Man is gifted with the supreme endowment of reason. This marks
humanity off from all the rest of the animal creation. But the Creator
institutes a law of compensation. There are certain powers and
faculties in inferior creatures which have never been evolved in man,
and which are plainly evidences of supernatural power applied for the
benefit of beings denied the prerogative of reason.
How does it come about that if a salmon is taken when only a
few months old from its native fjord on the coast of Norway,
and marked and then sent into the sea again, it may, after
traversing the ocean for thousands of miles, be found again
the next year in that same fjord? It has returned without fail
to its birthplace. The reason is that God gave it a miraculous
guide-book called instinct. How comes it that when, in a
beehive, the temperature rises so that the wax might melt, every
tenth bee glues its feet down to the board, and fans with its
wings at a tremendous velocity as long as may be necessary? It
is because God gave this little creature the same infallible
guide-book. How is it that the same pairs of swallows return all
the way from Africa to rear a fresh family in the same old nests
under the eaves? It is because that same miraculous instinct led
them unerringly. (Text.)
(1641)