28 October: Boreham on the Plough

God Speed the Plough
The fact that, at this time of year, the people of Australia hold their great Agricultural Shows recalls an interesting and suggestive incident which occurred in Chichester Cathedral a few weeks ago.[1] A plough was towed into the sacred fane and placed in front of the choir screen. And then, with the cathedral crowded with young farmers and with girls of the Land Army, the Bishop (Dr. G. K. A. Bell) solemnly blessed the huge implement that, at first blush, seemed so out of place in that impressive environment. It was, as "The Times" points out, the revival, after three centuries, of a very ancient rural custom. The ceremony may fittingly remind us of the immense debt that civilisation owes to agriculture. The plough is at once the instrument and the index of our progress. We get into the habit of regarding the cities as the natural expression of the amazing strides that scientific discovery has made. It is not without a salutary shock of surprise, therefore, that we are now and again confronted by the fact that the tilled field is far more truly typical of our modern social order than is the crowded city street.

Indeed, it is not too much to say that it was not until agriculture became an actuality that city life became a possibility. So long as the arts of pasturage and tillage were treated with contempt, barbarism held, age after age, its universal sway. When, on the other hand, the culture of the soil came to be regarded as an honourable pursuit, then some of the finest pages in human history came to be written. Those who have enjoyed "Hereward the Wake"—one of the greatest historical romances in the language—will scarcely forget the sudden transition in the last chapter. Throughout the entire book Kingsley has dealt with the redoubtable exploits of Hereward's sword. There is a splash of blood on every page. But the last chapter magnifies the achievement of Hereward's successor, Richard de Rulos, "the first of those agricultural squires who are England's blessing and England's pride." Over the tomb of Hereward, his admirers wrote the inscription: "Here lies the last of the old English"; but over the grave of Richard they wrote: "Here lies the first of the new English"; and all men felt that his was the finer tribute. The new and better day had dawned.

The Worship Of Mars Made Progress Impossible
During that dark and peaceless age in which Britain was successively invaded by the Romans, the Saxons, and the Danes, war was regarded as the only science worthy of true manhood. Children were carried by their fathers to the sanguinary conflicts in order that they might imbibe the fearful passion for slaughter. Only such tillage was undertaken as was absolutely needful. The culture of the soil was looked upon as the pursuit of the feeble and the timid; it was only undertaken by slaves, prisoners-of-war and men destined to exist under the scowl of their fellows. A labourer who learned to love such tasks was treated as having fallen below the level of the brutes. To guard against such a degrading attachment, the magistrates of that rude age were instructed to see that all tilled fields changed hands at least once a year. It was deemed an indelible disgrace to acquire by the sweat of one's brow what might have been attained by pillage and bloodshed.

The same sorry ideals found favour among the Scythians, Tartars, and other peoples who infested Northern Europe during the earlier centuries of the present era. The entire nation was an army and the people were perpetually on the march. A settled life was an abomination to them. Agriculture was regarded as an effeminate pursuit. Their herds of cattle constantly accompanied them. They lived exclusively on flesh and milk. The camp, never well arranged, was a butchers' shambles and historians have agreed in attributing to those constant scenes of cruelty, and to the nature of their diet, the ferocious and sanguinary propensities of these primitive peoples.

Mystical Forces Operate Behind The Scenes
About the beginning of the eleventh century a remarkable and beneficent transformation spread itself over the face of Europe, revolutionising the history of every nation. The Danes and the Scandinavians, the two peoples most of all responsible for the ages of unrest, discovered the benefits of agriculture and settled down to pursue the new science with characteristic energy and vigour. They found to their astonishment, and revealed to other nations, that the soil beneath their feet was itself the natural source of those boons and blessings which they had vainly sought on fields of carnage. They beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks; and, slowly but surely, a new day dawned.

But the ceremony at Chichester touches a still deeper chord. It used to be said that the farm is everybody's business:

It's the business of the kings upon their thrones;
It's the business of the
man who's breaking stones;
It's the business of the squire up at the
hall;
It's the business of the ostler at the stall;

And so on. But the ceremony at Chichester Cathedral reminds us that heaven itself regards the processes of the field as its business also. Having assumed the responsibility of creating us in such a way that we are utterly dependent upon the fruitfulness of the farm, Almighty God sees to it, year by year, that our expectation, in this regard, is not disappointed. There is always such an abundance in one place that the deficiencies of another are fully redressed. Nobody knows how the subtle processes of fertilisation and germination are performed. The scientist cannot tell; the farmer has no idea. We only know that the seed is committed to the ground; it rots and dies; it seems to be lost for ever; and then, by some magic or miracle beyond the limits of our thought it springs up, lives again and is multiplied a hundred-fold. Nobody who gives serious thought to this phenomenon will wonder that, from the time of its inception, the annual Agricultural Show in Melbourne has always been opened with the Doxology.

[1] This editorial appears in the Hobart Mercury on October 20, 1945.

F W Boreham

Image: A plough