lands!...

And these things I see suddenly, what mean they
As if some miracle, some hand divine unsealed my eyes,
Shadowy vast shapes smile through the air and sky,
And on the distant waves sail countless ships,
And anthems in new tongues I hear saluting me."_




CHAPTER I

WHERE ARE WE GOING?


The best picture I know of my religion is Ludgate Hill as one sees it
going down the foot of Fleet Street. It would seem to many perhaps like
a rather strange half-heathen altar, but it has in it the three things
with which I worship most my Maker in this present world--the three
things which it would be the breath of religion to me to offer to a God
together--Cathedrals, Crowds, and Machines.

With the railway bridge reaching over, all the little still locomotives
in the din whispering across the street; with the wide black crowd
streaming up and streaming down, and the big, faraway, other-worldly
church above, I am strangely glad. It is like having a picture of one's
whole world taken up deftly, and done in miniature and hung up for one
against the sky--the white steam which is the breath of modern life, the
vast hurrying of our feet, and that Great Finger pointing toward heaven