52 



It was only under Revelation, that the dignity which 

 heathendom had accorded to hands red with human blood 

 began to be transferred to hands stained with the soil. 

 But ever since the ladder of light sprang from beside the 

 Patriarch's head in the stony pasture of Bethel, the Bible 

 has striven to show the husbandman that all his fields 

 open upward into heaven. 



Our believing ancestry knew what the corner-stone of 

 civilization is. Learn from them, that your acres will lie 

 in the light of the Father's smile, only as they lie un- 

 profaned in the light of Sabbath mornings, only as the 

 church bell rings over their still glebe and resting " cattle 

 on a thousand hills," only as you and your children go 

 reverently up from them to the confessions of the sanctuary. 

 Your waving grain, and ripening corn, and growing herds, 

 will never wear such beauty, as when you pass them on 

 your grateful way to the courts of praise. Make the 

 growing wealth of your better industry to adorn and en- 

 large the outward temples of the Living God. The temple 

 will react with thousand-fold benefactions on your hus- 

 bandry and your heart. Let your devotions take sincerity 

 from your earnest life. Let your creed take largeness 

 from the catholicity of your out-door and heaven-arched 

 employments. The school-house, the farm-house, the town- 

 house, may well bend in homage to the meeting-house. 

 Lor learning without faith is but ambitious discontent; 

 and government without Christianity is power without 

 principle ; and home without the beatitudes is only an 

 animal's stall and bed, with no sacred joy and no spiritual 

 peace. Besides, are there not acres among all your fields, 

 where the only growths are gravestones and mounds, and 

 the flowers planted by mourning love ; where the only 

 seed-time is that ordained by the sad necessity, " That 

 which thou sowest is not quickened except it die ; " and 

 whose only " harvest is at the end of the world ] " At that 



