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You tell your child that this pine tree out here in the sandy field is one day going to be as large as that great sonorous pine that sings to every wind in the wood. The child, incredulous, determines to watch and see whether the field pine really does grow and become as large as you say it will. So, the next morning, he goes out and takes a look at it, and comes back and says, "It has not grown a bit." The next week he goes out and looks at it again, and comes back and says, "It has not grown yet. Father said it would be as large as the pine tree in the wood, but I do not see any likelihood of its becoming so." How long did it take the pine tree in the wood to grow? Two hundred years. Then men who lived when it began to grow have been buried, and generations besides have come and gone since then. And do you suppose that God's kingdom is going to grow so that you can look at it, and see that it has grown during any particular day? You cannot see it grow. All around you are things that are growing, but that you cannot see grow. And if it is so with trees, and things that spring out of the ground, how much more is it so with the kingdom of God? That kingdom is advancing surely, though it advances slowly, and though it is invisible to us...You cannot see it, even if you watch for it; but there it is; and if, after a while, you go and look at it, you will be convinced that it has been advancing, by the results produced. You will find that things have been done, though you could not see them done. Men are becoming better the world over, though you cannot trace the process by which they are becoming better. Christ's kingdom goes forward from age to age, though you cannot discern the steps by which it is going forward. While men, as individuals, pass off from the stage of life, God's work does not stop.

(H. W. Beecher.)

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KJV: And he said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground;

WEB: He said, "The Kingdom of God is as if a man should cast seed on the earth,