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the might of the spirit of man has passed that way.

If an engine is to be looked at from the point of view of the man who
makes it and who knows it best; if it is to be taken, as it has a
right to be taken, in the nature of things, as being an expression of
the human spirit, as being that man's way of expressing the human
spirit, there shall be no escape for the children of this present
world, from the wonder and beauty in it, and the strong delight in it
that shall hem life in, and bound it round on every side. The idealism
and passion and devotion and poetry in an engineer, in the feeling he
has about his machine, the power with which that machine expresses
that feeling, is one of the great typical living inspirations of this
modern age, a fragment of the new apocalypse, vast and inarticulate
and far and faint to us, but striving to reach us still, now from
above, and now from below, and on every side of life. It is as though
the very ground itself should speak,--speak to our poor, pitiful,
unspiritual, matter-despising souls,--should command them to come
forth, to live, to gaze into the heart of matter for the heart of God.
It is so that the very dullest of us, standing among our machines, can
hardly otherwise than guess the coming of some vast surprise,--the
coming of the day when, in the very rumble of the world, our sons and
daughters shall prophesy, and our young men shall see visions, and our
old men shall dream dreams. It cannot be uttered. I do not dare to say
it. What it means to our religion and to our life and to our art, this
great athletic uplift of the world, I do not know. I only know that so
long as the fine arts, in an age like this, look down on the
mechanical arts there shall be no fine arts. I only know that so long
as the church worships the laborer's God, but does not reverence
labor, there shall be no religion in it for men to-day, and none for
women and children to-morrow. I only know that so long as there is no
poet amongst us, who can put himself into a word, as this man, my
brother the engineer, is putting himself into his engine, the engine
shall remove mountains, and the word of the poet shall not; it shall
be buried beneath the mountains. I only know that so long as we have
more preachers who can be hired to stop preaching or to go into life
insurance than we have engineers who can be hired to leave their
engines, inspiration shall be looked for more in engine cabs than in
pulpits,--t