Contents

EDITORIAL. The Editor excuses himself from allegiance to the god of Mr. Trimblerigg[ 9]
CHAPTER 1. Mr. Trimblerigg becomes acquainted with his deity and finds him useful: contends with his sister for virtue, and acquires grace: converts his uncle as by a miracle, and receives the call[ 17]
CHAPTER 2. Seeking guidance of Scripture, zeal for the Lord’s house consumes him: the Lord’s house is consumed also, and the cause of religion is well served[ 30]
CHAPTER 3. The eye of Davidina: he puts on himself a price, which she takes off again. In search of a career he turns to True Belief[ 39]
CHAPTER 4. He wrestles mightily with his Uncle Phineas over the interpretation of Scripture, and by subtlety prevails. His uncle sends him to college[ 49]
CHAPTER 5. Calculating his future chances he stands in a minority for truth: advocates the ministry of women: preaches his first sermon[ 64]
CHAPTER 6. Having tried, and failed, to save Davidina from drowning, he tells a modest story of himself, which is allowed to stand[ 72]
CHAPTER 7. He tries to save himself from Davidina, and fails. The wicked incredulity of Davidina, and its effect upon his after-life[ 82]
CHAPTER 8. Meaning to choose a wife, he has a wife chosen for him. His Uncle Phineas dies: he finds his future is provided for[ 88]
CHAPTER 9. He enters the ministry of True Belief, and prepares for himself a way out: is saved by Davidina from an early indiscretion: marries, and has a family[ 97]
CHAPTER 10. The ministry of women a burning question: embarrasses his oratory. On the question of verbal inspiration True Belief turns him out[ 105]
CHAPTER 11. He becomes a Free Evangelical: from the militancy of women takes refuge in the organization of foreign missions[ 118]
CHAPTER 12. Mr. Trimblerigg’s deity exercises his divine prerogative, and watches him take a bath: his honesty under trying circumstances: his success as an organizer[ 124]
CHAPTER 13. His liking for adventure and experiment exposes him to danger: escaping without loss of character, he finds cause to complain of his wife’s[ 129]
CHAPTER 14. Invents his famous doctrine of ‘Relative Truth’: his success in the mission field. He begins to invest: looks for a popular cause, and finds one[ 137]
CHAPTER 15. His popular cause being threatened by his investments, he makes a sacrifice, and wins: becomes a power in the financial world, and achieves fame[ 144]
CHAPTER 16. By a very slight departure from the truth (relative), he gets the better of Davidina, whereby his conscience is greatly comforted[ 156]
CHAPTER 17. He tastes the sweets of popular success: forgives an enemy: sees his star in the ascendant, reads poetry, and sleeps the sleep of the just[ 161]
CHAPTER 18. A strange awakening: finds himself the recipient of an embarrassing honour: his difficulty in finding a place for it under present conditions[ 168]
CHAPTER 19. The effect of heavenly signs on the young and innocent. His wife discovers for the first time that he is a holy man: her remorse[ 181]
CHAPTER 20. To escape from the beauty of holiness Mr. Trimblerigg contemplates a life of sin, but finds himself stuck fast in virtue. Effects of his wife’s confession: his fear of Davidina: he narrowly escapes death[ 189]
CHAPTER 21. Refusing to make an exhibition of himself, he becomes unpopular: escapes the fury of the mob, meets Davidina, and is saved from further embarrassment. The story of an onlooker[ 200]
CHAPTER 22. Mr. Trimblerigg comes out top: Relative Truth in war-time the only solution: attends funeral of a celebrity, and makes arrangements for his own[ 209]
CHAPTER 23. He becomes the voice of the nation: secures the ministry of women: makes peace-mottoes for the million: hears a voice from the Beyond forbidding him to hew Agag[ 215]
CHAPTER 24. Relative Truth in black and white becomes a problem. For the rescue of his own reputation adopts the policy of reprisals: the Free Churches are divided[ 225]
CHAPTER 25. Puto-Congo: friendly comparison of Mr. Trimblerigg to a crocodile: why, in the Puto-Congo, a crocodile policy had become indispensable[ 232]
CHAPTER 26. The peaceful penetration of Davidina: her wonderful ways: their effect on savages. She returns to civilization, and encounters Mr. Trimblerigg[ 241]
CHAPTER 27. Mr. Trimblerigg’s prayer misses fire: he finds Davidina a comfortable person to talk to: they go their separate ways[ 250]
CHAPTER 28. Mr. Trimblerigg’s genius for inconsistency: its brilliant results: risks his life, and becomes founder of the Puto-Congo Free State Limited[ 257]
CHAPTER 29. Inspired by a new idea, he combines Spiritualism with Second Adventism, and opens campaign to make Heaven safe for Democracy[ 263]
CHAPTER 30. Mr. Trimblerigg, opening a box of prophecy, finds that his own coming has been foretold: his ambition is satisfied[ 274]
CHAPTER 31. He reverts to True Belief as the best means to Relative Truth when prophecies are about. Light returns to him: he uses it to slay an enemy[ 291]
CHAPTER 32. How he conquers America for the new faith, competes with the Movies, and starts building the New Jerusalem[ 295]
CHAPTER 33. The New Jerusalem encounters unexpected opposition. The effect of sticky gas on Second Adventism. Davidina puts out Mr. Trimblerigg’s light, and in the darkness that ensues his deity loses sight of him[ 308]

