Akin to the difficulty that the will of God is inscrutable and hard to
know, is the protest that to speak of Him as at work in the world to bring
in His kingdom, is remote from the actualities of daily life. As I have
walked about in Flanders, turning over thoughts about the onward movement
of God's purposes in the world, I have met those matchless monuments of
patient and unchanging daily toil, the peasants working in the fields.
Harnessed into the perpetual cycle of seed time and harvest, what can this
talk of movements and purposes in the great world be to them? Is
enthusiasm for the Kingdom of God possible only for those who are so
removed from the drudgery of existence that they can sit in the exhausted
air of committee rooms and talk about it? Or is it that under God's heaven
and close to the soil men know better? Is there no room for great
expectations in those pressed down into the thick of things?
There is telling truth here, but it is not the last word. The old man in
the fields--or is it the old wrinkled woman doing more than one man's
work?--knows that. They know that life cannot fully be measured by the
gauge of the individual's daily round. A word will bring pride and light
to their eyes. It is 'Vive la France!' They are citizens of a world wider
than their fields. They belong to 'La Patrie.' Their common tasks
count--only a little--but they do count in the world of great events. Life
is monotonous and cyclical, and yet it is more than that. Great changes
do arrive in days of crisis and convulsion--yes, in days of judgment, and
the victims of changelessness are caught up by movement. They are awakened
out of the sleep of humdrum existence, and are asked to give proof, and
proudly do give proof, that, plodders though they be, they belong to no
mean city.
This is true in the sphere of patriotism. It is true in the wider sphere
of the Kingdom of God. The difficulty here considered is one of the
products of our incorrigible individualism in religion. Christianity is
not narrow preoccupation with 'my soul.' It is an entrance into a sphere
as wide as the world. It is membership in a universal society which is
concerned with great causes and astir with deep movements. And be the
individual never so anchored in the daily and local necessities of
existence, he can nevertheless share with loyalty and pride and prayer
and service in the fortunes and onward march of the commonwealth of
Christ.