There were little exclamations about the table as Whittaker finished and returned at last to his fish. To Father Riley it occurred that these would have been more communicative, more sentient, but for his presence. In fact, there presently ensued an eloquent silence in lieu of remarks that might too easily have been indiscreet.
"Pray, never mind me at all, gentlemen—I'll listen blandly whilst I disarticulate this beautiful bird."
"I say one is quite as extreme as the other," again declared the discoverer of this fact, feeling that his perspicacity had not been sufficiently remarked.
"I dare say Whittaker is meditating a bitter cynicism," suggested Father Riley.
"Concerning that incandescent but unfortunate young man," remarked the amiable Presbyterian—"I trust God's Providence to care for children and fools—"
"And yet I found his remarks suggestive," said the twinkling-eyed Methodist. "That is, we asked for the belief of the average non-church-goer—and I dare say he gave it to us. It occurs to me further that he has merely had the wit to put in blunt, brutal words what so many of us declare with academic flourishes. We can all name a dozen treatises written by theologians ostensibly orthodox which actually justify his utterances. It seems to me, then, that we may profit by his blasphemies."
"How?" demanded Whittaker, with some bluntness.
"Ah—that is what the Church must determine. We already know how to reach the heathen, the unbookish, the unthinking—but how reach the educated—the science-bitten? It is useless to deny that the brightest, biggest minds are outside the Church—indifferentists or downright opponents of it. I am not willing to believe that God meant men like these to perish—I don't like to think of Emerson being lost, or Huxley, or Spencer, or even Darwin—Question: has the Church power to save the educated?"
"Sure, I know one that has never lacked it," purled Father Riley.
"There's an answer to you in Linford's letter," added Whittaker.