INATTENTION TO PROVIDENCE. 235 



lature, nor can he be conversant with the multiplicity 

 of influences and events, which are requisite to bring 

 them to his hand. He who lives in the country knows 

 that an omnipotent impulse must be constantly in ac- 

 tion ; he may till his land, and scatter his corn, but the 

 early and latter rain must soften his furrows ; the snow, 

 as wool, must cover the soil ; the hoar-frost, like ashes, 

 lighten his glebe ; the sunshine animate the sprouting 

 shoot ; and winds evaporate noxious moisture ; insects 

 and blights, that hover around, or circulate through the 

 air, must be guided away, or Our labors become abortive, 

 or are consumed : we see the bud, the blossom, leaf, 

 and germ, all progressively advance, to afford plenty or 

 yield us enjoyment ; we see these things accomplished 

 by the influencing interpositions of a beneficent Provi- 

 dence, and in no way effected by the machinery or ar- 

 tifices of our own hands ; and it should operate more 

 powerfully, in disposing those who witness them to par- 

 ticular resignation and gratitude, than others who cannot 

 behold them, but view the ingenuity of man as the 

 agent and means of his prosperity ; yet how it happens 

 that this principle is not in more active operation within 

 us, I cannot perceive. 



Every age has been the dupe of empiricism ; and the 

 greater its darkness, the more impudent appear to have 

 been the pretensions of knavery. We may even now, 

 perhaps, swallow a few matters, the arcana of the needy 

 or the daring, in the various compositions of powders, 

 draughts and pills, which are not quite agreeable to our 

 palates or our stomachs ; but our forefathers had more 

 to encounter, as they had more faith to support them, 

 when they were subjected, for the cure of their mala- 

 dies, to such medicines as album gr&cum, or the white 

 bony excrement of dogs, bleached on the bank, for 

 their heart-burns and acidities; the powder produced 

 from burnt mice, as a dentifrice ; millepedes, or wood- 

 lice, for nephritic and other complaints ; and the ashes 

 of earth-worms, administered in nervous and epileptic 

 cases. 



Our apple-trees here are greatly injured, and some 

 annually destroyed by the agency of what seems to be 



