14

OBSERVATIONS ON THIRD PERIOD, &C.

“ lated for presenting rural imagery, and those scenes we“ usually associate with innocence, simplicity, and virtue;“ —to communicate consolation to the mind perturbed hv“ care, and by the active bustle of life;—by bringing to“ recollection those scenes associated with our earliest im-“ pressions, when all was serenity and guiltless joy.”

Pasturage is so closely connected with Agriculture in thepresent practice, that it will be further noticed in that article.

Third Period. — Agriculture. — The third epocha ofhuman existence we apprehend to have been sustainedchiefly by the occupation of agriculture. Although to atransient observer, it may appear, or .we might have assumedit, as taking our authority from the Scriptures; we must seethat it constituted the first employ of the species; because,he would say, that God sent the first man to till the ground,having previously informed him, in consequence of his trans-gression, that the earth should produce thorns and thistles,and that in the sweat of his face he should earn his bread .' 0But to a person who should argue thus to support his posi-tion, as suggested, we reply, that he has forgotten to takeinto consideration the Omnipresence of the Supreme, towhom the past, present, and future, are, with him, as thesame instant. The threatened malediction, we, therefore,humbly contend, had, perhaps, a reference to future as wellas to the present; and also that it was not meant to applysolely to the individual person of Adam, but was alsoto be attached to his posterity. However, as it would fromthence appear, that the divine Author of Nature even con-descended to instruct man, in affairs of difficulty, how toact, it is extremely probable that he was taught in a thing ofso much importance to him, as w r as the method to procure food.

Taking up this question, upon the relation of human his-torians, and judging of what might have ensued, had manbeen taught by experience alone,—in that case, we mightthen have viewed it by the same medium through which ourmind is impressed by the relation of Diodorus Sicidus, in-stead of that in which it is previously given. In that case,indeed, a relation more consonant to natural probabilitycould not have been discovered than his. He says, but itwill be remembered he spoke of a post-diluvian period, thatso sanguinary had been the habits of men, that they killed andeven ate one another. This must have been understood, weshould think, when other animals could not have been found.“ And that it was owing to the care and industry of Isis,

p Genesis, iii. IT.