Boaz the Farmer
Farming, rather than gardening in the ordinary sense of the word, is man’s oldest occupation: in point of time, at least, claiming priority of all others. It may not be esteemed the most dignified one, nor may those engaged in it be generally found either the most enlightened or refined of men; still, instituted by Divine authority, and pursued by man in his primeval innocence, with the ordinances of marriage and the Sabbath-day, it is a vestige of Eden. Thus, though vustzc and Joorish, terms of reproach, be borrowed from country life,and the author of Ecclesiasticus held those engaged in its pursuits so cheap as to say, “‘Seek not counsel of him whose talk is of bullocks,” the business of a farmer, as regards both its age and origin, is invested with a dignity that belongs to no other profession.
* The sacred plow
Employed the kings and fathers of mankind
In ancient times.”
Besides, it is probable, if not certain, that it is the one employment in which man had God for his teacher. The heathens themselves represent the gods as having taught him how to cultivate corn; and in this, as in many of their other 1egends, they have preserved a valuable fragment of ancient truth. While some trades are of very recent origin, photography, for example, and while many have advanced to their present stage of perfection by slow steps, as spinning, from the simple distaff, still generally used in Brittany and occasionally in our remotest Highlands, to the complicated machines that whirl amid the dust and din of crowded factories, it is a remarkable fact that the cereal grasses, wheat, barley, and other grains which the farmer now cultivates, were cultivated
four thousand years ago. Forming new fabrics;
discovering new metals; learning how, as in ships, to make iron swim — the sun, as in photographs, to paint portraits — the lightning, as in telegraphs, to carry messages — and fire and water, as in locomotives, to whirl us along the ground with the speed of an eagle’s wing — man has, to use the words of Scripture, even in our own time, ‘“‘ found out many inventions.” Yet he has not added one to the number of our cereals during the last four thousand years. He appears in fact to have started on his career with a knowledge of these; a knowledge he could have obtained from none but God. He it was who taught him the arts of agriculture — what plants to cultivate, and how to cultivate them. There is that indeed in the nature of wheat, barley, and the other cereals, which goes almost to demonstrate that God specially created them for man’s use, and originally committed them to his care. These plants are unique in two respects — first, unlike others, the fruits or roots of which we use for food, they are found wild nowhere on the face of the whole earth; and secondly,
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180 STUDIES OF CHARACTER. =
unlike others also, they cannot prolong their existence independent of man, without his care and culture.
For example, let a field which has been sown with wheat, barley, or oats, be abandoned to the course of nature — and what happens? The following year a scanty crop, springing from the grain it shed, may rise in thin stalks on the uncultivated soil: but in a few summers more, every vestige of it has vanished, ‘‘ nor left a wrack behind.”
A more than curious, this is an important fact. It proves that those grains which form his main subsistence cannot maintain themselves without the hand and help of man; and proving that, it proves this also, that man started on his career a tiller of the ground — no such being as infidels in their hatred of the Bible represent him to have been — a naked savage, ignorant alike of arts and letters, little raised in intelligence above the wild animals in whose dens he sought a home, and of whose prey he sought a share. This fact in Natural History corroborates the testimony of Scripture; and shows us, in fields where every stalk stands up a living witness for the truth of the Bible, the revelations of God’s Word visibly written on the face of Nature. Waving with golden corn, and sounding with the songs of reapers, these fields carry the thoughtful mind back to the days when God first set man to till the ground; and, suggestive of Eden, they prompt the wish that with its primeval employments more of its primeval tnocence were found among our rural population. -
The scene before me, as I write these words, suggests another view of the occupation in which
Boaz spent his days. Beyond the estuary of the Dee, over whose broad sands, celebrated in tragic song, the tide, flecked with the sails of shipping craft and fishing-boats, has rolled, lies, a few miles off, the winding shore of Wales — the land rising gently from the beach in corn and pasture fields to heights over which a picturesque range of mountains heaves itself up against the evening sky. Along that low shore lie scattered towns and villages, whose tall chimneys, dwarfing tower and steeple, pour out their smoke to pollute the air, and cast a murky veil on the smiling face of nature. These bespeak the trades they pursue who, leaving the husbandman to his cheerful labors on the green surface of the earth, penetrate its bowels to rob them of their hidden treasures — the mine of its coals, and the mountains of their metals. But these — valuable as they are, many hands as they employ, and much as they contribute to the influence and wealth of our country — are undergoing a process of exhaustion. Some think we shall soon reach their limit; and are already bewailing the prospect when, with fires quenched in ruined furnaces, and spindles rusting in silent mills, and ships rotting in unfrequented harbors, Britain shall bid a long farewell to all her greatness. But when mines are empty, and furnaces stand quenched and cold, and deep silence reigns in the caverns where the axe of the pitman sounded, the husbandman shall still plow the soil. His, the first man’s, shall probably be the last man’s employment. Continued throughout those millennial years when, with swords turned into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, ‘‘the whole earth is at rest, and is quiet,’ the archangel’s trumpet shall scare the peasant at the plow, or summon him from the harvest-field. Fit emblem of the blessings of saving grace, the bounties of the soil are exhaustless. Husbandry will thus prove, as it is the oldest, the most permanent of all employments; and, since it produces the nation’s food, and is according to many the true source of its wealth, there is none with which the public welfare is so extensively and intimately bound up.
