The principle that every deed is a seed that contains the germ of its own reward or punishment has received full interpretation by the poets and dramatists. In his "Paradise Lost," Milton has made a detailed study of the principles of the spiritual harvests. The poet represents Satan as an angel, fallen indeed, and sadly battered by his fall, yet still an archangel glorious for strength and beauty. Having visited Paradise and accomplished the destruction of Eve's innocence and Adam's happiness, Satan returns home, passing over a bridge of more prodigious length than now arches the gulf between earth and hell. When the prince arrived at Pandemonium, the capital of Lucifer's realm, he found that the leaders of the fallen host had arranged a reception in the great banquet-hall of the palace. In the presence of the applauding throng, the prince told the story of how he had succeeded in opening the earth as a place to which these exiled angels might retreat from the prison in which they had been so long confined, and pointed to the great bridge spanning the abyss 'twixt earth and hell. When the loud cheerings and rejoicings over this fact had ceased, Satan told by what stratagem he had succeeded in inducing man to break friendship with God. It was not by disguising himself as an angel of light. But, affirmed Satan, man cared so little for the laws of God that, although disguised as a serpent, he induced man to sin.
"Then awhile Satan stood, expecting their universal
shout and high applause
To fill his ear, when contrary he hears
On all sides from innumerable tongues
A dismal universal hiss, the sound
Of public scorn. He wondered, but not long
Had leisure. Wondering at himself no more,
His visage drawn, he felt; too sharp and spare
His arms clung to his ribs, his legs entwining
Each the other, till supplanted down he fell,
A monstrous serpent on his belly prone,
Reluctant, but in vain. A greater power
Now ruled him, punished in the shape he sinned,
According to his doom."
Also when Satan attempted to speak, Milton says, only a hiss went forth "from forked tongue to forked tongue." When many days had passed by and their hunger was very sore because these fallen angels had seduced man by an apple, it came about that when, fierce with hunger, they seized the fruit ripe upon the branches, the apples were found to be filled with soot and ashes. By these striking suggestions Milton gives us his idea how angels and men reap what they sow. Should the literary critic seek an appropriate heading for the tenth book of "Paradise Lost," he could hardly find one more appropriate than this: "What Man Soweth, That Shall He Also Reap."
This law of the spiritual harvest that visits retribution upon unrighteousness or visits reward upon integrity seems to have cast a spell of fascination upon all great writers. Even those who have written upon liberty, law, patriotism, or love have not been content to end their task until they have, through song or story, illustrated this law of the soul's seedtime and harvest. The ancient poet who wrote at a time near to the dawn of history makes a strong man go forth to seize his neighbor's flocks and herds, but returning the prince found that in his absence enemies had looted his palace and carried off not only his treasure, but his wife and children. In ending the tale the writer adds the reflection that "God is just!"
Later on the Grecian threw this moral principle into a tale for children, a story that still lives under the title "Baucis and Philemon." One day two travelers entered a village, but as they drew near, each housewife slammed her door, while rude boys threw clods at the wayfarers and let loose their dogs, who snapped and snarled after the travelers. Passing quite beyond the village the pilgrims came to a humble cottage. As they approached his door Philemon came forth to offer refuge, and apologized for the rudeness of his neighbors. The old man prepared for them seats in the grateful shade and hurried to bring them fresh water from the cool spring. Baucis also hastened to bring the loaf, with her one small honeycomb and her pitcher of milk. When the glasses were filled twice and thrice and still the rich milk failed not, the old housewife marveled, until she found that in the bottom of the pitcher there was a fountain from which the rich milk gushed so long as it was needed. Nor did the honeycomb fail, nor did the sharp knife make the wheaten loaf to be less. Having told us that the morning brought disaster to the inhospitable villagers, but brought assurance from these angels who had been entertained unawares that Baucis and Philemon should never more want for earthly goods, the writer of the olden times sets forth for us the principle that good man and bad alike reap what they sow, since each deed contains a harvest like unto itself. Indeed, literature and life teem with exhibitions of this principle. Haman, the rich ruler, builds a gallows for poor Mordecai, whom he hates, and later on Haman himself is hanged upon his own scaffold. David sets Uriah in the front of the battle and robs him of his wife, and when a few years have passed, in turn David is robbed of his wife, his palace also, and his city.
