Leviathan the terrible.
This terrible monster has a whole chapter to himself. His portrait is painted on a broad canvas, and it is as full of life and movement as it is of form and colour. Representing the crocodile, though enlarged and idealized, leviathan is a picture of the most terrible of the works of nature.
I. THERE ARE TERRIBLE THINGS IN NATURE. When we look at the cruel jaws of the crocodile, gaping in readiness for its prey, and the little snake-like eyes watching intently, in spite of an inert attitude of body that tempts us to despise the creature as no better than a log of wood, we have before us the mystery of natural terror. Could God have made this horrible monster? Is there something in the animal world like the tares in the field, that an enemy sowed in the night? The unity and harmony of nature forbid such a thought. Moreover, the crocodile has as much right to live as the fish or the calf that it feeds on. Even when it snaps at an innocent and beautiful young creature, it is but fulfilling that great natural instinct of hunger, without which the world would perish. Far more terrible than the crocodile is the old serpent, who brought into the world not natural death, hut sin and the death of the soul.
II. NATURE IS ADVANCING IN BEAUTY AND JOY. Both behemoth and leviathan—the idealized hippopotamus and the idealized crocodile—are survivals of a more ancient order of creatures than those which now inhabit our globe. Geology teaches us that once such creatures, and greater ones, were the chief if not the sole inhabitants of the earth. They are really akin to the huge mastodon, a monster that would dwarf an elephant; and the dinosaurus and ichthyosaurus, in comparison with which the most tremendous reptile of our own day is an insignificant animal. While these monsters crashed through the forests or plunged in the rivers the world was no fit place for man. But since their time God has peopled the earth with a fairer and more docile fauna. At all events, with such animals as now inhabit it, he has made it possible for so weak a being as man to rule the world. The older ugly and fearful creatures remain to bear witness to the past. But by their contrast with the general life of the present they show how God is improving the earth.
III. THE MOST FEARFUL CREATURES HAVE THEIR LIVES ADJUSTED BY GOD. There is poetry in the magnificent description of leviathan, especially because the whole hangs together in harmony. There are no real "freaks of nature." The most eccentric creatures have their spheres. The terror and fury of the lower life of nature is all calmly provided for by God. We may, perhaps, think that something must have been wrong,
"When dragons in their prime
Tare each other in their slime."
To us this fury, this agony of nature, is fearful and mysterious. But in the sight of God it is innocence itself compared with fury of sin and the agony of remorse. The terrible things of nature may possibly prove to have come from some perversion of God's original plan by the influence of evil beings; this, however, is but a will conjecture. But the terrible sin of man is a certain fact, and the evil of the heart from which it springs is worse than the cruel rage of leviathan, just because the human evil is quite out of harmony with the will of God and in direct antagonism to his law.—W.F.A.