Our crop of Indian corn, if we value it at but one-half the present market price, amounts to more than all the gold from California; and our wheat crop, at the most moderate estimate, is worth as much as all the gold in the country; while the moderate growth of oats, with all reasonable allowances for exaggeration, more than equals any two years' produce of the California mines.

Again. Here are the means of the support of life. How absolutely dependent are we upon an adequate supply of food. It is the great necessity of animal life. We are daily and hourly, as the result of the curse, returning to the dust out of which we were taken. Every process of life expends some portion of our bodies. Every breath is consuming us, every employment is exhausting us, our very repose is evaporating us away, composed, as we are two-thirds of liquids. There is as constant a consumption going on within us as in the furnaces that warm our houses. The bones, the muscles, the tissues, the skin, are all wasting, crumbling, wearing away. Now food is intended to retard or repair this constant waste. It furnishes new fuel for this respiration; it generates new force for this activity; it not only supplies new bone, and muscle, and sinew, for labour, but it even keeps the organ of the mind in integrity for study.

If food is withheld, as this waste is continually going on in the various processes of life, the body will feed upon itself. And then fever will set in, and gnawing pain, and frightful delirium, and dreadful death. Nature shrinks with horror from this self-consuming. There is nothing to which the instinctive craving for food, which alone can ward it off, has not impelled men-the most loathsome resorts, the most shocking atrocities-companions eating one another, parents their children, mothers even their nursing infants. What harrowing pictures have been presented of the sufferings, the extremities, the resorts of men in sieges, shipwrecks, famines. How important a necessity, then, must food be. Even when the destitution is not. so extreme-when there is only an inadequate, unsuitable supply, the most serious consequences follow.

It is said that when, through force of circumstances, or distorted tastes, the proper kind or quantity is not enjoyed, for any length of time, health is endangered, the constitution is gradually altered, life is shortened, families are extinguished, and whole races swept away. Scarcity and improper diet, too, have often become the forerunners of pestilence. Weakening the body, they leave it more susceptible to disease, and less able to resist contagion and infection. So that mortality is always increased in times of scarcity. Further when food is scarce, labour is almost invariably in low demand. And men, looking around upon dependent families, for whom they see no prospect of relief, are very prone to become dejected, gloomy, reckless, turbulent, and ready for most desperate undertakings. While such a state of things proves most harassing to all but the wealthiest, there is a large lower class that it drives almost to madness, arraying them against the rich and more prosperous, and preparing them for riot and rebellion.

Besides, however, sustaining life, food exerts an important influence upon the character. We often judge of a people by their diet. Only low nations choose low food. Nor is this surprising; for it has far more influence than is generally supposed, in the formation of character. One kind of food we know inflames and excites, another renders sluggish, and inert, and timid. Animal food, for example, is said to augment the solid parts of the blood, and thus strengthen the muscular system; but it leads, as in the case of the carnivorous animals, to restlessness. This influences. the habits of life-disposes to wandering habits-the pleasures of the chase-and thus cultivates boldness and courage, indeed, but also indifference to the comforts of home, with a spirit of selfishness, cunning, and cruelty. Vegetable diet, on the other hand, renders the blood light, and disposes to feebleness of body, and torpor of mind. Requiring a much larger amount to sustain life, it induces fulness and inertness, and leads men, like the ruminating animals, to spend their time very much in eating and sleeping. So that it is evident that the influence of diet cannot be unimportant-especially when continued through generations, which seems necessary to form that indescribable something that we call national character. What else, it has been said, marks the earth-eating Ottomac, with his grovelling stupidity, but his grovelling food-or the vegetarian Hindoo, with his dreamy indolence-or the Indian savage, with his cunning and cruelty? Now abundant food does not absolutely secure, but it tends to that varied diet that man's very structure indicates that he needs. It gives greater disposition and opportunity to choose. In times of scarcity men will eat anything. When they have abundance, they are disposed to vary their diet, and consult those instinctive tastes that Providence implanted, and which have been the surest indications, where not prevented, of what is best for man.

In Professor Johnson's Chemistry of Common Life.

Besides, abundant supplies of food tend to general prosperity. As it has influence on the health and character of a people, such abundance tends to raise up a better race, with stronger, healthier bodies, and more elevated character, a more cheerful, enterprising, orderly, and useful people. Further, as food is a universal necessity, it must always be the most important basis of a country's internal and foreign commerce. If the farmer has large crops, he has more money, buys more goods, goes from necessaries to comforts, and from comforts to luxuries. This gives employment to merchants, artisans, and labourers. There is more trade, more building, more activity in every department. No country can flourish whose prosperity is not based upon what man's toil extracts from the ground. And in proportion to the general agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing prosperity of a people, schools and colleges, science and the arts, churches and benevolent institutions will flourish. So, too, abundant harvests will greatly aid foreign commerce. The imports of this country last year were more than two hundred and fifty-seven millions of dollars. How is all this paid *The total import of foreign merchandise into the United States for the Treasury year ending June 30, 1855,

$13,873,886

Custom-House Balance in favour of United States, .