Walter Scott believes in moral retribution. He tells us of a youth who deftly split an arrow at the point where it fitted the bow-string, that when his brother, whom he hated, should bend his bow the arrow might split and, rebounding, pass through his eye. Now it happened that the brother returned from the hunt without using his weapon. That night, alarmed at a commotion without, the youth seized his bow, and, chancing to strike upon that very arrow, was himself slain by the stratagem that he had wickedly planned for his brother. George Eliot, too, has dedicated her greatest volume to the study of this principle. The orphan child, Tito, is received into the arms of an adopted father, who lavishes upon him all his wealth. But when the youth was grown to full strength and beauty, one night Tito left his adopted father in slavery and fled with his gold and gems into a foreign land. Years passed by and, with his stolen wealth, Tito bought wife, palace, position, fame. He had sown falsehood and cruelty, and nothing seemed so unlikely as that he would reap a similar harvest. But one day the people discovered his falsehood and attacked Tito. A mob pursued him through the streets, and, knowing his strength as a swimmer, the youth cast himself into the River Arno. When Tito had swum far down the river to the other side, and, in his exhaustion, would go ashore, he looked up, and, lo! he discerned the gray-haired father whom he had injured trotting along the shore side by side with the swimmer. In the old man's eyes blazed bitter hatred, in his hand flashed a sharp knife. What the youth had sown years before now at last he was to reap. When increasing weakness compelled him to approach the shore he looked beseechingly to his father for mercy, but found only justice. With a wild and bitter cry Tito reaped his harvest. Soon the mud of that river filled the eyes and ears of him who years before had received defilement into his heart. What seed he had sown, that Nature gave him as a harvest—good measure, heaped up, and shaken together.
History permits no man to escape the reflection that if, for the time being, individuals have escaped this moral law, nations have felt its full force. Nature does, indeed, walk through the fields with footsteps so gentle as to disturb no drop of dew hanging upon the blade of grass. Nature also hath her sterner aspect, and for the sons of iniquity her footsteps are earthquakes, her strokes are strokes of war and of pestilence. When Sophocles worked out the law of moral retribution for King Oedipus and Antigone, his daughter, the poet might well have gone on to note that if the Grecian army had sacked the Trojan cities the time would come when the Roman fleet would sack her cities and make her sons to toil as captives. Later on, if the Roman conquerors swept the East for corn and wheat, looted stores and shops, pillaged palaces for treasure for triumphal processions, the time came when Nature and God decreed that the vast wealth piled up in the Roman capital should excite the cupidity of the Goths, until at last the streets of that great city were swept with flame and store-houses were pillaged by marauders. In reviewing the history of Venice Ruskin was so impressed with this principle of the moral harvest that he affirms that the history of palace and cathedral, of fleets and navies, is simply the story, written by a pen dipped in fire and blood, of how the children reaped what the fathers had sown.
For many months past the statesmen of England have been sending forth discussions reviewing the career of their country. In the light of the Eastern problem one of these authors reflects that whenever England has sown injustice to a weaker nation she has reaped injustice and retribution for herself. He notes that in the last century the governors of England—for example, Lord Hastings—went through the land robbing rajahs, despoiling the people by false weights and measures, until they had turned the whole country into one vast desert. The hour came when before the House of Commons Burke impeached Hastings for high crimes and misdemeanors, as the enemy of India and England and all men. But England was content to impose a trifling fine upon her wicked official. How could she give up the treasure she had filched for herself? Years passed and an injured people brooded upon its wrongs, and the time came when what England had sown in tears she reaped in blood. One day the Indian soldiers mutinied. The next day the wells were filled with the bodies of English officers, their wives and children; then merchants and missionaries and travelers were slaughtered. For weeks the strife went on. If once the English soldier had pillaged the Indian villages, now, in turn, the English quarters were pillaged. "Blind of eye and hard of heart," said the sage statesman. "Retribution hath been visited upon us," said the great leader. "Our jealousy and greed hath ended with that sword being sharpened against ourselves." The note of conviction is in the voice of this statesman, but what saith be save this: "What a man soweth, that also shall he reap!"
All young hearts may well remember that it is safe to do right, but dangerous to sow wrong! No matter how smooth, how soft and sweet, seem the paths of sin, know that beneath every flower there lurks a spider, beneath every silken couch of indulgence there broods a nest of serpents, and the scene that begins with flowers shall end midst thorns and thickets. For the moment, indeed, the judge may seem unobservant and the watchman may seem asleep; but he who yields to any deflection from honor shall find at last that God never slumbers, that his laws never sleep. Go east or go west. Nature is upon the track of the wrong-doer. Could the sage of old sit down to converse with each youth who to-day walks on the street, perchance he would find many who, through excess, are draining away the rich forces of nerve and brain and blood.
Daily they deny reason its book, taste its music, love its noble companionship. At last, when the harp of the physical senses begins to give way, and they fall back upon the mental faculties for pleasure, then these faculties that have been starved shall, in turn, make men suffer. In that hour reason or memory shall say: "Because I called and ye refused; because I stretched out my hand and no man regarded, therefore I will laugh at your calamity. I will mock at your desolation when your fear cometh as destruction and your desolation as whirlwind." In Daniel Webster's words of disappointed ambition, "I still live," we see that a statesman sows what he reaps. In Goethe's fearful cry for "more light" we see that the poet who sows darkness shall reap darkness. In Lord Byron's piteous "I must sleep now" we see that he who sows morbidness and passion reaps feverishness and shame. The law is inexorable. He who sows foul thoughts shall reap the foul countenance of a fiend. He who sows pure thoughts shall reap the sweetness and nobility of the face of Fra Angelico. He who sows reflection shall reap wisdom. He who sows sympathy shall reap love. The good Samaritan who sows tenderness to the man wounded by the wayside shall reap tenderness when angels stoop to bind up his broken heart.