The deeper one goes into the subject of world democracy the more one is
convinced of the necessity of calling to one's aid the help of true
religion in formulating a world consciousness.
Walt Whitman, whom many may regard as somewhat unwise in some of his
utterances, was absolutely right when he intimated that world democracy
could not be formulated without religion.
And today there is nothing that is going to help people so effectively
to grasp and feel at home with the ideal of an essential union of the
nations, as the modern teaching of the immanence of God. If we are a
part of the whole world, and if God is in the seas as well as the
flowers and hills then we will not dread them, for they are our
inspiration and helpers.
Not only does the teaching of the immanence of God in the seas help the
nations into closer fellowship. But what is more than that, it helps the
soul of man to find in the waters a purpose. The seas themselves seem to
be up to something.
No man felt this secret of nature with keener appreciation than the late
Prof. J. J. Blaisdell of Beloit College, Wis. For in one of his
lectures, the notes of which, I still have, he says:
"Nature is expressive of a purpose. And no one has gotten the good of
nature until he has got the momentum of the mighty work that it is
working. Its face is steadily set forward. It is not static. It is not a
current running down. It is an achievement. When you stop and think of
it you are led to reflect that its onward movement is so stupendous
toward the working out of a far off divine event that if you should
throw yourself across its track you would be annihilated in a moment.
"I have stood on the shore of Lake Michigan on a stormy day in December
and the rhythm of that lake seemed to be the echo of the march of the
universe treading its victorious way into the future. It is about
something--its face is steadfastly set to go to Jerusalem. The firmness
of great souls is but its child and copy; and responded to, it is the
breeder of great souls.
"Now until we become alive to the expressiveness of purpose in nature, a
purpose expressed in feeling and ready to lackey man in his pilgrimage,
we fail to understand nature and lose much of the blessedness of living
in this world.
"And my simple question is, how comes about this expressiveness? Why,
simply there is a person who is projecting himself through this
embodiment and it is the revelation of him, just as our friends' ways
express the person of the friend behind them."
How grand are those words! And how helpful to men who desire the very
co-operation of the seas in fulfilling their plans in unifying the
races! For if Prof. Blaisdell was thus inspired with the thought of the
co-operation of the waters of Lake Michigan with the historic purposes
of man, what should the true freeman feel as he looks out over the
Pacific? I can only tell you what I have felt in the words on the
following page: