As he gazed on her at their first meeting, Mr. Trimblerigg’s calculating mind got ahead of him before he could prevent; and ‘Shall I have to marry her?’ was the thought which suddenly presented itself. With equal suddenness came another, ‘If I do, what will Isabel Sparling say? There’ll be trouble.’
Isabel Sparling was the woman student whom he had converted to True Belief; and the conversion had been of an emotional character.
She was an ardent believer in the ministry of women, and having the prophetess of Scripture upon her side—Huldah the prophetess who dwelt in the college at Jerusalem for one, as Mr. Trimblerigg was quick to remember—had no difficulty in persuading him that the ministry of women was compatible with ‘True Belief.’
Mr. Trimblerigg had seized on it, indeed, with avidity as a forward point for him to score in discussions which forced him generally to take the reactionary line. There was also among True Believers a more obvious opening for women than elsewhere. The ministry of the connection was diminishing together with its funds; and there does come a point, in spiritual work as well as industry, when what cannot support a man will support a woman. In exchange, therefore, for the allegiance of a new convert for theological debates which left him so often in a minority of one, Mr. Trimblerigg blithely gave in his adherence to the ministry of women; and in the College debate on the subject, which took place in his second year, they won an unexpected victory, all but three of the women students, and more than a third of the men students voting in the affirmative.
It is symptomatic, however, that of this particular victory over the powers of evil Mr. Trimblerigg said not a word to his Uncle Phineas. It was a point over which he apprehended that True Believers of the older school might differ from the new. Uncle Phineas, sedentary in a small hill-side village and a chapel of which he himself was the proprietor, was scarcely in a position to appreciate the claim of women to spiritual equality; in the field of politics Mr. Trimblerigg knew that he was decisively against them; nor was Cousin Caroline, his house-companion, the sort of person to suggest a quiver of revolt.
And so, while pledged to Isabel Sparling and her fellow-aspirants to become their champion when membership of the Synod should give him a voice, Mr. Trimblerigg for the present allowed the question to sleep. In his own time and in his own way he would make it his policy, but not probably so long as his Uncle Phineas was alive, and his own financial future unassured. He must first himself become a minister.
It was during his third vacation that Uncle Phineas showed faith, by an overt sign, in his future qualification for the calling. Jonathan was invited, at the next Wednesday meeting, to put up a prayer, and give an address. The invitation was made on the Sunday, giving him half a week’s notice; and announcement was made to the congregation.
Local interest in the preaching ability of Mr. Trimblerigg had already been roused. Word had come down from College that in the debates he had become a shining light, and there was regret among the Free Evangelicals that the burning oratory of which he gave promise should become the exclusive possession of the narrowest and most disunited connection in the union of the Free Churches. In the course of the next two days many told him that they were coming to hear him.
This helped to make the occasion important; for if he could fill the chapel and continue filling it on future occasions, Uncle Phineas’s recognition of his vocation would become more assured. Mr. Trimblerigg was now eighteen, his uncle was eighty-six; and he could not regard as unpropitious this timing by Providence of their respective lives. Two or three more years in the propaganda of True Belief would not unduly hold up a career for which wider spheres were waiting. Suppose he could, for a couple of years or so, kindle True Believers into new life, make himself indispensable: and then—!
He began to see why possibly he had been called to devote himself temporarily to so narrow a field of service. If he could come bringing his sheaves with him, he would count in the Evangelical world more than if he had merely started as one among many, with no spiritual adventure to single him from the crowd.