g on in the dark to a
catastrophe or a glory that we cannot guess, it is a time for men to
pray a prayer, a standing-up prayer, to one another.

I believe that it is going to be this huge gathering-in of public
desire, this imperious challenge of what men want, this standing-up
prayer of men to one another, which alone shall make men go forth with
faith and singing once more into the battle of life. Sometimes it has
seemed to me I have already heard it--this song of men's desires about
me--faintly. But I have seen that the time is at hand when it shall come
as a vast chorus of cities, of fields, of men's voices, filling the dome
of the world--a chorus in the glory and the shame of which no
millionaire who merely wants to make money, no artist who is not
expressing the souls and freeing the bodies of men, no statesman who is
not gathering up the desires of crowds, and going daily through the
world hewing out the will of the people, shall dare to live.

* * * * *

But while this is the vision of my belief, I would not have any one
suppose that I am the bearer of easy and gracious tidings.

It is rather of a great daily adventure one has with the world.

There have been times when it seemed as if it had to begin all over
again every morning.

Day by day I walk down Fleet Street toward Ludgate Hill.

I look once more every morning at that great picture of any religion; I
look at the quiet, soaring, hopeful dome--that little touch of singing
or praying that men have lifted up against heaven. "Will the Dome bring
the Man to me?"

I look up at the machines, strange and eager, hurrying across the
bridge. "Will the Machines bring the Man to me?"

I look in the faces of the crowd hurrying past. "Will the Crowd bring
the Man to me?"

With the picture of my religion--or perhaps three religions or three
stories of religion--I walk on and on through the crowd, past the
railway, past the Cathedral, past the Mansion House, and over the Tower
Bridge. I walk fast and eagerly and blindly, as though a man would walk
away from the world.

Suddenly I find myself, throngs of voices all about me, standing
half-unconsciously by a high iron fence in Bermondsey watching that
smooth asphalt playground where one sees the very dead (for once)
crowded by the living--pushed over to the edges--their gravestones
tilted calmly up against the walls. I stand and look through the pickets
and watch the children ru