‘The occupation which Boaz followed rises still higher in importance when we look at the multi- tudes it employs. Great as we are in commerce and manufactures — clothing nations with our fabrics, covering every sea with ships, and carrying the produce of our arts to every shore — the cultivation of the soil employs a larger number of hands than any other trade. And thus if “the greatest happiness of the greatest number” be a sound and noble adage, the temporal, moral, and spiritual interests of our agricultural population should bulk very large in the eyes of Christian patriots. Now these interests turn to a great extent on the manner in which those who follow Boaz’s occupation discharge their duties: and it is therefore a matter of thankfulness that in him the Book which instructs both kings and beggars, peers and peasants, how to live, sets before us a model farmer. Happy our country were all its farmers like him, and all their servants like his! — making rural innocence a reality; not merely a poet’s. dream, or the graceful ornament of a speech. Let us study this pattern.
HIS DILIGENCE IN BUSINESS.
Boaz was not one whom necessity compelled to labor. He was rich; and is indeed called “a mighty man of wealth.” Yet he made that no reason for wasting his life in ease and idleness. Nor though, as appears from the Scripture narrative, he employed overseers — men no doubt of character and integrity — did he consider it right to commit his business entirely into their hands. Here is a lesson for us.
In the first place, such irresponsibility is not good for servants. It places them in circumstances of temptation to act dishonestly; and yielding to temptations to which no man is justified in unnecessarily exposing others, many a good servant has had his ruin to lay at the door of a too easy and confiding master. Neither is it, in the second “place, for the master’s interests. The eye of the master maketh a fat horse, says an English Proverb. The farmer ploughs best with his feet, says a Scotch one — his success turning on the attention he personally gives to the superintendence of his servants and the different interests of his farm. Boaz in the field among his reapers, or at the winnowing season foregoing the luxury of a bed to sleep at the back of a heap of corn, that, losing no time in travelling between his house and the distant threshing-floor, he might resume his work by the break of day, is an example of these old, wise adages; and how, pattern to others as well as farmers, a Christian should be — as the Apostle says, and Jesus was — “not slothful in business,” while ‘‘ fervent in spirit, serving the Lord” Religion, sanctifying the secularities of life, does not teach us to neglect our business; but, on the contrary, to attend to it — making it as much our duty to repair to our farm, — or shop, or counting-house, during the week, as, turning our back on them and dismissing their cares from our minds, to repair to church on the Lord’s Day.
The hand of the diligent, says the wise man, maketh rich. It does more: Boaz’s industry probably contributed as much to his moral safety as to his material wealth. Neither in the inspired Bible, nor elsewhere, is there a more important — practical truth than that expressed by the epigrammatic saying, The devil tempts every man, but an idle man tempts the devil: and thus it is best for men themselves — and for others also — when their circumstances impose on them a life of constant industry. Those engaged in Boaz’s pursuits form no exception to that adage; as was remarkably illustrated by the state of a country parish with which I was once acquainted. Many of its farms were held on life-leases, and at very low rents; but the rest were let at prices which required their tenants to be industrious and economical. And so inferior in point of culture was the first class to the second, that a stranger could have told which was which. Nor were the advantages of a condition which neither permits nor fosters idleness less visible in the character of the farmers, than in the condition of the farms. With exceptions of course on both sides, those who could not meet term-day without being diligent in business, were respectable in character, men of sober habits, wealthy and well to do; while not a few of the others became bank.
