SOIL CULTURE AND SOUL CULTURE. 45 



THE RELATIONS OF SOIL CULTURE TO 

 SOUL CULTURE. 



From an Address delivered before the Berkshire Agricultural Society. 



BY REV. WASHINGTON GLADDEN. 



All of US are pleased to note the magnitude and the excel- 

 lence of the potatoes and the pigs and the pears that these farms 

 turn out, but the chief question is, after all, what sort of men 

 and women are they raising ? I shall ask your attention there- 

 fore, for a while, to " Man as an Agricultural Product ; or the 

 Relations of Soil Culture to Soul Culture.''^ 



There is no honest calling in which a man may not preserve 

 his integrity, and develop his manhood ; and perhaps there is not 

 so much difference as we are sometimes led to think, among 

 those callings which are honest, in their influence upon charac- 

 ter. There are some trades and some professions which we all 

 agree in considering legitimate, and which we are yet wont to 

 consider as rather hostile to the highest growth of manhood ; 

 and there are others which seem to us quite favorable to intel- 

 lectual and moral development. But each calling has its advan- 

 tages and its disadvantages as a school of character ; and some 

 of those which seem to us to foster the better nature do, never- 

 theless, in various ways, impede its growth. The work of the 

 farmer and the farmer's wife is in some respects favorable, and 

 in other respects, unfavorable to the development of true man- 

 hood and womanhood. The man who wants to make the most 

 not only of his farm but also of himself, will find in the farm- 

 life, some helps to rejoice in, and some hindrances to overcome ; 

 some incitements to follow, and some temptations to resist. 

 Shall we not find it profitable to consider some of these, that 

 the highest problems of life may be clearly stated, and the 

 methods of their solution fairly understood ? 



