So, on the other hand, of the southern neighbors of the Tyrians. There the earth brought forth by handfuls. There was an abundance of corn in the land, even to the tops of the mountains. Its fruit did indeed shake like Lebanon. But there were no cedars there, no fir-trees, no sandal-woods. How short-sighted, then, and futile, would it have been for the Jews, to try to hang on in their own behoof to all the natural advantages that God had given to them, and to say, We will not part with the direct results of any of them, we will build treasure-cities as they did in Egypt, we will store up all the fruits of these fat years against the possible coming of some famine years in the time to come. That is anything in ordinary times but the divine plan. It is anything but the letter and spirit of the divine injunction: "_Him that keepeth back corn the people curse; but blessing shall be upon the head of him that selleth it_" (Prov. xii, 26). Had they talked and acted thus, no temple could then have been built in Jerusalem, and the people of that generation would have lost the moral and religious impulse and uplifting of their service and sacrifice. Their grain would have become worthless from its very abundance, and would have decayed on their hands. They would have missed a great gain for themselves, and would have snatched away from their neighbors to the northward a providential opportunity for an equal gain. The general truth must not be lost sight of here, even in passing, that all trade whatsoever is based upon a Diversity of relative Advantage as between the parties exchanging products. If, for example, the Hills of Judah and the Mountains of Israel had been covered with timber suitable for building the temple, and the coasts of Tyre and Sidon and the foot-hills of Lebanon had been fertile stretches of arable land, this particular trade would never have been thought of and could never have been realized. There would have been no gain in it for either party, and unless there be a valid gain for both parties at least in prospect, no trade will ever spring into being, because there would be no motive, no impulse, no reason, in it. Unless the Jews could get the timber easier by raising grain to pay for it, and the Tyrians get the oil and wheat and barley easier by cutting and floating timber to pay for them,--no trade; but the greater easiness to each actually came about, because each had an Advantage both natural and acquired over the other in his own rendering, and the mutual gain of the trade was wholly owing to that circumstance. So far as that matter went, the Tyrians had no cause to envy their neighbors the superior soil of the south, for they reaped indirectly but effectively a part of those harvests for themselves; and the Jews had no reason to be jealous of their northern neighbors on account of the noble forests crowning their mountains, because through trade they secured easily to themselves a share of that vast natural advantage.