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"To be sure I would," said the farmer.
"And do you imagine," said Mrs Mason, "that the human soul requires less care in culturing it, than is necessary to your field? Is it merely by teaching them to say their questions, or even teaching them to read, that the briers and thorns of pride and self-will will be rooted up from your childrens' minds?"
"We maun trust a' to the grace of God," said the farmer.
"God forbid that we should put trust in ought beside," returned Mrs Mason: "but if we hope for a miraculous interposition of divine grace, in favour of ourselves, or of our children, without taking the means that God has appointed, our hope does not spring from faith, but from presumption. It is just as if you were neither to plow, nor sow your fields, and yet expect that Providence would bless you with an abundant crop."
"But what means ought we to use,
