ard Lord Bryce lecture in iced and polished and
classic phrases on the age-long problem of Church and State; had spoken
to two hundred theological students who might just be in Oxford or
Edinburgh, for their eyes were just the same--the eyes of youth, who
perennially believe that they at least were born to put this old world
right. (That is the wonderful feeling that keeps pulpits filled--the
feeling that however much the message has been spurned and others have
failed, yet I cannot fail--glorious dream of youth!) From that
atmosphere of reposeful idealism I was suddenly projected into the
midst of New York. It was a bewildering experience. A friend who knew
his way in the maze guided me to the Pennsylvania hotel, 'The biggest
hotel in the world, with 2200 baths!' I found a room on the twentieth
storey, served by an 'express' service of lifts. I could enter into
the feelings of the countryman who, descending in one of those for the
first time and seeing floor after floor flash past, murmured, 'Thank
God, I am safe so far.' Having secured our 'baths' we went forth to
see New York by night.

Straight as an arrow my friend brought me to the spots where the full
blaze of the illumined streets burst into view. On every hand the
street fronts blazed with multi-coloured lights. Rainbows of dazzling
splendour spanned the avenues. Above every sky-scraper, darkening the
stars, letters of fire proclaimed 'The Greatest Boot Emporium in the
World' or 'The Vastest Store in all the Universe.' St. John in his
dreams of apocalyptic splendour in Patmos could never have dreamed
anything weirder than this. Far as the eye could see down Fifth Avenue
the quivering lights proclaimed to the silent stars: 'We are the
people--the greatest on the earth!' But, after all, the world is but a
tenth-rate little gutta-percha ball in the immensity of infinitude, and
it was a comfort to think that the constellations were not impressed.
On our way back we rested in a 'Soda-Fountain' refreshment room where
we sucked nectar through straws. 'This,' said my friend, 'was a
notorious saloon before the war, and here are we, two douce parsons,
drinking in all the phylacteries of respectability.' That, on the
whole, was the most wonderful thing we saw that night in New York. But
as I looked from the dizzy height of my room in the sky-scraper, out on
that city of glittering light, I seemed to realise what it meant. That
building of monstrous heig