At so searching a question from one to whom it was impossible to make a light reply, Jolyon stood for a moment feeling his back tried by the digging.

“What do you mean by God?” he said; “there are two irreconcilable ideas of God. There’s the Unknowable Creative Principle⁠—one believes in That. And there’s the Sum of altruism in man⁠—naturally one believes in That.”

“I see. That leaves out Christ, doesn’t it?”

Jolyon stared. Christ, the link between those two ideas! Out of the mouth of babes! Here was orthodoxy scientifically explained at last! The sublime poem of the Christ life was man’s attempt to join those two irreconcilable conceptions of God. And since the Sum of human altruism was as much a part of the Unknowable Creative Principle as anything else in Nature and the Universe, a worse link might have been chosen after all! Funny⁠—how one went through life without seeing it in that sort of way!