rupts — some living as much bankrupt in character, as they died insolvent in circumstances. The bird that ceases to use its wings does not hang in mid-air, but drops like a stone to the ground; and bya law almost as certain, he sinks into evil habits whose time and faculties are not engaged in innocent and good employments. So much is this the case, that though periods ofrelaxation are desirable, there is danger in unduly prolonging them. ‘There are few indeed,” says Addison in the Spectator, ““who know how to be idle and innocent: every diversion they take is at the expense of some one virtue or another, and their very first step out of business is into vice or folly.” The purest water left to stagnate grows putrid; and the finest soil thrown into fallow soon throws up a crop of weeds. Had David, as in other days, followed his army to the battle-field, he had perilled his life, but saved his character; escaping a temptation that owed perhaps more than half its power to the luxurious ease and idleness of a palace. Idleness is the mother of mischief: and who would keep their hands from doing wrong must employ them in doing good.
But this can only be done to the advantage of others, as well as of ourselves, by imitating the diligence of Boaz. ‘“Slothful in business,” he had not been in circumstances to be generous as well as just. I have had much to do with begging of a kind; and have often observed that those were most distinguished for their munificence in charities who were most distinguished for their diligence in business. It gives the ability to bless others; and in that a good man will find ample reasons for managing his affairs with diligence and discretion — making it a matter, not of choice, but of conscience. If we do not need money, others do. Many good and noble causes, like Ruth, require assistance; nor can any but those who are careful of their affairs afford to deal with them as Boaz with the widow, whom he generously invited to the bounties of his table — besides, with such a delicate regard to her feelings as reflected the highest credit on his own, whispering to his servants, “Let her glean among the sheaves, and let fall some handfuls on purpose for her.”
Here is a pattern to copy; and a noble incentive to diligence in business — one which, though we take a long step from the case of this honorable man to that of a thief, Paul employed, saying, “Let him who stole steal no more; but rather let him labor, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.” For this end, men who could afford to retire from business have continued in it. Instead of seeking rest in the evening of life, they have labored on to its close; they have denied themselves for Him who denied himself for them; and that they might have to give to such as lacked, toiled on till the oar dropped from their weary hands. Far more than the life of the hermit who retires to cloister or mossy cell, that he may pass the long day in solitude and alone with God, or that of one who occupies his whole time with religious speculations, or the ordinary duties of devotion, ‘s his a religious life who for such an object holds his post to the last; continuing diligent in business, that he may have wherewithal to glorify God, assist the cause of the Redeemer, and bless humanity — that he may be a husband of the widow, and a father of the fatherless; that he may reclaim the lapsed, and raise the fallen, and whether they be the godless at home or the heathen abroad, save such as are ready to perish.
HIS COURTEOUSNESS.
“Be ye courteous” is a duty which Paul — himself a fine example of it — enjoins on Christians. He who began his defence before Agrippa in this graceful fashion — ‘‘I think myself happy, King Agrippa, because I shall answer for myself this day before thee touching all the things whereof I am accused of the Jews; especially because I know thee to be expert in all customs and questions which are among the Jews: wherefore I beseech thee to hear me patiently” — was no rude, coarse, vulgar man. His was courtesy to a superior; but. a still finer ornament of manners, and of religion also, is a courtesy to inferiors. And what a fine example of that is Boaz! It is with no cold looks, nor distant air, nor rough speech, nor haughty bearing, making his reapers painfully sensible of their inferiority — that they are servants and he their master — Boaz enters the harvest field. ‘‘ The master!” spoken by one who has espied him approaching — words that strike with dread the noisy urchins of a school — neither turns their mirth into silence, nor makes them start to reluctant labors. Benevolence beams forth in his looks; and as the children who have attended their mothers to the field, won of old by his gifts and ready smile, run to meet him, he approaches with kindness on his lips. These are not sealed in cold silence, or
opened but to find fault with his servants, and —
address them roughly. ‘The Lord be with you,” is his salutation. They, dropping work, face round, sickles in hand, health in their ruddy cheeks, and the sweat of honest labor on their brows, to welcome their master, and, his inferiors in rank, but his equals in pious courtesy, to reply, “‘ The Lord bless thee!” More beautiful than the morning, with its dews sparkling like diamonds on the grass, and its golden beams tipping the surrounding hills of Bethlehem, these morning salutations between master and servants! Loving him, they esteemed his interests their own.
