. I'm a heretic and all that sort of thing, of
course, but perhaps that'll make it easier. I take it it's a kind of
heretic you're becoming yourself."

Peter pulled up a chair and got out his own pipe. "Arnold," he said, "I'm
too serious to joke, and I don't know that I'm even a Christian heretic.
I don't know what I am and where I stand. I wish I did; I wish I even
knew how much I disbelieved, for then I'd know what to do. But it's not
that my dogmas have been attacked and weakened. I've no new light on the
Apostles' Creed and no fresh doubts about it. I could still argue for the
Virgin Birth of Christ and the Trinity, and so on. But it's worse than
that. I feel ..." He broke off abruptly and pulled at his pipe. The other
said nothing. They were friends enough by now to understand each other.
In a little while the younger man found the words he wanted.

"Look here, it's like this. I remember once, on the East Coast, coming
across a stone breakwater high and dry in a field half a mile from the
sea. There was nothing the matter with the breakwater, and it served
admirably for certain purposes--a seat, for instance, or a shady place
for a picnic. But it was no longer of any vital use in the world, for the
sea had receded and left it there. Now, that's just what I feel. I had a
religion; I suppose it had its weaknesses and its faults; but most of it
was good sound stone, and it certainly had served. But it serves no
longer, not because it's damaged, but because the need for it has changed
its nature or is no longer there." He trailed off into silence and
stopped.

Arnold stirred to get out his pouch. "The sea is shifty, though," he
said. "If they keep the breakwater in decent repair, it'll come in handy
again."

"Yes," burst out Peter. "But, of course, that's where illustrations are
so little good: you can't press them. And in any case no engineer worth
his salt would sit down by his breakwater and smoke a pipe till the sea
came in handy again. His job is to go after it."

"True for ye, boy. But if the old plan was so good, why not go down to
the beach and get on with building operations of the same sort?"

"Arnold," said Peter, "you couldn't have put it better. That's exactly
what I came here to do. I knew in London that the sea was receding to
some extent, and I thought that there was a jolly good chance to get up
with it again out here. But that leads straight to my second problem:
I can't build on the old plan, a