"Still the same enthusiast," I said to myself, "though with so great a difference." But what struck me most was the reverence with which he said "God knows!" For the coolest Encyclopedist could not have denied the existence of God with a more settled air than did "the Vernet of old days." "And yet," so he went on, "were the human race to become all-righteous in a fortnight, and to push out angels' wings from its shoulders, every one! every one! all together on Christmas Day, it would still be the Darwinian process. Yes, we must stick to it, that it is evolution, I suppose, and I'm sure it contents me well enough. What matter for the process! And yet do you know what I think?" Lights had now been brought in by the waiter--a waiter who really could not understand why not. But we sat by the open window looking out upon the deepening darkness of the garden, beyond which the river shone as if by some pale effulgence of its own, or perhaps by a little store of light saved up from the liberal sunshine of the day. "Do you know what I think?" said Vernet, with the look of a man who is about to confess a weakness of which he is ashamed. "I sometimes think that if I were of the orthodox I should draw an argument for supernatural religion, against your strict materialists, from this sudden change of heart in Christian countries. For that is what it is. It is a change of heart; or, if you like to have it so, of spirit; and the remarkable thing is that it is _nothing else_. Whether it lasts or not, this awakening of brotherliness cannot be completely understood unless that is understood. What else has changed, these hundred years? There is no fresh discovery of human suffering, no new knowledge of the desperate poverty and toil of so many of our fellow-creatures: nor can we see better with our eyes, or understand better what we hear and see. This that we are talking about is a heart-growth, which, as we know, can make the lowliest peasant divine; not a mind-growth, which can be splendid in the coldest and most devilish man. Well, then, were I of the orthodox I should say this. When, after many generations, I see a traceless movement of the spirit of man like the one we are speaking of--a movement which, if it gains in strength and goes on to its natural end, will transfigure human society and make it infinitely more like heaven--I think the divine influence upon the development of man as a spirit may be direct and continuous; or, it would be better to say, not without repetition."