"At the great judgment day!" whispered the minister, —and, strangely enough, the sense that he was a professional teacher of the truth impelled him to answer the child so. "Then, and there, before the judgment-seat, thy mother, and thou, and I, must stand together. But the daylight of this world shall not see our meeting!"
I think the minister is still ashamed of what he has done. He doesn't actually want to expose himself to everyone. He did this to make it seem like he was going to do the right thing. But Pearl knows that he is faking it because he wont be shown in public with them. He wants to wait until judgment day to show that he was the father. He is being a coward. And the guilt is slowly killing him.
One interpretation of Pearl is that she has been sent as an agent of God to redeem both Hester and Dimmesdale. How does this work in the book?
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