LECTURE ON RURAL PURSUITS. 99 



their benign influences in promoting the welfare of mankind, 

 were almost like an attempt to prove that the siin imparts 

 light and heat ; that his radiant beams cause the seed to ger- 

 minate, the leaf to unfold, and the harvest to ripen. But as 

 it is by line upon line and precept upon precept that we 

 treasure up the lessons of experience, so let us again this 

 evening contemplate the importance of agriculture, the value 

 and progress of science as applied to this and other arts, and 

 the happy and refining influences which flow from rural life. 

 "Agriculture," said Washington, and it cannot be too often 

 repeated, "is the most healthful, the most useful, and most 

 honorable employment of man." "In the science of agricul- 

 ture," said the late Dr. Hitchcock, "is involved a great 

 principle which reaches through indefinite generations, and 

 forms the basis of all possible improvement, and the highest 

 hopes of our race." Agriculture was the first employment, 

 and has ever been the most important given to man. Before 

 the furnace had melted the ore, or the anvil had forged the 

 ax, before the woodman had felled a tree or built a hut, 

 before the waters had propelled a wheel or the white-winged 

 messenger of commerce had spread its sails, "God planted 

 a garden in Edeii," and conunanded man "to dress and keep 

 it." And when by his disobedience he was sent forth as a 

 wanderer in the earth, " to till the ground from whence he 

 was taken" he carried with him the Divine decree, "in the 

 sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread until thou return unto 

 the ground." Such were the absolute commands, and such the 

 primary conditions upon which must ever depend the suste- 

 nance of the whole human fjimily. Yes, my friends, blot out 

 the productions of the earth for a single month, and our race 

 would become extinct. "To till the ground from whence 

 thou wert taken," as a means of subsistence, and "to eat 

 bread in the sweat of thy face," were the merciful mandates 

 which have echoed in the ears of all past generations, and 

 which will continue to reverberate through the ages of all com- 

 ing time. This universal demand for daily bread must be 

 satisfied with the rising of every sun, or the pulse of life 

 would cease to beat. 



"This cry, with never ceasing sound, 

 Ciixles creation's ample round." 



