And, indeed, there seemed much reason for believing that Martin, whatever the extent of his secret doubts, was by temperament armed against agnosticism.  Distinctly it comforted him to hear the unbelievers assailed—­the friends of whom he spoke most heartily were all on the orthodox side; if ever a hint of gentle malice occurred in his conversation, it was when he spoke of a fallacy, a precipitate conclusion, detected in works of science.  Probably he was too old to overcome this bias.

His view of the Bible appeared to harmonise with that which Peak put forth in one of their dialogues.  ’The Scriptures were meant to be literally understood in primitive ages, and spiritually when the growth of science made it possible. Genesis was never intended to teach the facts of natural history; it takes phenomena as they appear to uninstructed people, and uses them only for the inculcation of moral lessons; it presents to the childhood of the world a few great elementary truths.  And the way in which phenomena are spoken of in the Old Testament is never really incompatible with the facts as we know them nowadays.  Take the miracle of the sun standing still, which is supposed to be a safe subject of ridicule.  Why, it merely means that light was miraculously prolonged; the words used are those which common people would at all times understand.’

(Was it necessary to have admitted the miracle?  Godwin asked himself.  At all events Mr. Warricombe nodded approvingly.)

’Then the narrative of the creation of man; that’s not at all incompatible with his slow development through ages.  To teach the scientific fact—­if we yet really know it—­would have been worse than useless.  The story is meant to express that spirit, and not matter, is the source of all existence.  Indeed, our knowledge of the true meaning of the Bible has increased with the growth of science, and naturally that must have been intended from the first.  Things which do not concern man’s relation to the spiritual have no place in this book; they are not within its province.  Such things were discoverable by human reason, and the knowledge which achieves has nothing to do with a divine revelation.’

To Godwin it was a grinding of the air, but the listener appeared to think it profitable.

With his clerical friend, Mr. Lilywhite, he rarely touched on matters of religion.  The vicar of St. Ethelreda’s was a man well suited to support the social dignity of his Church.  A gentleman before everything, he seemed incapable of prying into the state of a parishioner’s soul; you saw in him the official representative of a Divinity characterised by well-bred tolerance.  He had written a pleasant little book on the by-ways of Devon and Cornwall, which brought about his intimacy with the Warricombe household.  Peak liked him more the better he knew him, and in the course of the summer they had one or two long walks together, conversing exclusively of the things of earth.  Mr. Lilywhite troubled himself little about evolution; he spoke of trees and plants, of birds and animals, in a loving spirit, like the old simple naturalists.  Geology did not come within his sphere.