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forms around us with a calm indiflference, as though each particle of 

 inert matter were endowed with a power distinct from its Maker, by 

 which it could perform its ceaseless and ever- varying evolutions ? Is 

 the acorn a creature of volition and mechanical skill, so that it can build 

 the wide-spreading oak out of materials furnished by its own vesicles 

 and fibres ? Has the tiny seed the power of self-motion or self-trans- 

 formation, so that it can change itself to the complicated structure of 

 the stalk ? If not, then these metamorphoses, constantly taking place 

 in the physical world, are the invariable effects of an agency foreign to 

 the material on which it acts ; and all the phenomena of the bursting 

 germ — the shoot, the leaf, the bud, the blossom, and the fruit — are the 

 visible manifestations of an all-pervading intelligence. Nothing short 

 of the almighty fiat that created a universe, can create the humblest 

 flower that opens its petals to the sun. What then are growth and 

 development in every department of nature, but the indication of an 

 omnipotent creator ? What are the so called natural laws but his uni- 

 form ways of acting ? To such reflections the occupation of the farmer 

 will naturally lead. With such truths does he hold intimate and con- 

 stant communion. Such are lessons to be learned from the volume 

 which is opened for his daily perusal. There is reason, then, in the fact 

 that the tone of his moral and religious sentiment is generally higher 

 than that of those whose range of observation is more contracted, and 

 whose pursuits surround them with associations which are less instruc- 

 tive. Look for cold infidelity in cramped and crowded cities, where 

 vice lurks, and pestilence comes as a scourge of depravity and sin. Look 

 for heartless skepticism, where hard pavements and hateful walls ob- 

 struct the vision — where the sun sets a little past mid-day, behind quad- 

 rangular piles of brick and mortar, and men are the willing slaves of an 

 unrelenting; close-fisted business. Seek for the atheist where monoto- 

 nous labor and confinement leave no leisure for reflections — where the 

 objects of daily intercourse never appeal to his better nature; and when 

 you have found him, prescribe as a sure remedy for his mental opacity 

 a life upon a farm. There let dumb brutes, and groves, and birds, and 

 orchards and tilled fields, become his teachers, and let him learn from 

 them, the tenets of a nobler creed ; for atheism is not an agricultural 

 product. It can never grow, side by side, with trees or flowers. It can 



