"Do you think it is right?" said Chichester, earnestly.
"Right?"
"To strive to push one's way into hidden regions."
"If I didn't think it right I shouldn't do it," retorted Malling, but without heat.
"And—for clergymen?" questioned Chichester, leaning forward, and dropping his small, thin hands down between his knees.
"What do you mean?"
"Do you think it right for clergymen to indulge themselves—for it is indulgence—in investigations, in attempts to find out more than God has chosen to reveal to us?"
The man of science in Malling felt impatient with the man of faith in
Chichester.
"Does it never occur to you that the anima mundi may have hidden certain things from the minds of mortals just in order to provide them with a field to till?" he said, with a hint of sarcasm. "Wasn't the fact that the earth revolves round the sun, instead of the sun round the earth, hidden from every living creature till Galileo discovered it? Do you think Galileo deserved our censure?"
"Saul was punished for consulting the witch of Endor," returned Chichester. "And the Roman Catholic Church forbids her children to deal in occult things."