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 height, these proclamations that darkened the heavens, making the stars but a background for vaunting--what are they but the pursuit of the ideal; the scaling of heaven by force; the soul laying hold on immensity by both hands. It is humanity on its knees before the wrong altar. II