This would be no new and foreign element imported into our religion. It would be a modern revival of the doctrine of Jesus himself, which has been too long submerged and neglected. One chief reason why it was side-tracked is that no despotic State and no society dominated by a predatory class ever wanted religion applied to a reconstruction of the social order. The idea of the Kingdom of God reawoke with the rise of modern democracy. Now is the time for it.
III
The idea of the Kingdom of God is not identified with any special social theory. It means justice, freedom, fraternity, labor, joy. Let each social system and movement show us what it can contribute and we will weigh its claims. We want the old ideal defined in modern terms, in the terms of modern democracy, of the power machine, of international peace, and of evolutionary science. But we want to embrace it with the old religious faith and ardor, so that we can pray over it.
This great task of establishing a righteous social life on earth embraces all minor tasks in so far as they are good. The mother who tries to make a good home, the farmer who feeds the people, the teacher who trains them, the scientist who gets the facts for all, the merchant, the workingman, the artist, the leader in play—they are all contributing to the Kingdom, provided they view their work so, and are trying to put an evolutionary plus into it which will lift the total nearer to the divine will. The Kingdom is the supreme task, and all small tasks are part of it. That gives every man a place in it who works—where is the idler's place in it?—and it hallows all good work with religious glory.
It may seem as if this social aim of religion may depreciate the aim of developing our own personality and of saving our souls. It ought not. Sometimes it does for a time. But we are each so enormously important to ourselves that we are not likely to forget ourselves, and the practical struggle with temptation and sorrow will teach us to seek strength for our personal needs from Christ. In time we shall learn to say with Jesus, “For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified.” In time surrender to the Kingdom ideal, toil for it, self-denial for it, cooperation with others for it, will have the strongest kind of reactions on ourselves and our moral fiber. Gymnasium work is all right, but real work in the open is better. We are most durably saved by putting in hard work for the Kingdom of God.
In every great task a religious man is consciously thrown back on the aid of God—most of all in the greatest task of all. Eternal powers are cooperating with our puny efforts. That alone guarantees that our work is not wasted. We plant and water, but unless God's sun shines upon it, our work is nothing. He is a fool that is not reverent and humble. We sorely need this faith in the collaboration and patience of God today when so much of the best spiritual achievement of mankind is swept away, and we seem far away from a kingdom of love. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
IV
Here, then, we have another social principle of Jesus. A collective moral ideal is a necessity for the individual and the race. Every man must have a conscious determination to help in his own place to work out a righteous social order for and with God. The race must increasingly turn its own evolution into a conscious process. It owes that duty to itself and to God who seeks an habitation in it. It must seek to realize its divine destiny. “Thy kingdom come! Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven!” This is the conscious evolutionary program of Jesus. It combines religion, social science, and ethical action in a perfect synthesis.
What has this to say to students? Everything, it seems.
First, whatever is to be our particular job, we must relate it to the supreme common task at which God and all good men are working. Unless we see and assert that relation, we are mere day-laborers or slaves, with neither intelligence nor enthusiasm.