 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
