day at the house of one or another, or at a restaurant; and here
they talked shop or not as they chose, the thing insisted upon being
congeniality--that for once in the week they should be secure from
bores.

Here Presbyterian and Unitarian met on common ground; Baptist, Catholic,
Episcopalian, Congregationalist, Methodist--all became brothers over the
soup. Weekly they found what was common and helpful to all in discussing
details of church administration, matters of faith, methods of handling
their charitable funds; or the latest heresy trial. They talked of these
things amiably, often lightly. They were choice spirits relaxed, who
might be grave or gay, as they listed.

Their vein was not too serious the day Bernal was his brother's guest,
sitting between the very delightful Father Riley and the exciting
Unitarian, one Whittaker. With tensest interest he listened to their
talk.

At first there was a little of Delitzsch and his Babel-Bible addresses,
brought up by Selmour, an amiable Presbyterian of shining bare pate and
cheerful red beard, a man whom scandal had filliped ever so coyly with a
repute of leanings toward Universalism.

This led to a brief discussion of the old and new theology--Princeton
standing for the old with its definition of Christianity as "a piece of
information given supernaturally and miraculously"; Andover standing for
the new--so alleged Whittaker--with many polite and ingenious evasions
of this proposition without actually repudiating it.

The Unitarian, however, was held to be the least bit too literal in his
treatment of propositions not his own.

Then came Pleydell, another high-church Episcopalian who, over his chop
and a modest glass of claret, declared earnest war upon the whole
Hegel-Darwinian-Wellhausen school. His method of attack was to state
baldly the destructive conclusions of that school--that most of the
books of the Old Testament are literary frauds, intentionally
misrepresenting the development of religion in Israel; that the whole
Mosaic code is a later fabrication and its claim to have been given in
the wilderness an historical falsehood. From this he deduced that a mere
glance at the Bible, as the higher critics explain it, must convince the
earnest Christian that he can have no share in their views. "Deprive
Christianity of its supernatural basis," he said, "and you would have a
mere speculative philosophy. Deny the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden,
and the Atone