These beautiful expressions, as might be inferred from the words of the 129th Psalm: ‘‘ Let them be as the grass upon the house-tops, which withereth afore it groweth up; wherewith the mower filleth not his hand, nor he that bindeth sheaves his bosom; neither do they which go by say, The blessing of the Lord be upon you: we bless you in the name of the Lord,” may possibly have grown into a custom. Be it so. It was a very good custom. It had its root in the kindly relations that subsisted in these happy days between masters and servants; and the lack of which in ours breeds the jealousies that ever and anon break out in the unhappy strikes that entail such pecuniary losses on the employers, and such bitter sufferings on the families of the employed. Whatever may have been the case with others, Boaz’s courtesy was more than a form of speech — that French politeness, so often like the French polish which imparts to mean timber the lustre of fine-grained woods, His conduct corresponded with his speech. Observe the eye of compassion he cast on Ruth; his kindness to the lonely stranger; the delicacy with which he sought to save her feelings while he relieved her poverty; the respect he showed to her misfortunes and her generous attachment to Naomi. He paid as much honor to the virtues and feelings of this poor gleaner as if she had been the finest lady in the land. Behold true courteousness!
This grace is a great set-off to piety. As such it should be assiduously cultivated by all who desire to ‘“‘adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour” — religion associated with a kind and courteous manner, being, to use Solomon’s figure, like ‘‘apples of gold in pictures of silver.”
Nor is there any reason, as the case of Boaz proves, why courteousness should be foreign to a country life; or rural scenes should breed rude manners. No doubt those who reside in towns, being brought in frequent contact with others, acquire a polish more readily than country people — even as the stones on the sea-beach become rounded and smooth by the tides that roll them against each other. Allowance is to be made for this, and other disadvantages which belong to country life. For candor requires us, in judging others, to take into account the drawbacks of their position; that every profession has its own peculiar temptations; and that censorious people will find it easier to condemn the faults of others, than they would, were they in their circumstances, to avoid them. The cultivator, like the lord of the soil, seldom meets his superiors; and even his equals much less frequently than the citizen, who, on crowded change and busy streets, comes in daily contact with many, of talents, acquirements, and position as good as his own. Walking his farm as a little kingdom — as the captain of a man-of-war
his quarter-deck — and surrounded only by servants
and inferiors, the circumstances of a farmer are not the most conducive to the acquisition of very courteous manners. Yet what he, as well as all other masters, may and should be is seen in Boaz. A farmer, he was in the old, true sense of the word every inch a gentleman; pious, yet of polished manners; wealthy, yet gracious to the poor, and esteeming virtue above rank or riches; with dependents, yet treating the humblest of them with respectful courtesy; one in whom were beautifully blended the politeness of a court and the simple virtues of a country life.
A good practical lesson may be learned from the way in which this man bore’ himself toward his inferiors. It is by no means uncommon to hear servants, our peasantry, and the common people blamed for their rude and vulgar manners. But they who censure what I do not altogether deny, far less commend, would do well to remember that there were more servants courteous as those of Boaz, were there more masters like him. Why are the lower classes not respectful to the superior? May it not be, and is it not true to a large extent, that the latter are not respectful to them? Lzke begets like, they say; and of that, so far as courteousness is concerned, France, and other countries of the Continent, furnish remarkable illustrations.
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One of their pleasant features is the respectful manner which the upper classes show to the humbler, with which a master addresses his own servant. The result is that the lower catch the manners of the upper classes, and are not rude, because they are not rudely treated. Men are like mirrors; they reflect the features of those that look at them.
We, Britons, plume ourselves on our superiority to our neighbors in morals and religion. But why should not religion, in begetting kind and courteous manners, do as much, and more for us than nature or fashion does for them? What rude and unmannerly language have I heard addressed to servants! How little do many scruple to wound ‘the feelings of their inferiors ! — a vulgar and cowardly, as well as an unchristian thing. They cannot return the blow; and it is like striking a man when he is down. Courteousners lies in a due regard to the feelings of others, and is a Christian duty. Paul enforced it by his precepts, and illustrated it by his example. The whole tone and tenor of the Bible teaches us to be gentle; to be courteous as well as kind; to esteem men of low degree; to be kindly affectioned one toward another; and so to bear ourselves to our inferiors as to make them forget, rather than remember, their inferiority. The followers of Jesus are to be humble, not haughty — “clothed with humility,” says the Apostle: a robe, next to the righteousness which, covering all our sins, was woven on Calvary and dyed white in the blood of Christ, the fairest man can wear.
HIS PIETY.
“The Lord be with you” — his address to the reapers on entering the harvest-field — has the ring of sterling metal. What a contrast Boaz offers to farmers we have known, by whose lips God’s name was frequently profaned, but never honored — their servants, like their dogs and horses, being often cursed, but never once blessed! And in accordance with the apothegm, Lzke master lke man, what shocking oaths have we heard, volleying as it were out of the mouth of hell, from the lips of coarse, animal, sensual farm-servants!
Boaz almost never opens his mouth but pearls drop out. His speech breathes forth pious utterances. All his conversation is seasoned with grace; and, though the result of a divine change of heart, how natural his religion seems! — not like a galadress assumed for the occasion — not like gumflowers worn for ornament, but such as spring living from the sward — not like an artificial perfume that imparts a passing odor to a thing that is dead, but the odors exhaled by roses or lilies. bathed in the dews of heaven. One who could say, “I have set the Lord always before me.” God is in all the good man’s thoughts; and His holy name as often in his mouth to be honored, as it is in others to be profaned. Though it may have been a common custom to bless the harvest and its reapers, he did it from his heart; nor were they words of course, or custom, he spoke when bending on Ruth an eye of mingled pity and admiration, he said, “It hath fully been showed me all that thou hast done unto thy mother-in-law since the death of thine husband: and how thou hast left thy father, and thy mother, and the land of thy nativity, and art come unto a people which thou knewest not heretofore. The Lord remember thy work; and a full reward be given thee of the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust.”
Nor was it only in the language of piety that his piety expressed itself. It did not evaporate in words. We have heard him speak, see how he acts! One night sleeping by a heap of corn, alone as he supposed, he wakes to find a woman lying at his feet. It is Ruth. Instructed by Naomi, she takes this strange Jewish fashion — of which, as of herself, in a future chapter, we shall have more to say — to seek her rights, and commit her fortunes into his hands. There is not in all history a passage more honorable to true religion than the story of that midnight meeting. Silver seven times purified never shone brighter, as it flowed from the glowing furnace, than Boaz’s high principles then and there — not purer or brighter the stars that looked down on the scene of such a trial, and such a triumph. The house of God, the holy table where, by the symbols of Christ’s bloody death, saints have held high intercourse with heaven, never begot purer thoughts than this threshing-floor that night. A noble contrast to such as, disgracing their profession, have received women beneath their roof to undermine their virtue and work their ruin, Boaz, in his fear of God and sacred regard to a poor gleaner’s good name, is a pattern to all men. Ruling his own spirit, he stands there “better than he that taketh a city.” He is enrolled among the progenitors of the Messiah; nor, take him for all in all, was there one in the list of whom Christ had less cause to be ashamed; more worthy to be the ancestor of an incarnate God, of Him who was “holy, harmless, and undefiled, separate from sinners.”
HIS CARE FOR THE MORAL AND RELIGIOUS.
INTERESTS OF HIS SERVANTS.
Boaz in his own life set them an example of piety which could hardly fail to produce a favorable impression on their minds. Some are content to get work out of their servants; they take no interest in their souls — no more than if, like the cattle they tend, they had no souls at all. Unlike these, Boaz spoke to his servants as a God-fearing man. One who felt himself responsible to God and to their parents also, he charged himself with the care of their morals. This appears in the warnings and kind instructions he gave both to them and to Ruth. So soon as he found her in his fields she became the object not of his compassion only, but of his pious regards; and though but a poor gleaner, nor servant of his at all, he teok as much pains to protect her from contamination, or insult, as if she had been his own daughter.
People speak of Model Farms. In the best sense of the expression his was one; and farmers will find in his care for the virtuous and religious interests of his servants a most excellent pattern to copy. There is great need they should. Many are more careful about their cattle and crops thar of their children and servants — of the hours they keep; of the manner in which they spend their Sabbaths; of their associates; of the dangers to which the nature of their work exposes them; and above all of their being often left, and sometimes, I may say, forced, to seek company and courtship under the cloud of night. It were as reasonable to look for grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles,
as for a pious and moral population in some parts
of the country.
Look for example at that gang system of young men and women working together in the ‘fields without any proper guardianship, which, prevailing everywhere to some extent, has assumed in England such proportions of iniquity, cruelty, and evil, as to call — and not too soon — for the exposures of the press, and the interference of Parliament.
‘<The system of organized labor, known by the name of ‘ Agricultural Gangs,’ exists.”’ say the Commissioners, ‘‘in Lincolnshire, Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Nottinghamshire; and, in a few instances, in the counties of Northampton, Bedford, and Rutland. They consist of the gang-master and a number of women and young persons of both sexes from six to eighteen years of age. The numbers in each gang are from ten to forty. The whole number of boys and girls employed in the public gangs amounts to about 7,000, and in the private to as many os 20,000.”
These gangs are engaged in out-door work; and hell and heaven hardly offer a stronger contrast than the fields where Boaz went with pious sal.tations, and those where these unhappy creatures are brutally treated, and initiated in very childhood into the practice of the grossest vices. For the cruelty of the system, let us hear a mother, Mrs.
Adams, the wife of a laborer in Huntingdonshire. She says:
“In June, 1862, my daughters, Harriet and Sarah, aged respectively eleven and thirteen years, were engaged to work on Mr. Worman’s land at Stilton. When they got there he took them to near Peterborough: there they worked for six weeks, going and returning each day. The distance each way is eight miles, so that they had to walk sixteen miles each day on all the six working days of the week, besides working in the field from eight o’clock to five or half-past in the afternoon. They used to start from home at five in the morning, and seldom got back before nine. They had to find all their own meals, as well as their own tools (such as hoes). They (the girls) were good for nothing at the end-of the six weeks. The ganger persuaded me to send my little girl Susan, who was then six years of age. She walked all the way (eight miles) to Peterborough to her work, and worked from eight o’clock to half-past five and received fourpence. She was that tired that her sisters had to carry her the best part of the way home — eight miles, and she was ill from it for three weeks, and never went again.”
For its immoral results, amply testified to by others, take the evidence of Dr. Morris, of Spalding, as read by the Earl of Shaftesbury in the House of Lords:
‘‘T have been in practice in the town of Spalding for twenty-five years, and during the greater portion of this time I have been medical officer to the Spalding Union Infirmary. I am convinced that the gang system is the cause of much immorality. The evil in the system is the mixture of the sexes in ths case of boys and gizls of twelve to seventeen years of age under no proper control. The gangers, as you know, take the work of the farmers. Their custom is to pay their children once a week at some beer-housa, and it is no uncommon thing for their children to be kept waiting at the place till eleven or twelve o’clock at night. At the infirmary many girls of fourteen years of age, and even girls of thirteen, up to seventeen years of age, have been brought in pregnant to be confined there. The girls have acknowledged that their ruin has taken place in this gang work. The offence is committed in going ot returning from their work. Girls and boys of this age go five, six or even seven miles to work, walking in droves along the roads boll ld and by-lanes. I have myself witnessed gross indecencies between boys and girls of fourteen to sixteen years of age. I once saw a young girl insulted by some five or six boys on the road-side. Other older persons were about twenty or thirty yards off, but they took no notice. The girl was calling out, which caused me to stop. Ihave also seen boys bathing in the brooks, and girls between thirteen and nineteen looking on from the bank.”
We used to speak of slave-grown cotton being wet with the tears, and dyed with the blood of injured humanity; but it is at a price as high it seems that some of England’s counties grow their corn!
Happily such wrongs and immoralities are not general, far less universal. Yet it must be confessed that there is a lamentable amount of immorality among the population of most, if not all, of our country districts. Take this illustration from a Report on the state of Religion and Morals by a committee of the Free Church of Scotland:
As much of the district we visited was agricultural, our attention was specially directed to the moral and spiritual condition of the agricultural class. We found, that over all the country, a large number of boys and girls, from nine to fifteen or sixteen years of age, were engaged for about eight months of the year in herding cattle. Being the children of poor parents, they wers but half-educated when they entered on this work. ‘They were employed in it both Sabbath-day and week-day, and seldom had an opportunity of attending the house of God or the Sabbath-school. Except in the few cases where the master was a religious man, or some member of the family took an interest in the spiritual well-being of dependents, their spiritual good was entirely neglected. Asaclass, they seemed never to have been much thought of. As it is from them, as they grow up, the farm-servant class, male and female, is taken, may we not discover in this sad treatment of our herd boys and girls, one of the chief causes of that thoughtlessness, indifference, and immorality, which to so great an extent distinguish our agricultural population? We found many admirable specimens of God-fearing men and women among them. These, however, are the exceptions. One of the most difficult positions at present for the maintenance of a consistent and faithful adherence to Christ is, we believe, that of a farm-servant. As a class they are truthful and sober. It is only at feeing markets, which are the curse of a place, they think that they are at liberty to get drunk, without much guilt attaching to them. There is much profanity, however, among them; and we were grieved to hear that the sin of swearing was becoming very common among the young in some parts we visited, arising, as some thought, from the sojourn of gangs of navvies there, when the railways of the north were being made. In many of the districts, particularly within the bounds of the Presbyteries of Elgin and Strathbogie, the farm servants in large numbers absent themselves from the house of God. They look on that day as their own, and consider that no master or mistress has a right even to ask them how they spend it. It is employed as a day of visiting and feasting in each othsr’s bothies. In many cases, it is true, they are never asked to join in worship with the family they serve, even if a family altar is kept up in the house; and in those instances in which they are invited, a number of them refuse to attend.
