[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 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.