  Despite his liking for Hume’s scepticism, Prior took the serious step in 1951 of becoming an elder of St Martin’s Presbyterian Church in Christchurch. Elders are responsible for the spiritual oversight of the congregation, and he was assigned a ‘district’ of perhaps 15–20 households drawn from the congregation, and was expected to visit each of them regularly. Whatever his philosophical doubts may have been, Prior was now a pillar of the Presbyterian community. ‘Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief!’ he had made his Barthian Protestant character say in 1942.