To my mind,
it follows immediately that there can be no king, no government of any
sort, which is not either a subordinate or a rebel government, a local
usurpation, in the kingdom of God. But no organised religious body has
ever had the courage and honesty to insist upon this. They all pander to
nationalism and to powers and princes. They exists so to pander. Every
organised religion in the world exists only to exploit and divert and
waste the religious impulse in man.
This conviction that the world kingdom of God is the only true method
of human service, is so clear and final in my own mind, it seems
so inevitably the conviction to which all right-thinking men must
ultimately come, that I feel almost like a looker-on at a game of
blind-man's bluff as I watch the discussion of synthetic political
ideas. The blind man thrusts his seeking hands into the oddest corners,
he clutches at chairs and curtains, but at last he must surely find and
hold and feel over and guess the name of the plainly visible quarry.
Some of the French and Italian people I talked to said they were
fighting for "Civilisation." That is one name for the kingdom of God,
and I have heard English people use it too. But much of the contemporary
thought of England stills wanders with its back to the light. Most of it
is pawing over jerry-built, secondary things.
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