error had he committed!--But Sidwell? Was _she_ liberal enough to take
a personal interest in one who had renounced faith in revelation? He
could not decide this question, for of Sidwell he knew much less than
of her father. And it was idle to torment himself with such debate of
the irreversible.

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
divin