‘You do believe,’ she murmured; ‘only your belief is not blind and foolish. Why should you reproach yourself because you have rejected so much of the old superstition?’
‘Because I am a minister of the Church, round which, like that dark devouring ivy, the old superstitions still cling. Before you could make this place what it once was, a prosperous abbey, with happy creatures dwelling within it, you have to strip the old walls bare; and it is the same with our religion. I am not strong enough for such a task. The very falsehoods I would uproot have a certain fantastic holiness and beauty; when I lay my hands upon them, as I have sometimes dared to do, I seem to hear a heavenly voice rebuking me. Then I say to myself that perhaps, after all, I am committing an act of desecration; and so--my life is wasted.’
She watched him earnestly during a long pause which followed. At last she said:--
‘Is it not, perhaps, that you _think_ of these things too much? Perhaps it was not meant that we should always fix our eyes on what is so mysterious. God hid himself away in the beginning, and it is not his will that we should comprehend him.’
The clergyman shook his head in deprecation of that gentle suggestion.
‘Then why did He plant in our souls such a cruel longing? Why did He tempt our wild inquiry, with those shining lights above us, with this wondrous world, with every picture that surrounds the soul of man? No, Alma, He does not hide himself away--it is we who turn our eyes from him to make idols of stone or flesh, and to worship these. Where, then, shall we find him? Not among the follies and superstitions of the ruined Church at the altar of which I have ministered to my shame!’
His words had become so reckless, his manner so agitated, that she was startled. Struck by a sudden thought, she cried--
‘Something new has happened? O Ambrose, what is it?’
‘Nothing,’ he replied; ‘that is, little or nothing. The Inquisition has begun, that is all.’
‘The clodhoppers of Fensea have, in their small way, the instinct of Torquemada. The weasel is akin to the royal tiger. My Christian congregation wish to deliver me over to the moral stake and faggot; as a preliminary they have written to my Bishop.’