In regard to the quadrupeds selected and rejected then we can see a fair evidence of a spiritual application, but that may not be quite so obvious in regard to the fish and birds.
A fish to be accepted must have both scales and fins. The scales were considered by Agassiz to be of sufficient importance to form a basis on which to distinguish the different species, and this basis has been generally accepted. They form a bright, strong, flexible, defensive armor, and may remind one of Eph. 6:11. With this armor the fish are more hardy, and less liable to be injured and influenced by passing external impressions. The fins are serviceable for balancing, guiding and staying. (Of course all fish swim through the water by means of the tail, therefore fins can—in a way—be done without, as far as mere progress goes.) In addition to this the fins are rudiments of higher powers. We see this in the development of the pectoral fins into a kind of limb in the climbing perch, and into a kind of wing in the flying gurnard and Exo Volitans. Fins consequently suggest a nature which has poise and self-control, and has also in itself the impulses and rudiments of faculties which belong to a higher existence, a life in a celestial sphere. We need not believe in the evolutionary dogma, that one animal changes into another just because it has rudiments of faculties which that other possesses, any more than that a kettle will ultimately become a teapot because it has a spout: still there is a relationship between the wing and the fin which is traced back even to the saurians of the paleozoic times, and there is an embryo wing implanted even in the most unlikely places, as in caterpillars. The human caterpillar, feeling his proneness, sighs, “O that I had wings like a dove!” Some day perhaps, when he has passed through the chrysalis stage, they will come.
The birds of prey are excluded—"... the vulture and the kite after his kind, every raven after his kind.” These feed not only on death like the carnivora, but on corruption. This is the nature that finds delight in the contemplation and appropriation of what is not only dead but foul and putrid. But is there any such nature? Unfortunately we know too well that there is, and when we stand outside the cage of a bird like the African “Sociable Vulture,” and see it plunge its reeking beak in some loathsome carrion, we are apt to wonder what enjoyment it finds in that. But this is typical. There are European Sociable Vultures as well who feed on garbage, it may be.
All of this description are unclean, whether they are characterized by power and dignity like the eagle, cruelty like the hawk, impudence like the cuckoo, or the ponderous and shallow gravity, the stupid wisdom, of the owl. “I don't believe,” said Fox, “any living man is half so wise as Lord T—— looks.” Amongst them all there is none so impressive looking as the owl—to those that do not know that his omniscience is only parochial; that his attitude of grave impartial rebuke is only the fear to commit himself; that his preference for the twilight is not because he loves meditation (for he is only dozing when he looks so thoughtful), nor because of his exceptional devoutness, but simply because he is always confused by the daylight. His demeanor of calm disparagement does not mean a bit that he is superior in sanctity to everyone else: it only means that he thinks himself so. It is the general censoriousness which characterizes this predaceous nature. We can forgive him much on account of his purblindness, but surely it is going too far when, like the mantis religiosa, he spells “pray” with an “e,” instead of with an “a.”
A habit of inherent fault-finding is one of the most commonly known features of this nature and one of the most rapidly developed. But it finds faults not so much from a desire to correct them as that, from a natural aptitude, it looks for them in every direction (except inwardly). It loves to pick up morsels of evil from all sides, and whilst shaking its head over them and appearing to condemn them, quietly puts them in the mouth, masticates and ruminates them. Finally, whatsoever things are untrue, whatsoever things are dishonest...unjust...impure...unlovely and of bad report; if there be any vice; if there be any blame, the carrion-feeding nature thinks on these things. The elements of all these evil tendencies are of course in each of us. But if we have also been granted new natures, we have the power to “reckon dead” and “make no provision for the flesh.” Was not old Ulysses right (to speak as a man) when he smote down the scurrilous Thersites with rough blows, and Achilles when he slew him?
But oh, for the wings of the dove “covered with silver and her feathers with yellow gold!” “Though we have lien among the pots” yet may we be so. “Not as a raven but a dove The Holy Ghost came from above,” —that wisdom which is from above, first pure, then peaceable, gentle and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. It is simple concerning evil, wise concerning that which is good. Far from the carrion-feeding natures, it rejoices not in iniquity, but in the truth, imputes no evil but hopes all things and believes all things. Nay, even when the evil is unquestionably there, it is slow to see it, as to which we read even of the Most Blessed, that if He should mark iniquities who shall stand; that He had not seen iniquity in Jacob nor perverseness in Israel... (though there was little else there). The Lord, I think, would be well pleased to see more of the same nature in us all; that we might have dove's eyes and not vulture's. Thus the Bridegroom says, “Behold thou art fair, my love; behold thou art fair; thou hast dove's eyes within thy locks!”
In general too, all creeping things—all crawling, prone, and groveling natures—are rejected. But if they “had legs above their feet to leap withal upon the earth” like the locusts, they were accepted. For these had an inherent power that could overleap those earthly obstacles that the absolutely prone nature is stopped by. “If you cannot plow through the log,” Abraham Lincoln used to say, “plow round it.” It is better still when there is that inward faculty, which he himself possessed so largely, that enables us to rise over it.
J.C.B.