Part 6 (2/2)
The key that is in tune with all other keys of its own instrument is in tune with all harmony on the earth. And the man that has attuned his life to justice and liberty in the community in which he lives is in accord with freemen in every land, loves the vision of world-wide liberty and prays for its realization.
Tagore, the Hindu poet, says: ”I have learned though our tongues are different and our habits dissimilar, at the bottom our hearts are one. The monsoon clouds, generated on the banks of the Nile, fertilize the far distant sh.o.r.es of the Ganges; ideas may have to cross from east to western sh.o.r.es to find a welcome in men's hearts.
East is east and west is west--G.o.d forbid that it should be otherwise--but the twain must meet in amity, peace and mutual understanding; and their meeting will be all the more fruitful because of their differences; it must lead to holy wedlock before the common altar of humanity.”
FOOTNOTE:
[E] I am indebted to Josiah Strong for some of the suggestions in these precepts.
VII
The Sea's Highest Decree
WHAT ARE THE SEAS ABOUT?
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 G.o.d. If we are a part of the whole world, and if G.o.d 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 G.o.d in the seas help the nations into closer fellows.h.i.+p. 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 sh.o.r.e 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.
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