“The great sin of this class is illegitimacy. It is most prevalent in Banffshire and some sections of Morayshire. No country district which your deputies visited is, however, exempt from it. It is one of those questions which the Church is urgently called to consider as she has never yet done, and the more so, as it is found that it is a sin which has a tendency to perpetuate itself, for it is no uncommon thing to find generations of illegitimates. When we come to examine into the social causes of it, much perplexity overhangs the subject. We find it as prevalent in the districts of small farms as of large. We find it to be no less so where there are no bothies, but where the farmer is assisted in farm-work by his own sons and daughters, as where there are bothies.
‘Some of the causes to which its prevalence is attributed we found to be —
‘“«(1.) Constant changes of place, for which such facilities are afforded by feeing markets: and thus the evil habits of one district are introduced into others. The length of service seldom exceeds six months, ’
*(2.) The religious neglect of this class generally by their masters.
**(3.) The fearfully low tone of feeling prevalent on the subject.”
What can be worse than the conversation often held in barns and fields where there is none to »restrain its polluted flow? and do not the reports of the Registrars under the head of illegitimate births, while unveiling but a portion of the immorality, disclose enough to make our land ashamed of its vices, and our churches of their apathy? Not that these reports afford a fair criterion by which to determine the comparative morality of town and country. Reading them, we might suppose that virtue, unlike those plants that decay on being removed from the pure air of the country, thrives best in a smoky atmosphere; and had fled from hill and dale, rural scenes and peasant cottages, to reside in towns. This were a great mistake. Such tables illustrate the paradox that facts are sometimes more deceptive even than figures. There may be the greatest immorality under certain forms, where it presents the least appearance. Much of the vice of cities finds no place in the reports of Registrars; but, so far as these are concerned, flows like the foul sewers that lie below the streets, concealed from public view. With the view of applying a cure, a more important matter than the relative merits, or demerits, of town and country is, to discover the causes — always allowing for the depravity of our nature — to which the immoralities of our rural districts may be ascribed. In the first place, these may lie to no small extent in the laxity of the churches. The discipline which our Lord and his apostles committed to their successors has no existence in many places, and is in others but a name and mockery. The holy Sacrament of the Supper, with the ordinance of Baptism, is administered to all and sundry, without any respect to qualifications or character. It is proper to acknowledge this — Let ‘judgment begin at the house of God.” And when He, as of old, may say, ‘Her priests have violated my law, and have” profaned mine holy things; they have put no difference between the holy and the profane, neither have they showed difference between the clean and unclean,” no wonder that the standard of morality is low. We cannot expect it to be raised till the churches resume the use of the keys, and their ministers, breaking free from the trammels of a spurious delicacy, openly denounce the vices that are eating like a cancer into the bosom of society. Were this done with something of the love of John the Apostle, and the fire of John the Baptist,
hearers would cease to complain of sermons being
b]
“flat and unprofitable,” and preachers of being surrounded by drowsy congregations.
