34 THE CHRISTIAN NATURALIST. 



hand, he renders the inferior creatures so supplied, 

 subservient to the necessities and accommodation of 

 mankind. The agriculturist sows for the harvest, 

 this is his one design ; but in so doing, he is over- 

 ruled of God to accomplish a number of collateral 

 designs. Under the secret control of the beneficent 

 design of the Creator, the farmer sows for the raven, 

 for the sparrow, for the fly, for the slug ; he cannot 

 help himself. If, by a parsimonious sowing, he should 

 attempt to defeat the benevolent designs of God, he 

 would defeat his own design as regarded the harvest ; 

 and, on the contrary, if by a liberal hand in sowing, he 

 would secure his own object in a plentiful harvest he 

 cannot but choose to accomplish, passively and 

 undesignedly, the bountiful designs and objects of the 

 Creator of all. It is delightful to consider how even 

 the very covetousness of man is made subservient to 

 the bounty of God ; how the sower is forced by his 

 own interest, to be lavish, to be profuse. Man must 

 eat ; in order to eat, he must reap ; in order to reap, 

 he must sow ; in order to reap plentifully, he must sow 

 plentifully ; for as the Journal of Agriculture observes, 

 two thirds of his seed are destroyed by an agency 

 hitherto uncontrolled. There is a noble overflowing large- 



