LAND AND SEA BREEZES
The land is better for the sea,
The ocean for the shore.
—Larcom.
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"The tide is rising, let the land be glad. The breathless, rollicking, happy tides, whose comings are in truth the gladness of the world!"—Quayle.
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How much earth's flowers, hills, valleys and human life owe to the sea breezes. And how indispensable are the clear mountain streams to the sea, in pouring fresh water into its salty heart.
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How joyful are the waters, when the earth yields up its hosts of travellers, merchants, ambassadors, missionaries, educators, homeseekers and international statesmen to relieve the lonesomeness of its wide-flowing deep. All hail to the many ships that pass by sea!
* * * * *
"The earth is rude, silent and incomprehensive at first—
Be not discouraged—keep on—there are divine things well enveloped;
I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell."
—Walt Whitman.
THE PIONEERS OF THE WORLD
O far-seeing seers,
Looking over the shoulders of empires and nations, unconsciously dwarfed with prejudice,
Telescopic in vision, down the vista of the centuries,
You know not how far and deep you thought,
Nor what beginnings you wrought;
For we hasten to crown you, the world pioneers.
* * * * *
Call the roll of the men whose minds have companioned with the globe!
Who were these staunch henchmen of a race,
Getting their inspiration from a pillared cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night,
And negotiating with the continents and seas of an earth?
Who were these world pioneers?
* * * * *
Courageous Magellan, you were the first of the spheric heroes,
Who with your fifteen braves looking out from an isthmian cliff, civilization's bleakest frontier,
Out upon an untrailed, unsailed, trackless deep,
Was the first to push away from an Astec—hugged shore,
And send westward your creaking craft so mightily propelled by an explorer's tireless heart,
That when at Maclan island the red man's arrow struck you to the earth,
The mighty spirit of your immortal soul so fired your companion's wills,
That they with invincible force encircled the globe—
Past the Celestial Empire, doubling Cape Good Hope
And into Seville Roads, they came!
The first to complete the voyage about the sphere!
The first to exclaim, "the world, the world."
* * * * *
And inconquerable Cyrus Field you were one;
Who by linking Valentia and New Foundland,
Awakening to mutual speech two continents that were mutually dumb,—
Was, in spite of repeated breakings and the cowardly desertion of avowed friends,
The first, O indomitable knight of a world's progress,
To successfully lay the Atlantic cable.
The first to start a conversation between two hemispheres
And with initial message to yonder shores proclaim:
"Europe and America are now by telegraph united
To God be glory, in the highest
And on earth peace and good will toward men."
Indispensable pioneer, you wedded the continents as Goethals united the seas.
And now the voice of man is naturalized to a sphere.
It can be heard through the nations, around the world.
Whether Caucasian or Mongolian—he can talk about the globe.
* * * * *
And distance-vanishing Fulton, you were one;
Who—launching upon the waters the first steam-propelled ship, the Cleremont,
From who's experimental hull leaped into existence
The Savanah, the Great Eastern and Britannia,
Each moving faster, faster than the one before—
Was the first to draw together the continents, like some Colossus with a shortening cord of time
Until from coast range to distant shores
And from distant shores to coast range
Each new speeding steamer brings us closer,
Making more certain the intermingling of the races preparing for the brotherhood of man.
* * * * *
And great Augustine, dissolute as a youth
But angelic as a man, you were one;
Who—the humblest and the quickest to recognize
That since the day of Christ all noble men were sent,
And that constrained and resolute with Paul and with Peter they had gone—
Was the first—thank God you appeared—to marshal the good men for conquest,
To organize into missionary ranks the vision'd souls of the church,
Dispatching spirit-armored heroes from Rome to early England's soil
And preventing the annihilation of Christian hope and truth.
* * * * *
Noble prophet! Little did you know, O Augustine, what you had done.
Unbrazened in the face, illuminated with the divine,
With the crystal eye of goodness looking light and health into pagan nights,
And cowering Lust's mountain hurling hosts,
Followed by new recruits, since then the ranks have grown.
Men have come one by one and year by year
Until fifteen thousand heralded volunteers and ninety thousand native workers
Now can be seen from glad heavens Missionary Ridge, offering light and character on heathen fields!
Far-reaching, sea-exploring, colonizing England in its youth saved for enlightenment!
Christ inspired it! But you achieved it!
And today, as the oceans and the continents are united,
So five hundred and sixty-five million followers are gradually demanding that the races and the peoples
In essential Christianity—the good recognizing in other faiths—shall be one.
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And mind-emancipating Luther, thou art one—
Fearing only God and truth.
Hating naught but sham and falsehood!
