II.] AND SORTS OF CORN. 



omitted to learn from it that tithes were insti- 

 tuted by God himself. I beg pardon of their 

 reverences, for I did observe it ; but I observed, 

 at the same time, that those who were to receive 

 the tithes were forbidden to have any inheritance 

 in the land, and were commanded to share the 

 tithes with the poor, the widow, the orphan, and 

 the stranger; a forbidding on the one hand, and 

 a command on the other, which their reverences 

 seem to have wholly overlooked. But, not fur- 

 ther to digress, I had read in the 2d book of 

 Kings, and in the second verse of the fourth 

 chapter that, ^' There came a man from Baal- 

 *^ shalisha, and brought for the man of God 

 ^^ twenty loaves of barley, and full ears of corn 

 *' in the husks thereof, and said, give unto the 

 ^* people that they may eat." Now, I could un- 

 derstand the utility of giving them barley bread ; 

 but what was I to think of giving them wheat 

 ears, or rye, or barley ears to eat ? And then, as 

 to bringing the corn in the husks ; how Were the 

 ears to be brought otherwise than in the husks ? 

 The husk of wheat or of barley makes apart of 

 the ear; so that the text, taken altogether, I should 

 have called nonsense, if 1 had found it in any other 

 book; downright nonsense, or, rather, a ridiculous 

 falsehood. Finding it where I did, I regarded it 

 as extremely mystical ; but when I came to go 

 to " husking frolics" in New Brunswick, 



