of men’s voices out of the clouds, has made heaven a sounding board for great congregations of cities, and faraway nations wrapped in darkness and silence whisper round the rolling earth.  Man has long had the spirit of defying the seas.  Now he has the technique and the motor-boat.  He has had the spirit of removing oceans and of building huge, underground cities, the spirit of caves in the ground and mansions in the sky, and now he has subways and skyscrapers.  For a thousand years he has had the spirit of Christ and now there is Frederick Taylor, Louis Brandeis, Westfield Pure Food, Doctor Carrel, Jane Addams, and Filene’s Store.  Vast networks—­huge spiritual machines of goodness are crowding and penetrating to-day, fifteen pounds to the square inch, the atmosphere of the gospel into the very core of the matter of the world, into the everyday things, into the solids of the lives of men.

It takes two great spirits of humanity to bring a great truth or a new goodness into this world; one spirit creates it, the other conceives it, gathers the earth about it and gives it birth.  These two spirits seem to be the spirits of the poet and the scientist.

We are taking to-day, many of us, an almost religious delight in them both.  We make no comparisons.

We note that the poet’s inspiration comes first and consists in saying something that is true, that cannot be proved.

A few people with imagination, here and there, believe it.

The scientist’s inspiration comes second and consists in seeing ways of proving it, of making it matter of fact.

He proves it by seeing how to do it.

Crowds believe it.

CHAPTER XIX

AND THE MACHINE STARTS

One of the things that makes one thoughtful in going about from city to city and dropping into the churches is the way the people do not sing in them and will not pray in them.  In every new strange city where one stops on a Sunday morning, one looks hopefully—­while one hears the chimes of bells—­at the row of steeples down the street.  One looks for people going in who seem to go with chimes of bells.  And when one goes in, one finds them again and again, inside, all these bolt-up-right, faintly sing-song congregations.

One wonders about the churches.

What is there that is being said in them that should make any one feel like singing?

The one thing that the churches are for is news—­news that would be suitable to sing about, and that would naturally make one want to sing and pray after one had heard it.

There is very little occasion to sing or to pray over old news.

Worship would take care of itself in our churches if people got the latest and biggest news in them.

News is the latest faith men have in one another, the last thing they have dared to get from God.