42 TRAKSACTIONS. 



before the charm and glory of early ideals have faded off, 

 thh'st honestly for more stimulus to mental action, more 

 enlarging ministries to thought, than they have found in 

 rural places. This they dream of finding in the pressure 

 of crowds and the sharp collisions of traffic. Perhaps 

 they dream delusions ; but this is the feeling. Depend 

 upon it, if you would hold your sons and brothers back 

 from roaming away into the perilous centres, you must 

 steadily make three attempts — to abate the taskwork of 

 farming, to raise maximum crops and profits, and to sur- 

 round your work with the exhilarations of intellectual 

 progress. You must elevate the whole spirit of your 

 vocation, for your vocation's sake, till no other can outstrip 

 it in what most adorns and strengthens a civilized state. 



II. I have intentionally used so much space for the 

 scholarly aspects of your profession, gentlemen, that I have 

 left very little for the other three objects in the farmer's 

 outlook, — the Town-hall, the Church, and the Homestead. 

 I shall only touch each briefly, in the way of suggestion. 

 The Town-hall I take as the symbol of your relations to 

 the social compact, the body politic, or by whatever other 

 name you may choose to describe the powers and functions 

 of civil government. And when we have gone to the 

 bottom of the matter, whether by the way of philosophy 

 or Christianity, we shall find that the fundamental idea of 

 politics is mutual protection and friendly intercourse. I 

 do not say of feudal, or partisan, or aristocratic, or im- 

 perial politics, — for the law of their life has too manifestly 

 been mutual repulsion and aggression ; but of the true, 

 ultimate, divine politics. Not to hold each other back, 

 and pull each other down, and rob, and stab, but to con- 

 federate for the common good, and to complete an economy 

 of universal growth, by means of equal labor, whereof all 

 shall take the benefit, — this is the real and providential 

 office, whether of separate empires or of the several inter- 

 ests under the same administration. Hence it follows 

 that you serve the cause of good government when you do 

 two things, — when you perfect your own business as one 

 of the great productive forces which feed and cover hu- 