The following are some of the leading articles of Import into the United States for

for. We exported but one-fifth of that amount in the precious metals, with all our California mines. And if much more gold had gone out of the country, it must have produced correspondent stringency at home. We must, therefore, produce enough from the soil and by labour to meet this. How much will such crops as are exhibited by the Agricultural Bureau accomplish for this end! They not only provide for all our own wants, enabling large portions of our own population to engage in other pursuits, but help to pay what we import from abroad. These crops, indeed, cover a vast area, but we have more than twenty-five thousand miles of railroads-more than enough to encircle a globe-to carry them to market.

There is, however, another blessing suggested by such an exhibit that ought not to be overlooked,-the direct enjoyment we derive from our daily food. We might have been formed so that all our tastes would have been nauseous and painful. And men might have been disposed, like some animals, to eat in solitude, or as we take our medicines, turning away our faces. But food is agreeable, and all nations have found their pleasantest gratifications at their social meals. This, religion, so far from discountenancing, has commanded by precept and example. Indeed many of the religious services of God's ancient people, and the leading observances of the Christian religion, are associated with feasts. The early Christians, too, we are told, ate their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God, and having favour with all the people. Who can estimate how much we owe as individuals, families, and a people, to the family board, around which we gather, day by day, to unite in the cheerful social meal. These occasions are most favourable in every respect to promote kind feeling and benevolent affections. In times of scarcity, however, this influence is apt to be perverted or destroyed. Such are some of the blessings suggested by such an exhibit.

But in no department of life is the hand of God more distinctly seen. When we break up the fallow ground, and cast in the precious seed, we have to wait patiently and see what God will do. The seed springs, we know not how. This secret process is all of God. Who knoweth whether will prosper either this or that? What a period of anxiety, and murmuring often, is that which precedes the harvest. It is too hot, or too cold-too wet, or too dry-the rain comes too soon or too late. The grain may be too light, expending all its strength in the stalk, or too heavy, so as to fall by its own weight. Now there is danger of the rust, and now of the blight-of the fly, or of the army worm. And, in truth, the slightest alteration in the natural constitution of things-the withholding the minutest portion of carbonic acid from the atmosphere would extinguish vegetable life. How then is it that our valleys have been covered over with corn? God has been in our fields, visiting each grain, and his paths have dropped fatness. How

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much do we owe to him! Praise waiteth for thee, O God, in Zion. Let us acknowledge his hand, and return unto him according to his goodness. Now is the time to be liberal, as his stewards, to the poor and to his cause.

N. R. S.

THE BELIEVER WARNED AND DIRECTED.

No. II.

[In the conclusion of this article, we remind our readers that the four acts to which the writer was directing attention were as follows:

The first is that of building-" building up yourselves on your most holy faith." The second that of praying-" praying in the Holy Ghost."

The third is that of keeping-" keeping yourselves in the love of God."

The fourth is that of looking-"looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, unto eternal life."]

It is evident that there is no rhetorical unity or logical progression in this fourfold exhortation, but this does not destroy its use as an assistance both to the understanding and the memory of those who would obey it.

The figure of building includes two things, a foundation and a superstructure. Both are here distinctly mentioned. The superstructure is the Christian character and life of those whom the Apostle addresses, in accordance with the scriptural usage of edify and edification, terms no longer metaphorical in English, though their origin is still denoted by their etymological connection with edifice, to signify the regular, symmetrical progression of religious knowledge, principles, affections, and external habits, in the true believer, with respect to which he is declared to be "God's building," and as the result of which he is "a temple of the Holy Ghost." This formative, consolidating, and adjusting process, the design and the result of which is Christian character, as something definite, conformed to a fixed standard, and yet possessing individualitymay therefore be regarded as an indispensable condition and a necessary means of the security to which the text directs us. The "beloved" of the Lord can stand fast in the midst of abounding iniquity, prevailing error, and insidious corruption, only by being thus built up," symmetrically framed, consolidated, and established, in all that the Scriptures represent as natural or necessary elements of Christian character.

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But this, like any other superstructure, must have a foundation. There may be spacious temporary frameworks reared by human ingenuity or skill, without a solid basis; but our Lord himself has taught us, in one of his most striking metaphorical discourses, that such baseless fabrics, reared by knowledge without practice or experience, when exposed to the winds and floods of providential or of spiritual trial, must inevitably fall, and that with a conspicuous and terrible catastrophe. We thus learn negatively that mere knowledge of the