her beauty and her divine economy, and of that almost tangible 

 Providence Avliich moves in the procession of summer and Avinter, 

 day and night, seed-time and harvest, and looks out upon us 

 through the myriad forms of organic life, can they fail to exalt 

 and purify the heart and ripen it for that harvest -which is the end 

 of the world, and whose reapers are the angels? 



No pursuit has a truer dignity or nobler aim. The farmer is 

 the co-worker of the Creator. God is the great cultivator. He 

 lifts up the mountain of rock from the bosom of the earth, and 

 when the fire which heaved it from its deep foundations has gone 

 out, the process of cultivation begins. The atmosphere wreathes 

 itself around the granite's face and softens it. The rain bears the 

 impalpable dust to the plain. The seed is borne to it on the 

 wings of the wind. The sohtary place is made glad and the 

 wilderness buds and blossoms as the rose. 



A beautiful example of Nature's processes of culture may be 

 found in the agency of water in the formation and growth of 

 organic life, — water, itself the most beautiful of the works of God, 

 the emblem of his purity and goodness, one of the chief ministers 

 of his ever-creating and renewing power. Borne upon the bosom 

 of the air, the watery vapor softens the rock and creates the soil 

 itself. Mingling with and impregnating the atmosphere, it pen- 

 etrates and permeates the soil, finds its way into the leaf and 

 pores of every plant, and mingles with the life-blood of every 

 living being. It rises with the atmosphere, which holds it in sus- 

 pension in proportion to the warmth of its temperature. When 

 the air touches the colder mountain top or mountain side, it bears 

 behind, in the floating mist or cloud, a portion of its burden. 

 This re-appears in the rill or gushing spring on the thirsty plain 

 beneath. Again, when a warmer current of the air, charged Avith 

 moisture, meets and mingles with a colder current, the mean 

 temperature, which is the result of the union, is incapable of 

 holding in suspension the mean quantity of vapor. Again the 

 cloud is formed and the excess of moisture falls to the earth in 

 the refreshing and fertilizing shower, washing the air, as it passes, 

 of the vapors which, noxious to man, yet minister to vegetable 

 life. 



Observe another form of the same beautiful process, — when 



