Yes, it sounded encouraging, but it still left him in doubt; there was too much ‘if’ about it. He wanted to be quite sure, without any ‘ifs’, before he began.
It was at five o’clock one morning, after a sleepless night, that the spark of inspiration swam into Mr. Trimblerigg’s brain, and though it was not my sending—being entirely his own—I saw it come.
He was lying with his head on one side sucking a cough lozenge, when, with a sudden jerk of astonishment, first his eyes opened, then his mouth. The cough lozenge fell out, staining the pillow: he turned his head sharply, eyes front, and sat up.
The conception which had got hold of him was large but quite simple; he saw that Second Adventism depended for its success on one thing and one thing alone. If what he was pleased to regard as Christendom—that is to say, Free Evangelicalism and its dependent relatives among the Free Churches—if Free Evangelicalism could but be persuaded to believe in a Second Advent, and to desire it wilfully, whole-heartedly, passionately—then by the law of spiritual gravity, the Second Advent would come.
It was a great idea; Pragmatism, a thing he had only half-believed in before, would thus be given a test worthy of its powers—would, he believed, win through and make the world what it ought to be—theologically up-to-date. The saints under the Throne crying ‘How long?’ would suddenly change their tune, take up the initiative, and with spiritual Coué-ings themselves fix the date.
It was a bold democratic conception, and since he had always been a whole-hearted democrat there was no inconsistency—though he now thought of it for the first time—in applying it to things doctrinal. Man had his spiritual destiny—including dates—in his own hands; all he needed was unanimity or, failing that, a commanding majority. He had never had it, had never applied it till now. Had he done so the millennium would already have bloomed into being.
And the means to this spiritual unanimity, or commanding majority, by which the race was to be won? In the moment of inspiration that also had been flashed into his brain, and Civilization stood explained. The conquests of science were to become the weapons of faith, and publicity the final expression of religious art. What countless missionaries could not have done in a previous age a single voice would do now. All that was required was a world-wide audience of converts to Second Adventism, a voice going out into all lands, a trumpet signal, and a shout, and at that shout the walls of Jericho would fall flat:
Faith would vanish into sight,
Hope be emptied in delight,
and every man would go up straight before him and possess the city of his inheritance.