head of a band of English troops
and went forth to destroy the towns and villages of his boyhood and
pillaged the homes of his old friends. He sowed avarice, and of
avarice he reaped $30,000. He sowed distrust in America; he reaped
distrust from the Englishmen who had bought his honor. He sowed
treason; he reaped infamy. He sowed contempt for the colonists, and,
dying, he reaped the contempt from his old friends, who counted his
body carrion. For the harvests of the soul represent not arbitrary
degrees, but the workings of natural law. If Ceres, the goddess of
harvests, makes the sheaf to reap the seed, conscience, recalling man's
career, ordains that like produces like. What a man soweth that shall
he also reap is the law of nature and of God.

The heroes of the Old Testament are common people capitalized. What is
unique in the experience of these sons of greatness holds true of all
of lesser rank. The career of one of these giants is a pictorial
exhibition of this principle of the spiritual harvest. Young Jacob was
shrewd, crafty and full of foresight. If Esau, his brother, was a
"hail fellow well met," the child of his impulses, Jacob was a diplomat
and very wily. One day, when the father, Isaac, was blind and old,
Esau grew restless, and at last went away with his companions, for he
dearly loved to hunt. In that hour ambition tempted Jacob and avarice
led him away. Advantaging himself of his brother's absence, Jacob used
the skin of a kid to make his hands hairy, like the hands of Esau, and,
simulating the brother's voice, he extorted from his dying father those
tokens that, according to the Eastern custom, made him the successor to
his father's title, wealth and power. Full twoscore years passed
swiftly by and the deceit seems to have brought is large money returns
to crafty Jacob.

But silently nature was working out the harvest of retribution, through
that law of heredity that makes sons repeat the qualities of their
father. When Jacob was now advanced in years his ten sons began, to
develop craftiness, and soon they plowed great furrows of care in the
father's face. In those days of care his young son Joseph stole into
Jacob's heart like a sweet sunbeam, and, with his open, loving ways,
filled his father's heart with gladness. When the elder brothers knew
Jacob had given Joseph a coat of many colors they remembered the craft
of their father in his early career. One evening, when the herds an