licious fruit grow here and there, and may be cultivated to any extent desirable; plains and valleys wave with luxuriant harvests; the very ground is covered with a soft carpet of verdure. If from any special natural cause, there happen to be a deficiency of the earth's produce in any particular region, the defect is ever compensated by extraordinary abundance elsewhere; so that were mankind in that state of universal love and brotherhood, in which their Heavenly Father intended them to be, serious distress could never take place: the wants of one portion would be freely supplied from the plenty of another. This we have seen beautifully exemplified even in our own comparatively evil and selfish age. Some time ago, for instance,—when the vines of Madeira failed, and the people were in danger of suffering from want, Europe and America both sent them assistance; and when the harvests of Europe were thin,—especially when the potato-crop of Ireland had perished,—was it not a pleasant sight to behold their brethren, both in England and America, freely extending their hands in aid? and from the latter, especially, great ships, built for the purposes of war, removing their engines of destruction, and supplying their place with food for their suffering fellow-men,—thus bringing with them life instead of death! Even in that case, however, as in most similar cases, the suffering that was actually and so extensively endured before relief came, may be ascribed in a great degree to the disordered moral state of the inhabitants themselves,—to their indolence or negligence, in allowing themselves to depend on a single article of food, when Providence has bountifully supplied so great a variety.
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