1 J. E. B. Mayor.
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that which is shed from folly will spring up into folly, and that which is sown of truth bear fruit of truth, according to the ground it is cast on, some thirtyfold, some sixty, some an hundred.^
^ The story of Adam Bede is a tragedy arising from the inexorable consequences of human deeds. It will be remembered that it was Charles Bray who first set George Eliot meditating on the law of consequences. Sara Hennell had thought much about it too. She wrote in Christianity and Infidelity : " When the law of moral consequences is recognized as fixed and absolute, the hope to escape from it would be as great madness as to resist the law of gravitation." George Eliot's best known expression of this law is in Bomola : " Our deeds are like our children that are born to us ; they live and act apart from our own will. Nay children may be strangled, but deeds never : they have an indestructible life both in and out of our own consciousness." This is the old Buddhist doctrine of Karma. St. Paul had put it still more briefly : " Be not deceived ; God is not mocked : for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." This law was not fatal to St. Paul, because he believed in regeneration. George Eliot followed Charles Bray. For him, the responsible person was he who, recognizing the inexorable consequences, governed himself accordingly. Nemesis was George Eliot's watchword, but in her handling of this law she approached to the Greek Fate rather than to St. Paul. It is this Fate that makes much of the extra- ordinary impressiveness of Adam Bede. Arthur Donnithorne's sin brought its retribution of terrible suffering not only to himself, but to Hetty, to Adam, to the Poysers, " There's a sort of wrong that can never be made up for," are the words wrung from him after bitter experience.*
3. The harvest corresponds in kind to the sowing. Each seed produces its own kind, because God has so ordained. That which we reap from off the fields of nature is always of the same species as that which we have sown. No sane man, even if he should be the most unquestioning believer in the transmutation of species, would expect a crop of valuable grain from an inclosure which he had sown with tares ; and every husbandman when he plants his corn does so in the confidence that, according to the uniformity of nature's operations, he will have a harvest of the same. He has no manner of doubt about it. There may be sometimes a question
* Rnskin, Belation of Ethics to Arts, % 5 ( W&rks, xix. IM.). ' C. Gardnw, The Iwmt Life of Oeorge Eliei, 117.
436 SOWING AND REAPING
in his mind during a long drought as to whether he shall have a larger or smaller crop, possibly even as to whether he shall have a crop at all ; but he knows that if he have any crop it will be of the same kind as that which he has planted. On the plane of material nature, then, every one understands, admits and acts upon this principle as an absolute law admitting of no exception — " Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."
Our Lord endorses this principle in his Beatitudes. He affirms that the soul's reward matches the soul's effort and expectatioa If we hunger and thirst after righteousness, we shall be satisfied with righteousness, and with nothing lower. We reap that which we sow the seed of, and not any other kind of grain. There are some Christians who repine and grow despondent because they do not find themselves reaping a harvest which they have no right ta look for. If you hunger and thirst after riches or renown, rathei than after righteousness, you may win them on the same terms. If you devote yourself, body and soul, to becoming a successful man rather than a good man, you may probably succeed ; only it is not possible to achieve both aims at once.
^ Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he reap. Mind you, he shall not only see it grow and see it ripen, but he shall reap. And everything you sow shall grow, and you, and you only, shall most certainly reap. Be sure your sin will find you out. It won't perhaps be found out. But, I say, it will find you out. It will grow and grow and eat out your life. It will run you to earth a doomed man. For the end of these things is Death. And you will reap in many directions. You may not know the seed or the ground you sow, but sow and you will reap. Men know thistles from oats. You sow and sow, and then you hope God will forgive and your page be clean. I answer you. Nay. Sow thistles, and thistles will come up. Sow oats, and thistles will not come up, oats will come up. "Sow thistles," you say, "and then sow good oats, and thus clear the thistles." No, the harvest will be thistles and oats.^
^ One story connected with this time Mr. Erskine used to tell. It was of the Eev. William Dow, a good man, who was minister of a parish in the south of Scotland, but who for siding with the views of Mr. Campbell of Eow was called to stand his trial before the General Assembly. On the Sunday immediately before he went to Edinburgh for his trial, beincr quite sure what fate awaited