352 The Owner of the Soil. [August, 



it a perfect tree — and he only because tlie picturesque thing serves 

 his special purpose — no doubt the good God is quite contented with 

 his oak, and says: "Well done, good and faithful servant." He 

 designed it to serve these manifold uses, and furnish beauty for the 

 painter's picture and meaning for the preacher's speech. Doubtless 

 it enters into the joy of its Lord, having completely served His 

 purpose. He wanted a caravansary and chateau for those uncounted 

 citizens. To judge of it we must look at all these ends, and also at 

 the condition of the soil that had a superabundance of the matter 

 whereof oak -trees are made. 



We generally look on the world as the carpenter and millwright 

 on that crooked oak, and because it does not serve our turn com- 

 pletely we think it an imperfect world. Thus men grumble at the 

 rocky shores of New England, its sterile soil, its winters long and 

 hard, its cold and biting springs, its summers brief and burning, 

 and seems to think the world is badly put together. They complain 

 of wild beasts in the forest, of monsters in the sea, of toads and 

 snakes, vipers and many a loathsome thing, hideous to our imperfect 

 eye. How little do we know ! a world without an alligator or a 

 rattlesnake, a hyena or a shark, would doubtless be a very imper- 

 fect world. The good GoD has something for each of these to do ; 

 a place for them all at his table, and a pillow for every one of them 

 in Nature's bed. — ParJcer 



THE OWNER OF THE SOIL. 



The man who stands upon his own soil, who feels that by the laws 

 of the land in which he lives — by the law of civilized nations — he 

 is the rightful and exclusive owner of the land he tills, is by the 

 constitution of our nature under a wholesome influence not easily 

 imbued by any other source. He feels, other things being equal, 

 more strongly than another the character of a man as the lord of an 

 inanimate world. Of this great and wonderful sphere which, fash- 

 ioned by the hand of God, and upheld by his power, is rolling 

 through the heavens, a part is his — his from the center to the sky ; 

 it is the space on which the generation before moved in its round of 



