Now among Free Believers the idea of women in the ministry had been so unthought of that in their constitution there was no word against it; and Mr. Trimblerigg was, by his outspoken advocacy of their claim during his college career, a predestined champion of the cause.
He had not occupied his pulpit a month before Miss Isabel Sparling reminded him. She asked for three things: that he would circulate a Women’s Ministry petition to the Annual Conference for the signatures of his congregation, that he would himself present the petition and make an accompanying motion in his ministerial capacity, and that meanwhile he would invite her as a lay-preacher to his own chapel.
Mr. Trimblerigg was of a divided mind: had the proposition at that time been welcome among the Free Evangelicals, he could not have wished for a better means of effecting a breach between himself and the True Believers, when occasion was ripe for it. But among the Free Evangelicals vacancies in the pastorate were not going begging as they were among the True Believers; and for that and other reasons the rank and file of Free Evangelicalism were either opposed or indifferent. The question had indeed already been debated in that great body of Free Churchmen, and they had decisively turned it down as inopportune. The opposition ranged from support of the Pauline doctrine of womanly silence in the assembly, to the argument that as they could not go out as missionaries to be eaten by savages they had not a complete qualification for ministerial office; and when some protested that they were quite willing to take their chance of being eaten like the rest, it was pointed out that savages did other things to women besides eating them; at which point it was considered that the discussion had become unsuitable for open debate; and the previous question was moved and carried.
After considering the matter for awhile, therefore, Mr. Trimblerigg decided to plead his youth and inexperience. It was the only time that he ever did so; as a rule he revelled in the sense of freedom attaching to both, finding inexperience quite as valuable as youth in the formation of those momentary opinions on which he ran his career. Tentatively, however, as a sop to self-approbation he put the matter to his own chapel-members,—did they wish to have a woman come and preach to them? The shade of Uncle Phineas presided over the gathering: they were startled—emphatically they did not.
Mr. Trimblerigg, fortified by this verdict, told Miss Sparling that being nothing if not democratic, and his own local democracy having decided against it, he could go no further at present in that particular direction; but that in his own time and in his own way he would work for the enlargement of popular opinion, and as soon as he saw an opening resume advocacy of the cause.
Thereupon ensued a long dispute between Mr. Trimblerigg and Miss Sparling as to what ‘democracy’ really meant. Was democracy, in matters spiritual, the will of a single congregation or community, or of the whole Church Militant? Mr. Trimblerigg said that democracy was merely what you could make it, a thing not of theory but of practice; and the whole Church Militant being highly divided on party lines, democracy was divided also.
Miss Sparling then created an argumentative diversion by asking, ‘Why did you kiss me when you converted me to True Belief?’ And thereafter the duel which went on between them was mainly upon those two questions—what democracy meant, and what the kiss had meant. Mr. Trimblerigg gave to both alike a spiritual and a brotherly interpretation. Whereupon Miss Sparling adumbrated a letter in which he had signed his name with five crosses after it: what did the five crosses mean? Mr. Trimblerigg said that they stood for an unfinished communication—unfinished for lack of time; and that educated people called them ‘asterisks.’ Miss Sparling refused to be so educated, and thenceforward was his enemy.
In the holiday season she took lodgings in the neighbourhood, and became a member of his congregation. Mr. Trimblerigg found that he could no longer preach and pray freely, while Isabel Sparling sat with her eye upon him, saying ‘Amen’ in a loud voice whenever he came to a full stop, pretending to think then that his prayer had finished. Thus by attacking his nerves she destroyed his spiritual efficiency. Constantly he received letters which he did not answer.
She followed him up on weekdays also, attended his mission services in the neighbouring villages and towns; and though he had ceased to speak to her, was to be seen following him at a few paces distance, as though somehow he belonged to her.
Mr. Trimblerigg walked fast, and sometimes, on turning a corner, ran to get quit of her. One day, in front of his gate, she was seen to make five crosses in the mud, indicative of an unfinished communication. She left it at that.