The bases of the temperance reform: an exposition and appeal./ With replies to numerous objections. By Rev. Dawson Burns.

CHAPTER IV.
PROPOSITION: THAT VIOLENCE IS DONE TO THE WILL OF
GOD AND THE WELFARE OF MAN BY APPROPRIATING THE
FRUITS OF THE EARTH TO THE PRODUCTION OF INTOXI CATING DRINKS.
IF man himself, as to his body, has sprung from the
dust, not less true is it that from the dust springs the
food by which his bodily life is renewed day by day. The
daily (or necessary) bread for which he prays is provided
by a divine economy above his control, but with which
he is permitted to co-operate, in order that, instrumentally, he may earn the subsistence which gives to labor its
sweet reward. There isa profound truth in the narrative, viewed literally or allegorically, which assigns to
the first man the care and cultivation of the ground
and the honors paid by early nations to agriculture, and
the mysteries associated with the processes of natural
production and increase, find their ready explanation in
the felt and pressing value of the food with which, at the
touch of industry, the wide earth teems. Both Scripture
and reason unite to fill the mind with reverence, in the
presence of that aspect of nature which, in the form of
autumnal affluence, bears the sign-manual of the King of
Heaven. Human science, unable to create a single grain
of wheat, sees a divine phenomenon in every grain, and
in the reproductive energy which makes the buried grain
reappear in an increase of sixty or a hundred fold. Inscrutable as the manner of this is, there is nothing dubious as to the purpose of the gift and the will of the Allgracious Donor. It is his will that the produce of the