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him to citizenship in the kingdom of heaven. It is by 

 divine riglit that the church spire overtops all the struc- 

 tures that men's hands build, and hallows the landscape 

 with its aspiration. Handling God's workmanship every 

 hour, and treading his solemn temple-floor at every step, 

 an unbelieving farmer is in some manner guilty of per- 

 petual sacrilege. If any man's daily task puts him close 

 to the eternal secrets of the universe, and into communion 

 with the awful hiding-places of Almighty power, it is his. 

 If any man is instructed in a creed that is at once devout 

 and charitable, a piety at once reverential Christ-ward and 

 generous man-ward, it is he. The deeper shame to all his 

 manly sense, if he is not touched with the religiousness of 

 his august surroundings, and if he does not blend ^vorship 

 with his work. Nature may not reverse her order, nor 

 unbar her everlasting ordinations, to dispel the illusions of 

 his unrighteous prosperity with a miracle ; but none the 

 less does she carry the scourge in her hand, and keep her 

 eye on him till his time. 



Christianity is the patron of his labor, ar;d ever has 

 been. While she was shut up in monasteries, it is true 

 she had no chance to breathe on him her benediction. 

 But the moment she was let free from the bondages of 

 that false guardianship, and walked forth in the immortal 

 beauty of her freedom and love, she spoke graciously to 

 the toilsman, and exalted labor. Again the common 

 people heard the Master gladly. The Protestant refor- 

 mation was the charter of emancipated handicrafts as well 

 as the Pentecost of a free church. It stretched its hand 

 over the tilled fields of Northern Europe, and industry 

 woke to a new and nobler life. Thenceforth Christian 

 literature spoke in honor of agriculture, not with the ef- 

 feminate sentiment, the dainty rhetoric, and patronizing 

 pastorals of Pagan classics. Virgil and Theocritus did not 

 know how to glorify work in its influence on character. 



