. That is to say, we must draw evidence of our faith
from its latent capacities, its unsuspected affinities, its previsions, its
adaptability, comprehensiveness, sympathy, adequacy to human needs.«
    »That puts very well what I have always felt,« replied Mr. Warricombe. »Yet
there will remain the objection that such a faith may be of purely human origin.
If evolution and biblical criticism seem to overthrow all the historic evidences
of Christianity, how convince the objectors that the faith itself was divinely
given?«
    »But I cannot hold for a moment,« exclaimed Peak, in the words which he knew
his interlocutor desired to hear, »that all the historic evidences have been
destroyed. That indeed would shake our position.«
    He enlarged on the point, with display of learning, yet studiously avoiding
the tone of pedantry.
    »Evolution,« he remarked, when the dialogue had again extended its scope,
»does not touch the evidence of design in the universe; at most it can correct
our imperfect views (handed down from an age which had no scientific teaching
because it was not ripe for it) of the mode in which that design was executed,
or rather is still being executed. Evolutionists have not succeeded in
explaining life; they have merely discovered a new law relating to life. If we
must have an explanation, there is nothing for it but to accept the notion of a
Deity. Indeed, how can there be religion without a divine author? Religion is
based on the idea of a divine mind which reveals itself to us for moral ends.
The Christian revelation, we hold, has been developed gradually, much of it in
connection with secondary causes and human events. It has come down to us in
anything but absolute purity - like a stream which has been made turbid by its
earthly channel. The lower serves its purpose as a stage to the higher, then it
falls away, the higher surviving. Hitherto, the final outcome of evolution is
the soul in a bodily tenement. May it not be that the perfected soul alone
survives in the last step of the struggle for existence?«
    Peak had been talking for more than a quarter of an hour. Under stress of
shame and intellectual self-criticism (for he could not help confuting every
position as he stated it) his mind often wandered. When he ceased speaking there
came upon him an uncomfortable dreaminess which he had already once or twice
experienced when in colloquy with Mr. Warricombe; a tormenting metaphysical
doubt of his own identity strangely beset him. With involuntary attempt to
recover the familiar self
