Up to now he had been introduced step by step into a new set of experiences, Christian indeed, yet amazingly worldly in their aspect; he had begun to learn that religion could transform the outer world, and affect and use for its own purposes all the pomps and glories of outward existence; he had begun to realize that there was nothing alien to God--no line of division between the Creator and the creature; and now, in one instant, he had been brought face to face again with inner realities, and had seen, as it were, a glimpse of the secret core of all the splendour. The Pope attended by princes--the Pope on his knees before a barefooted friar. These were the two magnetic points between which blazed Religion. He stood there, trembling a little, trying to steady his bewildered brain--even now, in spite of his years, not unlike the brain of a child. He passed his tongue over his suddenly dry lips. Then he began to move down the passage again, to find his friends. CHAPTER VII (I) "What I can't yet quite understand," said Monsignor, "is that point I mentioned the other day about Faith and Science. I don't see where one ends and the other begins. It seems to me that the controversy must be unending. The materialist says that since Nature does all things, even the most amazing things must be done by her--that we shall be able to explain them all some day, when Science has got a little farther. And the theologian says that some things are so evidently out of the reach of Nature that they must be done by a supernatural power. Well, where's the point of reconciliation?" Father Jervis was silent for a while. * * * * * The two were sitting on the upper deck of an air-ship towards evening, travelling straight towards the setting sun.