HISTORICAL RESUME 21 



not only for our own delight, but for the delight 

 of generations yet unborn. And yet all these 

 wonders are but the monuments of agriculture 

 that were made possible only through the busi- 

 ness of farming, or the business of the tilling of 

 the soil, and emphasize the startling fact that a 

 partial crop failure would result in distress, a 

 total failure in disaster. 



When the world was created farming became 

 its first business. After God had said "let there 

 be light " and there was light, He divided the 

 waters, the dry land appeared, and under His 

 command it brought forth grass, the herb yield- 

 ing seed, and the tree yielding fruit. He created 

 man, planted a garden and put him into it to 

 "dress it and to keep it." Satan came and 

 tempted man. He fell, and his punishment was 

 banishment from the garden into the pathless 

 wastes of the wilderness, burdened with the awful 

 sentence, "Curst is the ground for thy sake. In 

 sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy 

 life, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field." 



Thus in the very dawn of creation the tilling 

 of the soil became the source of man's bread, and 

 his first business, and so continued until the world 

 became so wicked that God deluged all mankind 

 with His waters, and none but Noah and those in 

 his ark survived. 



When the waters receded and the dry land 

 appeared and Noah left his ark, he built an altar 

 and offered a sacrifice acceptable unto the Lord. 

 And the Lord said, "I will not again curse the 

 ground any more for man's sake." And Noah, 

 after he had offered his sacrifice, began to be an 