For traveling back from our day into medieval darkness—
(The chains, hear them rattle! But also hear them snap in a true reformers clutch
Causing multitudes to rise from superstition
And stand upon their feet, erect in the freedom of a simple faith)—
We there behold the pioneer of intellectual freedom,
A simple monk, commanding the low-browed ignorance of a whole dark continent to think,
Awakening the western world to science, to true religion and to thought;
Until the mind of the sullen masses of Europe now is brooding,
And in America it is voting,
While the public mind of the world is becoming more and more habituated to reason for international concourse.
For the Bible, the rocks and the skys are unchained,
Because Luther lived and honestly dared for the truth!
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These are the men—inspired by Him who altered times calendar and began an Easter day—
Who took epochal steps for the world's conquest.
That directly achieved in encircling the globe.
But there are others, a host of others, worthy, noble, world pioneers.
* * * * *
O indispensable pioneers, see them moving out in history,
Just as bravely, just as necessary, often giving inspiration to the first,
Most of them impelled forward by Columbus and Copernicus—
The inspirers of explorers, the pioneers of the pioneers.
* * * * *
Consecrated to humanity and the world, look backward and see the host of sphere-ward moving men;
See the explorers—with Columbus, Balboa, Drake, Desoto opening up a new west.
See the scientists—Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, daring to say that God is in life.
See the philosophers—Aristotle, Plato, Hegel, Kant and Eucken.
See the missionaries—Judson, Carey, Thomas, Livingstone, Moffat and Morrison.
See the inventors—Stevenson, Watt, Marconi, Edison and Bell.
See the patriots—Solon, Savonarola, Cromwell, Henry, Lincoln and Gladstone.
Mighty huers through the forests,—
See them laboring for a nation in some special task or knowledge,
But incidentally and emphatically for the world.
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And turn your eyes from the past to the present to observe your own world inspired sons!
See them moving toward the international congress and the Hague,
The greatest educators, ambassadors and financiers,
See them increasing in their numbers, for they also will be counted with the world pioneers.
* * * * *
O Copernicus, we hail thee for announcing to timid minds that the earth, "it is a globe."
O Kepler and Newton, we celebrate you for asserting it is true.
O Galileo, we honor and respect you for looking superstition squarely in the face and before highest potentates declaring:
"But nevertheless it does move!"
We commemorate you all master-minded men,
Who have announced, and explored and unified the globe.
Surely these are not pygmies nor dwarfs.
But in achievement, they are Titans, they are giants,
They are the immortal pioneers of the world.
* * * * *
And these lives moving forward, have they all been lived for naught!
No! A thousand times no, O far-sighted men, now enlisting for new world movements!
Speak the message of the united seas with at least a prophetic international preamble
And announce the coming of essential democracy for the world.
[C] THE OLIVE BRANCH AS AN EMBLEM OF WORLD PEACE
In history the olive has been nobly emblematic of three virtues—peace, purity and industry with its attendant prosperity. And I mention these three virtues for which the olive stands because we will never in the world establish peace unless it is preceded in community, state and nation by virile-mindedness, which is the very secret of industry and prosperity wherever they are found.
Whenever the Greek looked out at a foothill mantled with an olive orchard, gently waving in the distance, a sea of bluish-green leaves; or seized upon an olive branch, he was reminded of the fact that no man was worthy of a crown of olives unless he was right-minded, peace-loving, and industrious. For, the placing of a crown of olive twigs on the brow of a person was the highest distinction that could be bestowed on a citizen who had merited well of his country.
Not only were the noble-minded statesmen and poets thus honored, but also the athletes who, by scrupulous care and development of the body, gained physical victories at the Olympic games. The harmless and commendable victories of peace always result from well-developed manhood. And so on the last day of these games the victor received, in front of the temple, the crown of wild olives gathered from the sacred tree. For the olive was sacred to Minerva, the goddess of wisdom and therefore of purity, peace and prosperity.
Among the Romans also it had a similar significance. The olive crown of the Roman conqueror at an ovation and those of the equites at the imperial review, alike typified the gifts of peace that, in a barbaric age, could be secured by victory only. I say all history has associated the olive with these three superb virtues, wherever the olive tree has grown. But if secular history has offered the olive branch to the conqueror in honor of a peace secured through contest or war, the surprising thing about the olive in Biblical history is that it represents peace as coming directly to an individual, community, or nation because of a Christian-mindedness—a type of mind that is controlled by reason, justice, love, intelligence, and purity of thought.
For, what do these striking verses in the Prophet Zechariah mean?—
"'What sees't thou? And I said, I have looked, and behold a candlestick all of gold with a bowl upon the top of it and his seven lamps thereon.
"'And two olive trees by it, one upon the right side of the bowl, and the other upon the left side thereon'."
