sacrifices to sustain religious institutions, broke the crust of selfishness, and helped 

 to the elevation of the entire character. Imagine them in their lot in other re- 

 spects so nan-ow and barren, without the influence of rehgion. What would have 

 become of them ? Why they would have speedily sunk to the level of the ab- 

 origines about them. The sons need this. influence as much as did the fathers. 

 The farmer can do to himself and househola no greater wrong than to shut out 

 from his Hfe and theirs this highest stimulus toward all that is true and beautiful 

 and good. You might as well say that you cannot afford your daily bread as to 

 say that you cannot afford the money and the pains it may cost to bring the hfe of 

 the farm into contact with the truths and institutions of rehgion. Are there not 

 scores of farmers on these hills who from their neglect in this direction are sink- 

 ing gradually toward barbarism, and drawing their households down after them ? 

 I commend the thought to your serious consideration. 



EEVIVED INTEREST IN FARMING. 



I wUl detain you with simply one other thought ; it is that there is much in 

 the present aspect of the times to demand from the farming class a revision and 

 improvement in its methods of life, in order to*make the occupation more attrg^t- 

 ive. The recent long-continued depression of business turned pubhc attention as 

 never before to the comparative indeperdence of the farmer's life. The advan 

 tages of an occupation, which while it precludes the idea of wealth in the common 

 sense of the word, yet seems absolutely secure against extreme reverses of fortune, 

 making sure at least the comforts of life, is now appreciated as never before in 

 recent years. But the great drawback still is the aspect of barrenness in the far- 

 mer's life. I doubt not there are hundreds of business men in our cities who, dis- 

 couraged by their repeated failures, would go into the country to-day were it not 

 for the feeling that bj^ so doing they would deprive their famOies and themselves 

 of so many of the refinements of life, A motive of patriotism and philanthropy 

 therefore comes in to re-enforce that of personal interest in leading farmers to 

 special effort to redeem their calling from this reproach. It is perhaps not too 

 much to say that farmers now hold in their hands the solution of the great prob- 

 lem of modern -times, which is such a distribution of the world's increasing popu 

 lation that all may be reasonably sure of a comfortable livelihood. Let them show 

 by examjile that a good degree of refinement and culture is not incompatible with 

 an agriculeural occupation, and they wiU attract to it increasing immbers year by 

 year, and thus help most materially to restore the disturbed balance between the 

 rural and the city populations. More than that, they have it in their power to 

 make the farmer's calling the object of special desire and aspiration. In England 

 and some other countries the possession of land in fee is almost equivalent to a 

 title of nobihty. We can never have a landed gentry in this country, nor do we 

 want one. But considering the untold advantages of a farmer's life in other re- 

 spects, in its indej)endence and comfort, in its famUy associations gathering for 

 successive generations around a fixed homestead, in its freedom from debasing 

 temptations, and in its close communion with nature, which is so helpful towards 

 couiui union with God— with all these great and inalienable advantages it would 

 certainly seem that farming ought to be able to take on enough of the amenities 

 of hfe to Uft it to the queenship of human occupations, to make it in reality what 

 it has always been in romance and song, the ideal hfe of mankind, -^his is cer- 

 tainly a consummation devoutly to be wished, and it is one the reaHzation of which 

 farmers hold in then* own keeping. 



