“Ah! I had no idea that you would make such a sudden drop from the question of the sacredness of marriage to the question of mere legality. I understood that the Church’s first and only line of defence was the spirituality of marriage—the sacred symbolism—the mystery. Now you drop at once to the mundane level of the law—you talk of the legal marriage. I thank God, Mr. Possnett, that I adopt a higher tone. I elect to stand on a loftier level than yours. I do not talk of legality, but of spirituality.”
“You cannot evade your responsibility by harping on words or phrases, Priscilla. In any question of marriage one cannot express too rigid an adherence to what is legal and what is illegal.”
“In that case, then, surely we shall be able to obtain a divorce in a court of law——”
“There is no such thing as divorce.”
Mr. Possnett had unwittingly walked into the trap laid for his feet by a young woman who had for years been acquainted with his individual views respecting the dissolution by a court of law of a marriage celebrated in a church of God.
“There is no such thing as divorce,” he said. “I refuse to recognize the validity of a so-called decree of divorce. I would think it my duty to refuse to perform the service of marriage between two persons either of whom had been divorced. Having once said the words, ‘Whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder!’”
“But surely divorce is perfectly legal, Mr. Possnett?” said Priscilla.
“I care nothing for that.”
“But you said just now that in all questions of marriage one must be bound down by what is legal and what is illegal; and now you tell me that you refuse to be bound down to a legal decree of divorce. Oh, Mr. Possnett, you cannot blow both hot and cold in the same breath.”
“In all matters but this—but our Church permits a priest to hold his own opinion, if it be formed on conscientious grounds. It is not like the Church of Rome; it recognizes the imperative nature of the call of religious scruples on the part of an individual priest.”