In chapel, the next Sunday, when the plate came round for foreign missions, Davidina with ostentation put sixpence into it. Is it to be wondered that, before the week was over, he had got sixpence back from somewhere, and took care that Davidina should see him spending it. Davidina meant well, I am sure; but it is to be questioned whether her method of clipping his wings was the right one. He became tangential to the orbit of her spells; they touched, but they did not contain him.
Meanwhile, without Davidina’s aid, even without her approval, Mr. Trimblerigg’s call to the ministry was becoming more assured. And the question mainly was whether, in that family of cramped means, money could be found in the years lying immediately ahead to provide the necessary training. It meant two years spent mainly away from home at the Free Evangelical Training College; two years of escape from Davidina for whole months at a time; it meant leaving home a boy and coming back very nearly a man. Even had the ministry not appealed to him, it would have been worth it for the peculiar attraction of those circumstances.
Whether this could become practically possible depended mainly upon old Uncle Trimblerigg—Uncle Trimblerigg whose investments in house property had been inspired by holy scripture, but whose theological tenets were of a kind for which up-to-date Free Evangelicalism no longer provided the college or the training. Nor did he believe that either college or training were necessary for the preaching of the Word. He had done it himself for fifty years, merely by opening the book where it wished to be opened and pondering what was thus presented. The verbal inspiration of Scripture, not merely in its writing but in its presentation to the sense of the true believer, was the very foundation of his faith. The sect of ‘the True Believers’ had of late years sadly diminished; for as all True Believers believed that while they believed truly they could never make a mistake in their interpretations of Scripture, it became as time went on dangerous for them to meet often or to exchange pulpits, since, where one was found differing from another, mutual excommunication of necessity followed and they walked no more in each other’s ways. Only at their great annual congress did they meet to reaffirm the foundation of their faith and thunder with a united voice the Word which did not change.
Thus it came about that dotted over the country were many chapels of True Believers cut off from friendly intercourse with any other by mutual interdict; and the hill-side chapel of Uncle Trimblerigg—built by himself for a congregation of some twenty families all told, his tenants, or his dependents in the building trade—was one of them.
So among the True Believers there was small prospect of a career for the budding Mr. Trimblerigg; and yet it was upon the financial aid and favour of one of them that he depended for theological training in a direction which they disapproved.
It speaks well for the sanguine temperament and courage of our own Mr. Trimblerigg that the prospect did not dismay him, or even, in the event, present much difficulty.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Beard of the Prophet
UNCLE PHINEAS, the uncle of Mr. Trimblerigg’s father, lived at an elevation, both physical and spiritual, among the stone quarries a-top of the village. His house and the chapel where he ministered stood adjoining, both of his own building; and in the days when Jonathan knew him he was seldom seen leaving the one except to go to the other. For he was now very old, and having made his money and retired from business, he had only one interest left in life, the preaching of the strict tenets of True Belief to the small congregation which had trickled under him for the last fifty years.
The True Believers had a worship which was all their own; they flocked by themselves, never going elsewhere, though others sometimes came to them. No instrument of music was allowed within their dwelling, nor did they sing—anything that could be called a tune. When their voices were lifted in praise they bleated upon a single note, which now and again they changed, going higher and higher, and when they could go no higher they stopped.
To our own Mr. Trimblerigg this form of worship was terrible; he liked music and he liked tunes; diversity attracted him; and here, by every possible device, diversity was ruled out. But the importance of Uncle Phineas, both present and prospective, obliged certain members of the Trimblerigg family to ascend once at least every Sunday, to hear him preach and pray, and though none of them professed an exclusive conversion to the teaching of the True Believers, they kept an open mind about it, and listened respectfully to all that Uncle Phineas had to say.