gh deserts,
or sweeping on on horses through the plains, and now with his banners of
steam at last he has great public trains of cars carrying cities.

For hundreds of years man has had the spirit of the motor-car--of having
his own private locomotive or his own special train drive up to his
door--the spirit of making every road his railway. For a great many
years he has had the spirit of the wireless telegraph and of using the
sky. Franklin tried using the sky years ago but all he got was
electricity. Marconi knew how better. Marconi has got ghosts 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 m