What do these beautiful verses mean? Simply this,—that the source of all peace, individual and international, is that type of mind which Christ and Christian statesmen have. The two olive trees, one on each side of the candlestick, stand for Christian character—one for the stern moral character of the prophet, the other for the mercy of the true religious teacher. And the candlestick stands for work, for service for mankind and the nations. And as both of the olive trees supply the light with oil, so we are not to seek for peace on earth with the sword, but by increasing the number of men whose service for humanity is controlled by Christian morality and justice, mercy, and kindness.
These are the men who will bring peace. God increase the number! These are the men that providence can use to correlate the nations into essential democracy. These are the men who are worthy of a crown of olives! These are the men that we must depend upon to correct the compass of the ship of the world, as it moves forward against the besetting fury of antagonistic waters, bearing its prow day by day and year by year against the unwearied enmity of hateful waves, until it reaches the haven of essential international peace.
[D] THE INEVITABLE DRIFT
For the earth—
The white enfolded, or green Easter world,
Warmed by nature's heart into a new bursting life—
Like the universe, the earth is a perfect spherical creation,
And because the world is a sphere, the most perfect of figures,
Animated and endowed with purpose and reason,
It is therefore much better than all other forms.
* * * * *
And so man, with humanity-love and reason gifted,
Feeling that he is a part of all that thrills in sod, sky or sea,
Developed, demands the fullness of the globe's life as his home.
And to look not beyond a continent or nation,
Is barbaric, retrogressive and sinful;
For He that said, to the child of every race, "be thou perfect,"
Thereby also commands to be naturalized to the sphere.
And this, O armies and bigots is the inevitable drift!
ESSENTIAL DEMOCRACY
It may be helpful to relate, in just a word, what is meant in this volume by essential democracy, essential united earth and similar expressions. Springing from the Christian idea that all men are created equal in the sight of God, in opportunity, it stands for that type of society in which the essential power of government is wielded by the mass of the people.
The one thing that it is important to remember is that a monarchy or an oligarchy is not necessarily an antithesis of democracy—only absolutism in the form of a monarchy or oligarchy or plutocracy is an antithesis to democratic principles.
Many governments which live under the standard of a republic are not democratic in spirit at all. Mexico has virtually been a despotism. The Spanish-American states, especially until recent years, were nothing but a specie of military tyranny. And France has often been only a bureaucracy in structure and in state.
By essential democracy we mean the gradual triumph of the principles which emphasize the equality of man before God, and which are everywhere coming into increasing recognition throughout the world.
One author says that before the middle of the nineteenth century all the great European states, with the exception of Russia and Turkey, had adopted a constitution limiting the power of the crown "and investing a considerable share of political power in the people, and in most of them a representative legislature of the parliamentary or British type was adopted." While in Switzerland, Norway and Sweden alone on the continent democracy has reached a type of true efficiency. And these triumphs must be remembered by the people for the sake of future inspiration and courage; and because it may help one to interpret the present European war as an agony incident to the progress of growth.
It is true that the victory of the principle of democracy has been checked by the persisting of the military spirit in Europe and the wonderful industrial expansion in both Europe and America. In England also the triumph "has been delayed by the prevalence of aristocratic traditions which still grant privileges and rights to a social class based on berth and inherited wealth." While in American the simplicity of the colonial life and the absence of the people from the aristocratic classes of Europe promoted a vigorous and commanding growth of the democratic ideas. And this is why the nations of the world in their struggle for democracy are looking to America, because she has the most nearly of all nations realized the democratic ideal.
In light of what has already been accomplished, how inspiring then becomes the lure of the ideal of world democracy. Essentially it is splendidly possible. The people crave it because it is God-born. They love to think and work and vote for that far-off divine event. And more than that the words, monarchy and oligarchy, are so out of date that they are anxious to be in spirit and letter citizens of a republic. And wherever the leaven is working thrones are in danger, because great things are going to happen on this God-guided globe, in the interest of humanity.
Let it be remembered that there are fifty recognized governments in the world; and that of this number twenty-six are republics, twenty limited monarchies, with democratic features, and only four absolute monarchies. The very thought of this is an inspiration and shows that all the nations are rapidly moving in the direction of essential world democracy.
A PRAYER FOR WORLD CITIZENS
Our Father, who art in heaven—the God of humanity—hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in the whole earth as it is in heaven.
Give the nations this day their daily bread;
And forgive them their trespasses as they forgive the nations that trespass against them.
And lead them not into the temptation of conquest or self aggrandizement, but deliver them through their rulers from this evil.
For thine is the world kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen.
At the Congress of Religions held at the World's Fair at Chicago in 1893, when the question came up as to what would be an appropriate devotional appeal to be used in opening the Congress, the representatives of every religion and faith of the world unanimously agreed that the Lord's Prayer found in the Sermon on the Mount would be acceptable to all. And the one given above is an adaption from the Lord's Prayer, given in order that it may be seen how well its spirit could be adapted to world democracy.
