But it does
nothing to meet that profound dissatisfaction with this world and that
sense of the encumbrances of the flesh which is also a part of reality
and, to the religious man, perhaps the greater part. He wants to turn
away from all these present things and be kept secretly in a pavilion
from the strife of tongues. Here he has no continuing city. Always
while we dwell here we have a dim and restless sense that we are in an
unreal country and we know, in our still moments, that we shall only
come to ourselves when we return to the house of our Father. Hence
men have never been satisfied with religious leaders who chiefly
interpreted this world to them.
And indeed, since July, 1914, and down to and including this very
hour, this idealizing of time, which we had almost accepted as our
office, has had a ghastly exposure. Because there has come upon us all
one of these irrevocable and irremediable disasters, for which time
has no word of hope, to which Nature is totally indifferent, for which
the God of the outgoings and incomings of the morning is too small.
For millions of living and suffering men and women all temporal
and mortal values have been wiped out. They have been caught in a
catastrophe so ruthless and dreadful that it has strewed their bodies
in heaps over the fields and valleys of many nations. Today central
and south and northeastern Europe and western Asia are filled with
idle and hungry and desperate men and women.
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