“Nearly all the pioneers to whom we owe our age of comparative enlightenment were heretics,” George persisted.  “And if they could have been headed off, or burned, most of us would still be living in mud caves at the foot of the cliff on which stood the nobleman’s castle; and kings would still be kings by divine decree, scientists—­if there were any —­workers in the black art, and every phenomenon we failed to understand, a miracle.”

“I choose the United States of America,” ejaculated Evelyn.

“I gather, George,” said Phil Goodrich, “that you don’t believe in miracles.”

“Miracles are becoming suspiciously fewer and fewer.  Once, an eclipse of the sun was enough to throw men on their knees because they thought it supernatural.  If they were logical they’d kneel today because it has been found natural.  Only the inexplicable phenomena are miracles; and after a while—­if the theologians will only permit us to finish the job —­there won’t be any inexplicable phenomena.  Mystery, as I believe William James puts it may be called the more-to-be-known.”

“In taking that attitude, George, aren’t you limiting the power of God?” said Mrs. Waring.

“How does it limit the power of God, mother,” her son-in-law asked, “to discover that he chooses to work by laws?  The most suicidal tendency in religious bodies today is their mediaeval insistence on what they are pleased to call the supernatural.  Which is the more marvellous—­that God can stop the earth and make the sun appear to stand still, or that he can construct a universe of untold millions of suns with planets and satellites, each moving in its orbit, according to law; a universe wherein every atom is true to a sovereign conception?  And yet this marvel of marvels—­that makes God in the twentieth century infinitely greater than in the sixteenth—­would never have been discovered if the champions of theology had had their way.”

Mrs. Waring smiled a little.

“You are too strong for me, George,” she said, “but you mustn’t expect an old woman to change.”

“Mother, dear,” cried Eleanor, rising and laying her hand on Mrs. Waring’s cheek, “we don’t want you to change.  It’s ourselves we wish to change, we wish for a religious faith like yours, only the same teaching which gave it to you is powerless for us.  That’s our trouble.  We have only to look at you,” she added, a little wistfully, “to be sure there is something—­something vital in Christianity, if we could only get at it, something that does not depend upon what we have been led to believe is indispensable.  George, and men like him, can only show the weakness in the old supports.  I don’t mean that they aren’t doing the world a service in revealing errors, but they cannot reconstruct.”

“That is the clergyman’s business,” declared Mr. Bridges.  “But he must first acknowledge that the old supports are worthless.”

“Well,” said Phil, “I like your rector, in spite of his anthropomorphism —­perhaps, as George would say, because of it.  There is something manly about him that appeals to me.”