talents, known and respected far and wide ; among them all, 

 however, I do not call to mind one person who made journal- 

 ism a profession and a business. Perhaps I am the last of 

 them who should have been called now ; for it was not my 

 good fortune to be born on a farm, to labor on a farm, or for 

 a great length of time to live on a farm. Of practical hus- 

 bandry I would take lessons of the most unlettered farmer in 

 the county. I will not, therefore, detain you in discussing the 

 details of agriculturalr pursuits ; but there are topics relating 

 to the normal employment of man, which is tilling the soil, 

 fixed in the nature of things, upon which others may have 

 views as clear and distinct, as those who plough the earth, and 

 work the oxen, and gather the harvests into storehouse or 

 barn. I propose briefly to speak to you upon The Relations 

 OF Agriculture to Man — the connection between husbandry 

 and man as a physical being ; its influence on civilization and 

 government; — upon man's intellectual nature, and upon his 

 moral and religious character. 



the relations of agriculture to man physically. 



Man is the lord of creation — the last crowning work of 

 his maker — and in the image and likeness of his God was he 

 made ; but when, in considering man as the culminating point 

 of creative energy, he who weighs and measures and numbers 

 the stars and follows them in their trackless courses, who calls 

 down the lightnings from heaven and claims them his slaves, 

 and sends them forth on his world-wide errands ; who converts 

 the deserts into gardens, covers the earth with cities, and the 

 seas with ships ; who delves into the lowest depths of science 

 and soars to the sublimest heights of philosophy and poetry — 

 in considering him thus but little lower than the angels, we 

 must not forget the great fact of his physical existence, of his 

 purely animal nature, which he shares in common with the 

 lowest worm that crawls at his feet ; that literally it is true 

 that " all flesh is grass " — that the declaration is, " dust thou 

 art, and unto dust shalt thou return." Considered simply in ^ 



