28 The Moral Influences of Agricrdturc. [Jan., 



essary discipline for a fallen being. Nothing can keep down the 

 fiery passions of the human heart, but severe and constant labor. — 

 Luxury and idleness breed every form of depraved lust and crime. — 

 The lazy, idle man will almost of necessity be vicious. If in want 

 of the necessaries of life, he will steal rather than work. If he 

 have an abundance, he will be a glutton, or a drunkard, or a licen- 

 tious wretch; very likely all three together. The haunts of vice in 

 every city, the records of every penitentiary, bear witness to these 

 assertions. Men must labor, or they will be wicked. The necessity 

 of labor for the supply of the means of supporting life, is then a 

 merciful necessity, an unspeakable blessing. Without it, humanity 

 would sink from one stage of degradation and defilement to another, 

 till the whole race would ' utterly perish in their own corruption.' — 

 Thorns and thistles, rugged rocks and barren hills, have much to do 

 in preserving the human family from moral putrefaction. 



3. Of all the kinds of labor, none is so favorable to moral culture 

 as that of the farmer. One reason of this, is, that none can be more 

 promotive of bodily health and vigor. Out in the pure air of heaven, 

 in rain and sunshine, summer and winter, where the odors of mother 

 earth, and the breath of opening flowers and springing grass are all 

 about us, this is the place for health ; and it will be found in the 

 long run, that the employments which are the most healthy physically, 

 are also the most healthy morally. The statistics of this subject 

 would be found of exceeding interest, but we have not time nor space 

 to present them. 



Another reason why this kind of labor is so favorable to virtue, is, 

 that much more than any other, it brings men into immediate con- 

 tact with Nature, and the God of Nature. The farmer is not a 

 builder, not a framer, as is the mechanic and the artizan of every 

 name. He does not take material ready made to his hand and re- 

 cast it, nor construct out of it instruments of art. He does not 

 work upon the products of nature, so much as he works icith nature 

 in furnishing those products. He opens the earth and puts in the 

 seed, and protects it from being overgrown with weeds and from be- 

 ing devoured by animals; but further he can not go. He can not 

 cause the grain to swell, and burst forth, and send up the blade and 

 ihe full corn. He may train the tree, if it grow, but he can not call 

 forth, upon its branches, one particle of fruit. He is absolutely de- 

 pendent upon God for any results of all his labor. He watches the 

 clouds, the sun, the frost, the early arid the latter rain ; and he must 



