The Fruit of His Labor.

Blessed is the man whose toil and striving of a lifetime bring results, even though he, himself, does not live to see them!

Thrice blessed is the man, the fruit of whose labor is garnered while he is among the living, to see and enjoy it!

The prophet Isaiah was a thrice-blessed man. Although no one knows where or how he died, every one knows where and how he lived, and how his life was fruitful in blessings for his people.

He saw kings come and go on the throne of Judah. He passed through many crises in the history of his country. He experienced many woes because of his patriotic devotion to the welfare of his land and people.

But through it all he remained, uncomplainingly, staunch in his faith and true to his God. He believed, implicitly, in the justness of God and, therefore, in His demand of righteousness as the standard of living for the people. Isaiah's own strength, in time of trial and tribulation, came from his trust in God; and that same trust he urged upon Jerusalem and Judah in his day and, through his discourses, upon all men, for all time.

Thus it was given Isaiah to see the fruit of his labor in the peace and prosperity of Judah during the remainder of his life which he, undoubtedly, spent in peace with his family in his home in Jerusalem.

It is no wonder that he conceived the ideal of a time of universal peace, in which God shall be the God of all the nations, an era in which all peoples shall come to Him, and believe in Him, and follow in His law, and live such just and righteous lives that there would be an end to war in all the earth:

"It shall come to pass, in the end of days,
That the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established at the
top of the mountains,
And it shall be exalted above the hills;
And peoples shall flow unto it.
And many nations shall go and say,
'Come ye, and let us go up to the mountains of the Lord,
And to the house of the God of Jacob;
And he will teach us of His ways,
And we will walk in His paths.'
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem,
And He shall judge between the nations,
And arbitrate for many peoples;
And they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
And their spears into pruning hooks;
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
Neither shall they learn war any more."

THE COMMONER

CHAPTER I.

His Awakening.

Sloping down from the Judean hills toward the plain of Philistia and the Mediterranean Sea is the Shefelah, or Lowlands, a section of Palestine, far-famed for its stretches of rich farm lands, vineyards and olive groves.

These foothills were once the constant battlefield on which the Israelites from the hill country and the Philistines from the plain struggled for mastery; but, since the days of King Amaziah, who conquered Philistia soon after he came to the throne of Judah, in the year 798, the Shefelah, far away from the political turmoils in Samaria and Jerusalem, was one of the most peaceful and richest farm sections in Israel or Judah.

Up in Samaria, in the year 734, Hoshea, son of Elah, had played the traitor and had bent his head to Tiglath-Pileser, the Assyrian conqueror. Up in Jerusalem, Ahaz, son of Jotham, had acted the coward and had slipped his neck under the Assyrian yoke. But down in the Shefelah, on the lower highlands, politics and political intrigues played little part in the lives of the humble peasant folk.

Numerous towns and villages dotted the Shefelah, especially on the highway running northeast from Gaza, in Philistia, to Jerusalem, in Judah. These towns and villages were the centers where the neighboring farmers gathered at set times and where the many daily wage earners lived all the time.

Rich and fertile sections like the Shefelah were the backbone, the strength and the power of Israel and Judah. While the high and mighty princes and merchants lived in the capitals and squandered their wealth, the simple and hard-working farm folk and wage earners made up the bone and muscle of the population, raised the necessities of life and, in times of need, furnished the sinews of war.

Yet, notwithstanding the fertility of the Shefelah, its rich fields and olive groves, its plentiful and well-watered pasture lands, the farmers in the entire section, had to live from hand to mouth. Though they labored hard at their toil, they were, in fact, poor and unable to lay aside anything for a rainy day.

It was very difficult to become reconciled to such a condition of affairs. No one seemed interested enough to fathom the reason for it, except a certain young peasant, named Micah, who had a home in the town of Moresheth, and was the proud possessor of several well-paying olive groves and vineyards in the vicinity.

Micah's interest in the population was aroused, one day, when the widow of one of his neighbors came to him for advice. Her husband had owned a farm, adjoining one of Micah's pastures, on which there was a heavy mortgage. Now that the head of the family was gone, the merchant in Jerusalem, who held the mortgage, threatened to eject the widow and the children, because they could neither pay the amount borrowed nor the interest due thereon.

The sturdy young peasant, brought up in a home of severe simplicity, where gentleness and kindness were taught and practiced, pitied the woman and her children in their sad plight and loaned her the needed interest payment to stave off ejection from her home. Thereafter, he looked after her family until the oldest son was able to manage his own affairs.

Talking to some of his day-laborers he discovered a very amazing situation. He found that most of them had, at one time or another, owned their farms, but had lost possession of them through lawsuits, in which mortgage holders from Jerusalem had involved them, or through unjust treatment on the part of tax collectors and corrupt judges.

More amazing still was the knowledge that, all through the Shefelah, the majority of vineyards and olive groves were not owned by those who cultivated them, at all, but that they formed the vast estates of the princes and wealthy men of Jerusalem.

The beautiful and fertile Shefelah, then, was not the habitation of happy and contented tillers of the soil, who sang at their tasks and prided themselves upon their independence! It was in the heavy grip of a land trust, controlled by the great interests in the capital!

This knowledge caused Micah to enter upon his investigations with greater interest and deeper feeling. He discovered that the nobility and the rich were fattening upon the sweat and toil of the rural and working population. A farmer thrown into debt was sure to lose his acres, and a wage earner, having no possessions that could be taken from him, was sure to lose his liberty. Widows and orphans were quickly robbed of their inheritances by the greedy land-grabbers of the metropolis, aided by a corrupt judiciary.

All this was a severe shock to the young peasant. He, himself, born and raised on a farm, had inherited his father's estates free from debt. He lived simply, worked hard, saved a neat sum every year—and imagined that every one else was doing the same.

Awakened to the real condition of affairs, Micah now determined to leave his estates in the care of his trusted overseers and to go to the great and famed cities of his land, to study at first hand the causes that had made possible the terrible economic and social wrongs in his section of the country.