124 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



so if your fellow-citizens elect you as selectman or county 

 commissioner, or to the Legislature, do not in your modesty 

 decline the honor, but go ! Be willing to go anywhere in 

 the line of patriotic self-denial, even to Congress, or to the 

 White House! A little ambition and self-sufficiency will 

 not hurt you a bit: it will help to lift you out of the ruts, 

 and to break through the limitations that now surround 

 your life. 



INTEREST IN RELIGION AND ITS INSTITUTIONS. 



I am not here to preach a sermon ; but it would be a 

 strange deficiency in this discussion to overlook one other 

 means of improvement for the farmer, and that the highest 

 of all: I mean an interest in religion and in religious institu- 

 tions. Li lu-ging this point, I do not speak as a clergyman, 

 but rather in the interest of social science. I do not urge, 

 as perhaps I might, the importance of religion from its con- 

 nection with the life to come, but from its connection with 

 this life. I speak of it as a civilizer, as an educator, as a 

 means of refinement to the intellectual and social nature. 

 All men need its influence in this direction : the farmer espe- 

 ciallv needs it from his lack of other and unattainable means 

 of culture. There can be little question, I think, that it was 

 the religion of the fathers of New England that saved their 

 intellectual and social life. Theological discussion quick- 

 ened their powers of thought. The weekly attendance at 

 church afforded the contact with their fellow-men needful 

 for the cultivation of social sympathy. Their sacrifices to 

 sustain religious institutions broke the crust of selfishness, 

 and helped to the elevation of the entire character. Luagine 

 them in their lot, in other respects so narrow and barren, 

 without the influence of religion. What would have become 

 of them ? Why, they would have speedily sunk to the level 

 of the aborigines about them. The sons need this influence 

 as much as did the fathers. The farmer can do to himself 

 and household no greater wrong than to shut out from his 

 life and theirs this highest stimulus toward all that is true 

 and beautiful and good. You might as well say that you 

 cannot afford your daily bread, as to say that you cannot af- 

 ford the money and the pains it may cost to l)ring the life of 

 the farm into contact with the truths and institutions of reli- 



