to the Future.  Earth and Heaven both send forth an invitation for supreme interest in their thoughts and feelings.  History and literature call to them to emulate the achievements whose monuments they see about them, while the Cross admonishes them that these achievements are but temporal.  Here they experience a fulfillment of their desires.  Their knowledge is broadened, and their faith is lifted up.  The Past thrills them; the Future inspires them; and thus the Present is far more worth while.

=House of Parliament.=—­Across the way is Parliament, and this conjures up a long train of events of vast import.  The currents that flow out from this power-house have encircled the globe.  Here conquests have been planned that electrified nations.  Here have been generated vast armies and navies as messengers of Desire.  Here have been voted vast treasures in execution of the desires of men for territorial extension and national aggrandizement.  These halls have resounded with the eloquence of men who were striving to inoculate other men with the virus of their desires; and the whole world has stood on tiptoe awaiting the issue of this eloquence.  Momentous scenes have been enacted here, all emanating from the desires of men, and these scenes have touched the lives of untold millions of people.

=Commerce.=—­We see the Thames near by, teeming with ships from the uttermost corners of the earth, and we think of commerce.  We use the word glibly, but no mind is able to comprehend its full import.  We know that these ships ply the seas, bearing food and clothing to the peoples who live far away, but when we attempt to estimate the magnitude of commerce, the mind confesses to itself that the problem is too great.  We may multiply the number of ships by their tonnage, but we get, in consequence, an array of figures so great that they cease to have any meaning for the finite mind.  The best and most that they can do for us is to make us newly aware that the people who dwell in the jungles of Africa, who roam the pampas of South America, who climb the Alps, the Rockies, the Andes, and the Himalayas, all have desires that these ships are striving to gratify.

=Social intercourse.=—­Going up the river to Hampton Court we see people out for a holiday.  There are house-boats with elaborate and artistic fittings and furnishings, and other craft of every sort that luxury can suggest.  One could imagine that none but fairies could stage such a scene.  The blending of colors, the easy dalliance, the rippling laughter, the graceful feasting, and the eddying wavelets all conspire to produce a scene that serves to emphasize the beauty of the shores.  Underneath this enchanting scene of variegated beauty we discover the fundamental fact that man is a gregarious animal, that he not only craves association with his kind but that playing with them brings him into more harmonious communion with them.  In their play they meet upon the plane of a common purpose and are thus unified in spirit.  Hence, all this beauty and gayety is serving a beneficent purpose in the way of gratifying the inherent desire of mankind for social intercourse.