Editorial

THE tribal deity to whom Mr. Trimblerigg owed his origin would, I think, have shown a better sense of the eternal fitness of things had he chosen for his amanuensis one whose theological antecedents were more within his keeping and jurisdiction than my own. But when he visited me with the attack of verbal inspiration which I was powerless to throw off in any other form than that which here follows, he seems rather to have assumed an intellectual agreement which certainly does not exist, and to have ignored as unimportant a divergence of view which I now wish to place on record. For, to put it plainly, I do not worship the god of Mr. Trimblerigg; and had these pages been a complete expression of my own feelings, they would have borne hostile witness not so much against Mr. Trimblerigg, as against his deity.

When nations declare war, or when gods deliver judgment against criminals who are so largely of their own making,—fastening in self-justification on some flagrant instance of wrong-doing which, for those who do not wish to reflect, puts the culprit wholly out of court,—they would do well to select their official historians from minds too abject and submissive to form views of their own; and of course verbal inspiration, as in the case of Balaam, is one way of getting the thing done. But whereas, in that historical instance, it was the ass and not the prophet who kicked last, in this instance, having delivered my message, I claim the right to exonerate myself in a foreword which is entirely my own. And so here, in this place—before he makes revelation or utters prophecy—Balaam speaks his own mind.

I do not think that Mr. Trimblerigg’s deity has dealt fairly by him. To me he seems chargeable with the same exploitive elasticity as that which he exposes in Mr. Trimblerigg, whom he first cockered up in his own conceit by a course of tribal theology, and then callously abandoned to its logical consequences when tribal theology went suddenly out of fashion. For Mr. Trimblerigg was emphatically a product of that self-worship of the tribe or clan, on which divine Individualism has so long fattened itself. He was brought up to believe himself one of a chosen sect of a chosen people, and to judge from a theocratic standpoint the ways, doings, and morals of other sects, communities, principalities, and powers. He could not remotely conceive, without being false to his deity, that his own was not immeasurably the best religion in the world, his god a god of perfect balance and proportion, and himself a chosen vessel of the Lord. In that character he was always anointing himself with fresh oil, which, losing its balance, ran far further than it ought to have done. But if, in consequence, he became an oleaginous character, whose mainly was the blame?

I cannot acquit the deity in whose tenets he had been trained. Having been brought up to read history as a pre-eminent dispensation of mercies and favours to his own race, with a slight push of miracle at the back of it—is it any wonder that, when he applied his gospel to propaganda for the interests of that same race, or went out a missionary to the heathen, it was with a conscientious conviction that a little compulsion was necessary for the saving of souls?

And so, in that shadiest episode of all his career, presented to us by his deity in such an unfavourable light, when the poor benighted heathen began painting Mr. Trimblerigg’s fellow-missionaries black and tan, and other horrible colours to indicate their hearty dislike for a blended gospel of free salvation in Christ and duty and allegiance to the Puto-Congo Rubber shareholders; when they did that, he—quite naturally—invoked the law of the Mosaic dispensation, and did the same to them: and defended himself for these gospel-reprisals by saying that it would have been very unreasonable not to protect Christian missionaries by the only method which savages could understand as a stepping-stone to the methods of Christianity.

The picture as presented is true: that was Mr. Trimblerigg all over. He had a lively notion that Christianity could be induced by pagan methods. But has his deity the right to cast either the first or the last stone at him? If he seemed to be always carrying the New Testament in his coat-tail pocket and making it his foundation for occasions of sitting down and doing nothing, while, up and doing, it was the law of Moses with which he stuffed his breast: and if, when he wanted to thump the big drum (as he so often did), he thumped the Old Testament, he was only doing with more momentary conviction and verve and personal magnetism what the larger tribalism of his day had been doing all along; and his tribal deity never seems to have had the slightest qualms in allowing Mr. Trimblerigg to regard himself as a Christian.

Yet all the time the deity himself knew better, as this record abundantly shows; for having made Mr. Trimblerigg partly but not entirely in his own image, he then used him as a plaything, an object of curiosity; and committing him to that creed of racial aggrandisement of which he himself was beginning to tire, thereby reduced him to ridicule, made a fool of him, exalted him to the likeness and similitude of a god, and then—let him go. And though, in the ensuing pages, he has helped himself freely to my opinions, as though they were his own, I do not feel that they were honestly adopted. For a god who tires of his handiwork is still responsible for it, however disillusioned; and when, employing me as his mouthpiece, Mr. Trimblerigg’s maker mocks at the tribal religions which have brought the world so near to ruin, he remains nevertheless a deity tribal in character, albeit a disgruntled one. And if he has manœuvred this record in order to wash his hands of responsibility, it comes, I fear, too late; the source is too suspect to be regarded as impartial, and he himself very much more of a Mr. Trimblerigg than he seems to be aware.