanciful exposition of Old Testament prophecy. It is the doctrine plainly and positively laid down in Rom. 8. It is written there that "the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him that had subjected the same," in plain allusion to the fall of him that was over the creature. He fell; and creation, being under the headship of Adam, fell along with him. It was he who made it subject to vanity; misery and death came in through him. For there is no reason to suppose that death would have reigned with regard to the brute creation of the Adamic world, any more than with regard to man, if sin had not entered. I am aware that the wise men of this world often speak of fossil remains which show the death of animals before man was created. Into such disquisitions I do not enter, but would only say that there was not the same state of things under Adam. Supposing now the facts and inferences of geologists to be sound — whatever living creatures may have been made and destroyed in the earth before Adam was created, scripture is entirely silent about them; and so I desire to be in expounding it. They are questions of no moral importance, and therefore a Christian need not meddle with them. I add that these theories, if true, do not contradict scripture in the slightest degree. For there is no trace of man connected with that state of things which preceded Adam; and scripture passes over it, hastening to what is immediately connected with him. When the human race begins upon the earth, the moral dealings of God are gradually developed. But man quickly fell, and then creation was degraded through its fallen head. Death, as far as regards the Adamic world, entered through the disobedience of Adam — death directly as to men, and, as a consequence, its ravages spread throughout all the lower living creation.

The creation was not made (as it now is) in decay, degradation, suffering, death. That God originally designed that it should be in such confusion and misery would be hard to digest; but the scriptures teach the contrary, as it shows that, whilst subjected to its present disorder on account of man's guilt and ruin, it longs not in vain for deliverance, but awaits in hope His revelation in glory. The very struggle of everything for life and against sickness witnesses that it is fallen to rise. Thus not only is the riddle of what now is solved by God's account of the past, but His word casts its own bright light on the future; for, though subjected to vanity, it was "in hope that even the creation itself shall be freed from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God." It is only by faith that any enter into the liberty of grace; and this is the portion even now of God's children under the gospel. Creation cannot of necessity know such liberty, being unintelligent even where it is animate; but even itself shall exchange the slavery of corruption by which it is now held down for the liberty of glory when the children of God are glorified. Thus all will be vindicated on God's part, and all in due order. There can be no communion between us and creation in grace; there will be in glory when the power of God deals with all creation in honour of Christ's death, whose blood has bought not the treasure only but the field, the world which contained it, yea, all things.

The series opens with a declaration of God's provision for beasts and birds of prey, as seen in the lion and raven; next, the wild animals of the mountain and desert come under His all-wise care; then the control of those beasts confessedly beyond man's power in strength and swiftness; closing with the control of the migratory instincts of the birds. It is significant that the series opens and closes with mention of beasts and birds of prey. They might seem to be worthless, if not positively injurious, and yet He cares for them with unerring wisdom. Shall He fail to watch over His child who knows and trusts Him?

(1) To what distraction would man be brought if he had for a single day to provide food for even one class of these creatures. Only of God can it be said, "These wait all upon Thee, that Thou mayest give them their meat in due season." "The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God." "That Thou givest them they gather: Thou openest thy hand, they are filled with good (Ps. 104:21, 27, 28). God not only tolerates, but cares for these creatures which prey upon others. They are part of His wise plan — once put under the hand of man and subject to him, but now turned against him as enemies. Thus Satan, whose assaults Job was feeling, was only the creature of God's will, working even by his enmity the purposes of God. If Job is ignorant of his devices, God is not, and will bring good out of all his ravening and roaring.

Yet nature remains unfallen from its place as the eldest of revelations. There is nothing fallen but man, and even his fall has only in a sense confirmed its witness to us as from Him to whom man's ruin is no surprise, and redemption no after-thought. Assuredly, such a world of conflict and destruction, beast preying upon beast, down to the minutest being that comes under the microscope, would be to an unfallen being an inharmonious and incongruous mystery. How striking, then, that we find the yet unfallen parents of our race shut off from it in a specially prepared and sheltered garden of delight, which might be for them a better witness of Creating Love, — a memory of blessing to them when fallen. Then, when at last sent forth into the earth, with the new strife that had been awakened in their souls, they could find from the conflicting elements around, with which they were in so manifest sympathy, the assurance of omniscient foresight undeceived and undethroned.

Second, not first, for evil is necessarily inferior to the good, — "a degree lower in organization than" the typical, says Mr. Swainson. A type of evil ordained for us out of the animal creation, he that will may find in Gen. 3. Is not this the secret of the strife in nature that goes on around us, that God would thus provide us with such object-lessons as are these? Does not spiritual law govern the natural world still in all this?

First of all, "the whole creation" groans and travails in pain together. This was the case when the Apostle Paul wrote these words, and it certainly is so now. In these words the fist reference is to the lower creation, which has been dragged down by the fall of man. Dominion was given to Adam over all, and by his sin he ruined all. He was, so to speak, the top link, intelligently connected with the Creator, with all other links in the chain dependent on him. When he fell, all creation fell with him; animals became wild and destructive. We may not have ears to hear the groan of the lamb or kid as the leopard pounces upon it, or of the fly as, entangled in the web, it feels the spider's bite; but the groaning is there.

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."

Here then, plainly, are characteristics of divine government,* while the whole make us think, of necessity, of how God uses the creatures He has made, aye the dumb creatures, and much more those who were created in the image of Himself, to accomplish His purposes. These living beings have each one of them six wings, the number of full and, indeed, unresting activity, while they are "full of eyes around and within." Divine omniscience is in them, although this does not mean that the instruments themselves possess it, though as instruments they manifest it. Thus the instincts of the animal creation generally manifest a wisdom higher than what is really in them, and so will all God's instruments which work out His purposes, guided (as we see in inspiration) better than they know. And as they rest not, so they cease not day and night saying, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, who was, and who is, and who is to come." The day and night are evidently from the earthly standpoint, for in heaven there is no night; but we have to do with the government which is over the earth, where day and night exist, but where the night as well as the day, the darkness as well as the light, speak in the ears of those that hear, of the holiness of an almighty God, the perfect Master of all, and the Unchangeable. Well then may it be that when these living beings give "glory and honor and thanksgiving to Him that sitteth upon the throne," the living God throughout eternal ages, the redeemed fall down before Him that sitteth upon the throne, and worship, and cast their crowns before the throne, — crowns that they have received from Him, — saying, "Thou art worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power; for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy will they were, and were created." What a rest for the heart as we go on to consider events, often so terrible in themselves, which are now to follow! The absolute sovereignty of God from which, alas, men so often shrink, is nevertheless what is the salvation of all. There is nowhere any mere drift. He who has given Christ for men is making all things work together for good in the accomplishment of His perfect will.

But that is a very different thing, as a little consideration will assure us. Death was indeed God's judgment upon the race as vitiated and corrupt, but — inasmuch as it was corrupted by another's sin and not its own, — a judgment which was a merciful discipline for it, a witness to the fallen creature of its own condition, an appeal to it by its own frailty and helplessness to look higher than itself for help, an admonition so to number its days that its heart might be applied to wisdom. What should we do without the thorns and thistles which grow out of the ground cursed for man's sake? What should we do without the need of the sweat of the brow? What, without the ministry of death itself? Surely a blessing is in this curse; it is an evil which is good; the discipline of the Father of spirits for our profit, chastening of a holy hand that we may be partakers of His holiness, and in its own nature contrasted with that final sentence which is "Depart from me, ye cursed." The first death and the second death are contrasts and not the same.