 of evolution, and there's modern biblical criticism.
The more I study these objections, the less able I am to see how they come in
conflict with belief in Christianity as a revealed religion.«
    »Yet you probably had your time of doubt?« remarked the other, touching for
the first time on this personal matter.
    »Oh, yes; that was inevitable. It only means that one's development is
imperfect. Most men who confirm themselves in agnosticism are kept at that point
by arrested moral activity. They give up the intellectual question as wearisome,
and accept the point of view which flatters their prejudices: thereupon follows
a blunting of the sensibilities on the religious side.«
    »There are men constitutionally unfitted for the reception of spiritual
truth,« said Martin, in a troubled tone. He was playing with a piece of string,
and did not raise his eyes.
    »I quite believe that. There's our difficulty when we come to evidences. The
evidences of science are wholly different in kind from those of religion. Faith
cannot spring from any observation of phenomena, or scrutiny of authorities, but
from the declaration made to us by the spiritual faculty. The man of science can
only become a Christian by the way of humility - and that a kind of humility he
finds it difficult even to conceive. One wishes to impress upon him the harmony
of this faith with the spiritual voice that is in every man. He replies: I know
nothing of that spiritual voice. And if that be true, one can't help him by
argument.«
    Peak had constructed for himself, out of his reading, a plausible system
which on demand he could set forth with fluency. The tone of current apologetics
taught him that, by men even of cultivated intellect, such a position as he was
now sketching was deemed tenable; yet to himself it sounded so futile, so
nugatory, that he had to harden his forehead as he spoke. Trial more severe to
his conscience lay in the perceptible solicitude with which Mr. Warricombe
weighed these disingenuous arguments. It was a hateful thing to practise such
deception on one who probably yearned for spiritual support. But he had
committed himself to this course, and must brave it out.
    »Christianity,« he was saying presently - appropriating a passage of which
he had once made careful note - »is an organism of such vital energy that it
perforce assimilates whatever is good and true in the culture of each successive
age. To understand this is to learn that we must depend rather on constructive,
than on defensive, apology
