not only pray for daily bread for their families, and food convenient, but must lay themselves out with care and industry to provide it.'
"Again, 'the famine was sore in the land,' and again the patriarch sent his sons to bring home food; but doubting whether money alone could purchase what was so much needed, he said to them: 'Take of the best fruits of the land in your vessels, a little balm, and a little honey, spices and myrrh, nuts and almonds.' And again does the Christian commentator, out of that right religious sentiment which so often leads to right judgment on the most complex questions, utter sound principles of political economy: He sent a present of such things as the land afforded, balm and honey, spices and myrrh, nuts and almonds, the commodities that Canaan exported. Providence dispenses its gifts variously. Some countries produce one commodity, others another, that commerce may be preserved. Honey and spices will never make up for the want of bread corn. The famine was sore in Canaan, and yet they had balm and myrrh. We may live well enough on plain food without dainties, but we cannot live upon dainties without plain food. Let us thank God that that which is most needful and useful is generally most cheap and common.' Yes, generally, for in the goodness of God there is abundance of corn and provisions upon the earth for the use of all his creatures, if they were freely exchanged; but our laws permit the importation of 'dainties'—the spices, the balm, the myrrh, the nuts and the almonds—for the use of the law makers, while, for their sole benefit, 'plain food,' the food of the multitude is rigorously excluded till there is a famine as sore in the land as that which afflicted Canaan.
"Seven hundred years after Jacob had sent the produce of Canaan for the produce of Egypt, we find that a bargain was made between Solomon, who was building 'a house unto the Lord,' and Hiram, King of Tyre, who contracted to supply him by sea, on floats, with cedar wood and well-instructed workmen; Hiram, like a paternal ruler, requiring food for his household in exchange. Solomon fulfilled his bargain giving 20,000 measures of wheat and twenty measures of pure oil. On this transaction Mathew Henry remarks: 'If Tyre supplies Israel with craftsmen, Israel will supply Tyre with corn. Thus, by the wise disposal of Providence, one country has need of another, and is benefited by another, that there may be mutual dependence, to the glory of God our common Parent.'"