28 MR. Oliver's address. 



session, and halh insured by His promise that can never fail, 

 that ''seed time and harvest, and day and night, shall not 

 cease, while the earth remaineth," will you prepare the fields 

 of that earth for the reception of that seed, and wait the just 

 time of day and of night, for the coming and the gathering of 

 that harvest. 



The farm was made for the farmer, and not the farmer for 

 the farm, and is not, then, the farmer greater than the farm, — 

 the man, than the soil he treads upon ? Will you " rise up 

 early and sit up late, and eat the bread of carefulness," that 

 you may improve the lesser, and will you, with stolid indiffer- 

 ence, neglect, and waste, and destroy the greater ? Nay, do 

 not commit so short-sighted a folly ! Cultivate yourselves ; — 

 and your homes, your wives, your children, and your farms shall 

 feel the benign influence of such culture, and be the better 

 for it. Nay, more, all social relations shall be the better for it. 

 Your Town, and State, and your Country, shall feel its whole- 

 some influence, and all men shall rise up to honor and to bless 

 you. In fact, I do not exactly see what right any man has to 

 neglect the spirit of culture. His own self requires, and has a 

 right to require, that he give diligent heed to it. His own 

 family, that other part of himself, requires it of him. Society 

 and the country require it of him. God requires it of him, for 

 that great and good Book, that you and I, and all of us, 



Do not read 

 Half so much as we need ; 



preaches to us, from every page of its inspiration, that we neg- 

 lect not " the getting of wisdom and understanding," — that we 

 "abound more and more, in knowledge and in judgment." 

 All nature cries out upon you and upon me, and upon all of 

 us, to study the mysteries that dart upon our view, from every 

 shimmering star that twinkles in the sky, — from the firm shine 

 of every planet, that walks its stately course round the great 

 central sun, — from the blazing comet, that with flaming train, 



" Doubles wide 



Heaven's mighty cape ; and then revisits earth, 



From travel of a thousand years;" — Young's Night Thoughts. 



from the pale moon, that with soft beams and milder light, 



