7VV 



vexations, until his shattered nerves are reflected from a countenance 

 whose expression is suggestive of acids and aloes. 'Twould be strange 

 if the lawyer should never find that the atmosphere of rascality, which 

 surrounds him, is contagious. But the farmer deals with nature in her 

 purer and better aspects. His round of duties bring him daily in con- 

 tact with scenes of natural beauty. His grateful task is to fulfill the 

 conditions upon which a beneficent creator supplies the wants of his 

 oreatures. It is his province to preside as the high priest of nature, 

 over those mysterious processes by which she produces, in beautiful suc- 

 oession, the bud, the blossom, and the fruit — as in an open volume, he 

 may read those revelations of wisdom and goodness which God makes 

 to man, in the ever-returning miracles of death and resurrection of the 

 vegetable world. He is a co-worker with God, marshaling and direct- 

 ing nature's wonderful forces. He deposits the seed in the mellow soil, 

 and the same creative power which formed man himself from the dust 

 of the earth, breathes into it the breath of life. The loftiest view that 

 was ever gained of Deity, is when he is regarded as the omnipresent 

 and immediate agent in all the ceaseless changes which are going on, 

 everywhere, in the material universe. The growth of the humblest 

 plant or shrub, is an exertion of Almighty power, as direct and as ac- 

 tual as that which spoke creation into being. Spring comes as an an- 

 nual savior " to kill old winter with her glorious looks, and turn her 

 course to fiowers." But there is no intrinsic power in spring alone, to 

 perform these annual wonders. It is God himself, moving with creative 

 energy upon the face of nature, and light and heat, day and night, sun- 

 shine and shower, are the mere means through which he works. Gtod 

 breathes with vitalizing breath upon the leafless trees and naked fields, 

 until they quicken with new life, and vegetation leaps rejoicing from it« 

 grave. God crimes in the fertilizing warmth of summer, and the earth, 

 clothed with rich foliage and waving harvests, smiles responsive to hie 

 touch, and when autumn bestows, as the rewards of patient toil, its gold- 

 en grains and luscious fruits, these are only the embodiment of that 

 infinite benevolence and power in which we not only, but everything 

 that has vegetable or animal life, lives and moves and has ita being. 

 Should any reflecting mind fail to see in all this the evidence of an 

 omnipresent divinity ? Do we not too often regard the changes and 



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