A resident of a city riding into the country, especially if he be an intellectual man, and engaged in intellectual pursuits, will be thrilled by what he sees around him. The life of the farmer, planted in the midst of so much that is beautiful, having to do with nature's marvellous miracles of germination and growth, moving under the open heaven with its glory of sky and meteoric change, and accompanied by the songs of birds and all characteristic rural sights and sounds, will seem to him the sweetest and the most enviable that falls to human lot. But the hard-working farmer sees nothing of this. What cares he for birds, unless they pull up his corn? What cares he for skies, unless he can make use of them for drying his hay, or wetting down his potatoes? The beautiful changes of nature do not touch him. His sensibilities are deadened by hard work. His nervous system is all imbedded in muscle, and does not lie near enough to the surface to be reached by the beauty and music around him. All he knows about a daisy is that it does not make good hay; and he draws no appreciable amount of the pleasure of his life from those surroundings which charm the sensibilities of others. We are in the habit of regarding the farming population of the country as the most moral and religious of any, yet if we look at them critically, we shall find that their piety is of a negative, rather than a positive character. They are men in the first place who have very few temptations, either from without or from within. There are no professional tempters around them to lure them into the more seductive paths of sin. The woman whose steps take hold on hell does not pass their doors; the gambler spreads no snares for them; no gilded palace invites them to music and intoxicating draughts; they are not maddened by ambition; and they have no vanity that leads them to degrading and ruinous display. If they are little assailed from without, they are not more moved toward vice from within. The fact that their vital energies are all expended upon labor relieves them from the motives of temptation. Men whose muscles are overworked have no vitality to expend upon vices. The devil cannot make much out of a man who is both tired and sleepy. If we inquire of the ministers who have charge of rural parishes, they will usually tell us that an audience of mechanics is better than an audience of farmers, and that the miscellaneous audience of a city is better than either. It is impossible for men who have devoted every bodily energy they possess to hard labor during the waking hours of six days, to go to church and keep brightly awake on the seventh. Country ministers will also admit that they have in their parishes less help in social and conference meetings than the pastors of city parishes, and that no great movements of benevolence ever originate in, or are carried on by, rural churches.