"We none of us," Harry Aikin had said, when arranging the sociables with his friends, "spend a penny at the dram-shop, so we may well afford a little family cheer at home, where wives and children can partake with us; and thus the good things God gives us may be used to nourish our affections." May not this be esteemed a mode of obedience to the Christian law—eating and drinking to the glory of God?
Our, details may be tiresome; but do they not show that, in this country, real comforts, and even the best pleasures of life—hospitality, liberality, and charity—can be attained by the poor, if intelligent and managing? that they are not compelled, even the less-favoured portions of them, to exhaust life in painful efforts to keep soul and body together? but that, by exertion and contrivance, they may cultivate their own and their children's minds and hearts, and advance them in that upward course open to all. Let others glory in the countries of luxuries and the arts; let us thank God that ours is filled with blessings for the poor man.
Mr. Barlow selected the horse and the cow, as the most useful animals to man, for the subjects of his first lecture. He was a sincerely and earnestly religious man; and he believed ignorance to be the most fruitful source of irreligion, and that, the more the mind was awakened to the wonders of creation, the more it understood of the wisdom and benevolence of the contrivances of the Creator, the more certainly would it reject the bad seed of infidelity that is sowed at broadcast with such cruel industry.