But, in the second place, much of the abounding immorality is due to the negligence of parents, of the master and mistress of the household or farm, of those who can take a close and daily care of the morals of such as they have in charge. Let every man that has a farm, every man indeed that is a master, take Boaz for his model! It is not enough that they do not corrupt their servants, and may hold in deserved abhorrence the villain who receives some poor girl into his house to work her ruin and to blast her character. How many do not take sufficient care to prevent those whom they would not corrupt from being corrupted! Their moral and spiritual interests are sacrificed to indifference, to economy, to convenience — ser-
6 ed ne oe ae wants being exposed in the house and field to the ‘‘evil communications which corrupt good manners,” to temptations to which no man with a proper regard to her virtue would expose his own daughter. This is wrong. It wrongs servants, who have a strong claim on our kind and Christian interest — it wrongs the parents, who, perhaps with trembling hearts and many prayers, have committed them to our charge — it wrongs the country, whose morals and happiness should be our care — it wrongs God, who is no respecter of persons, and cares as much for a humble servant as for a lordly master — it wrongs the Saviour, who died for them, and having taken their form, has a peculiar sympathy with servants: and last of all, it wrongs ourselves, as many shall find on meeting Him who reckoned with Cain for his brother, saying, ‘‘ Where is thy brother Abel?” Let it not be supposed from these remarks that I do not love the people as well as the scenes of the country; or am ignorant of how much that is lovely and excellent, fair and honest, good and pious, dwells in farm homestead and lowly cottage. «Sure peace is his: a solid life, estranged
To disappointment, and fallacious hope;
Rich in content, in Nature’s bounty rich,
In herbs and fruits: whatever greens the Spring,
When heaven descends in showers; or bends the bouga,
When Summer reddens, and when Autumn beams;
Or in the Wintry glebe whatever lies
Concealed, and fattens with the richest sap:
These are not wanting; nor the milky drove,
Luxuriant, spread o’er all the lowing vale;
Nor bleating mountains; nor the chide of streams
And hum of bees, inviting sleep sincere
Into the guileloss breast, beneath the shade,
Or thrown at large amid the fragrant hay;
Nor aught beside of prospect, grove, or song, Dim grottoes, gleaming lakes, and fountain clear. Here too lives simple truth: plain innocence; Unsullied beauty; sound, unbroken youth, Patient of labor, with a little pleased;
Health ever blooming; unambitious toil.”
It has been my privilege and happiness to have seen beautiful examples of rural piety. Indeed, the deepest early impressions of reverence I can recall were made by a near relative, who was a farmer. Born in the early part of the last century, remembering the rebellion of 1745, he was an old man before I could know him. The weight of nearly fourscore years and ten had not bent his form, which was still straight as a lance; but his voice was low and tremulous, his step short and feeble, and his long spare locks as white as driven snow. His appearance was at all times venerable, but at the table, when seated beside his aged partner, bowed down and blind with years — also a devout Christian, though of stern mould, who fasted one whole day each week, nor ever told husband or children, why — his manner when he asked the blessing rose into the sublime. Uncovering his aged head, taking off the broad bonnet which, the fashion of his early days, he wore to the last, he turned his face upwards with an expression of deep solemnity. There was a moment’s silence, as if he was gathering up all his mind to enter the presence of a Heavenly Majesty. And when the blessing came forth in slow, and solemn, and trembling accents, what a contrast it afforded to the mumbled, curt, hurried “For what we are
- en ee as to receive, the Lord make us thankful,” we often hear! The words were few and well chosen; but there was that in the old man’s voice, face, and manner, which communicated feelings of solemnity even to thoughtless childhood — the venerable worshipper looking like one that stood before the throne, and saw the august Being whom he addressed.
These early impressions of rural piety were not impaired by the seven years I spent as the minister of a country parish. Numbering about a thousand inhabitants, there was only one man of the whole number who did not attend the house of God — and he was half crazy; there was also but one of years to read who could not — and he was no native, but an interloper; and among the common people there was not one who could properly be called a drunkard — not even the old soldier, who occasionally exceeded on pension-day. With a parish library, both secular and religious, resorted to by many readers; with a parish savings’-bank, set on foot to promote habits of temperance and economy, in which I left, on being called to Edinburgh, many hundred pounds, the savings of honest. industry; with a church, and besides a number of Sunday, two day schools, we were more than a match for the one public-house, which, situated, fortunately for us, on our boundary, drew most of its money from the tipplers of the neighboring town. There I learned to love the country, and form a high estimate of the kindness and sobriety, of the virtues and piety, of a well-ordered rural population. ‘The lines had fallen to me in pleasant places.” The moral aspects were much in harmony with the physical of a scene where the fields yielded abundant harvests, and the air, loaded with the fragrant perfume of flowers, rung to the song of larks and woodland birds, and long lines of breakers gleamed and boomed upon the shore, and ships with white sails flecked the blue ocean, and the Bell Rock tower stood up on its rim to shoot cheerful beams athwart the gloom of night; a type of that Church which, our guide to the desired haven, is founded on a rock, and fearless of the rage of storms.