LECTUEES AND ESSAYS READ AT INSTITUTES. 347 



answer to the idea of the supernatural in its fall scope. The supernatural in its 

 highest and supreme display is the influence of the Infinite mind upon the 

 finite mind of man. But the supernatural has grades and degrees of manifes- 

 tations, and the power of man as a superior being over the earth, his power to 

 to change a desert into a fruitful field, to make the flinty sides of the moun- 

 tain green and fresh with beauty, and rich with the purple blood of grapes, 

 the power of his intelligence which enables him to cultivate a wild, coarse 

 plant from a comparatively useless and immature state to be the daily food of 

 nations, thus contributing to raise mankind from barbarism and want to re- 

 finement and comfort; his ability to construct from the trees of the forest, 

 and from the iron and stone that he digs from the earth, comfortable dwell- 

 ings adorned with works of beauty and use ; to overcome in a large measure, 

 the natural elements, and train the great forces of nature to do his bidding; 

 in short, the power and influence of man's spiritual nature to carry forward 

 natural things to higher excellence, and to bring out the possible world that 

 lies dormant and hidden in the actual world, is the supernatural on this plane ; 

 the imposing of a power above upon things below ; and it also illustrates the 

 supernatural in its supreme display. This is progress. 



If the American farmer of to-day has a better plow than the Egyptian had, 

 it is not because of any law of nature, but because of a law above nature 

 originating in an intelligent mind and will. If you can raise ten bushels of 

 corn oil an acre of land in its natural state, and fifcy bushels on the same land 

 cultivated, it is not nature nor any law of nature that makes the extra forty 

 bushels, but nature directed by your will. The laws of nature are material 

 for man to work with, just as much as stone or wood or iron, and unless they 

 are used, appropriated, they are like any other raw material — they lie where 

 they are. 



God works in nature but he does not do everything, and he utterly refuses 

 to do anything more, until man does what belongs to him. What did nature 

 do towards making Bidwell strawberries, Bartlett pears, Olawson wheat, I'each- 

 blow potatoes, or Shorthorn cattle; just the same that she has done towards 

 making a wagon — she furnished the raw material — and it is man's labor in 

 working and combining these materials in unison with nature's laws, but 

 guiding and controlling them by his mind and will, that makes up the sum of 

 the world's progress. 



Agricultural progress, its methods, aims, and results, is the theme of my 

 remarks at this time ; and also to point out the conditions which shall indicate 

 the highest progress, the coming of the millennium of agriculture. 



And first in our dealings with the soil. Our lands have been so recently 

 reclaimed from the from the forest with the accreted wealth of centuries in 

 the soil, that we have as yet scarcely realized that there is a limit to the ele- 

 ments of fertility. Increased cultivation has added to the products, but we 

 have hardly taken into account the fact that this made the spoliation still more 

 complete, and just in proportion as larger crops were induced. 



The older nations who have cultivated their soil for a thousand years, and 

 have turned and touched every particle, have learned that it is necessary to 

 return the proper elements back to the soil to insure prolonged fertility. If 

 they have not done this, barrenness has come, and the once fruitful fields have 

 become desert wastes. They well know that the earth will not continue to 

 produce for them if they give nothing back. It is an almost unlimited store- 

 house, yet not inexhaustible, and they husband everything that will preserve 

 or increase the fertility of their soil. Fertilizers of all kinds, mineral, ani- 



