And so, informally, with the goodwill of a congregation where he was native and known, Mr. Trimblerigg became temporary preacher to the Free Evangelicals; and when, after a six weeks’ illness, Pastor Hubback died, Mr. Trimblerigg was congregationally recommended to take his place; and after a certain amount of prayer, deliberation, and inquisition before a Committee, in answering which Mr. Trimblerigg found no difficulty at all, his ministerial status was confirmed and the appointment made.
In the month following, to make it as easy as might be for the faithful at Horeb to find and accommodate a new pastor, Mr. Trimblerigg moved his wife, family, and furniture to the larger abode of his late grandfather. But though the chapel was then left to them free of charge, and the house at a fair rental, the True Believers of the locality thenceforth dwindled to a small remnant; while the congregation at Bethesda increased and multiplied.
Mr. Trimblerigg, however, had made his exit so handsomely that though henceforth a suspended and disconnected minister (for the fiat of the Synod had gone forth against him to that effect) there was nevertheless between him and his old congregation a certain measure of goodwill; those who parted from him parted with regret; a few, younger members mostly, came out and followed him.
In that matter, indeed, more followed him than he could have wished; for no sooner had he been cut off from the communion of True Belief, than it became evident that in that narrow and reactionary following the woman’s ministry propaganda had not a dog’s chance of success. Possibly also, with him out of it, the sect ceased to attract the forward spirits of feminism. Whatever the cause, within a few weeks the agitation, so far as True Belief was concerned, died the death; but unfortunately came to life elsewhere, more vigorously and more abundantly than ever.
The long struggle of women, in the broad fold of Free Evangelicalism, to obtain sex-equality is not to be told here. Its main importance, so far as we are concerned, is the effect it had on the career of Mr. Trimblerigg. The recrudescence of Isabel Sparling and her followers in congregations drawn together by his growing reputation as a preacher became a sad impediment to the flow of his oratory. The manifestations were epidemic through all the loosely-knit communions of the Free Churches; but against himself they were directed with a personal animus of which only he and Isabel Sparling knew the full inwardness. For public purposes it was sufficient that, after first disclaiming all further obligation to their cause—since only in the bonds of True Belief had he stood fully committed thereto—he now sought to postpone the question of their admission until the corporate union of the Free Churches, and a few other reforms (Disestablishment amongst others), on which he had set his heart, had been accomplished. A piecemeal extension of the ministerial function to women would, he maintained, have a disturbing and a disuniting effect on communions which he sought to draw together in closer bonds of brotherhood. ‘I am in favour of it,’ he said (to the deputations which continued to wait on him), ‘but I am not so much in favour of it, as of other and more fundamental things which must come first.’
Fundamental: the word kindled in the hearts of women who had felt that fundamental call of the spirit, a flame of resentment that crackled and spread. Who was he, who was anybody to dictate times and seasons, when the signs of that spiritual outpouring were here and now?
And so there was War in all the Free Churches which strove to fulfil themselves under the ministry of one sex alone; and Mr. Trimblerigg’s prayers and preachings were in consequence broken into shorter paragraphs than was good for them.
But the violence with which those spiritual interruptions were carried out could not go on for ever; it was not in human, it was not in heavenly nature to utter messages born of the spirit with the drilled regularity and mechanism of a firing-squad. The things they said lacked conviction, did not come from their hearts or their heads, but only from their tongues and their tempers; and when in certain selected cases, Mr. Trimblerigg was inspired to pause so that they might speak as the spirit gave them utterance, the spirit left them badly in the lurch, they faltered and became dumb. For Isabel Sparling had enlisted in her cause many who were the poorest of poor speakers and had no wish whatever to become ministers; and when these heard themselves speak to a congregation which was artfully prevailed upon to listen they trembled and were afraid, and felt themselves fools.
And so, for a while, in his own particular congregation, it almost seemed that Mr. Trimblerigg was on the way to restore order and recover the undivided attention of his audiences.
But once again the pin-prick policy of Isabel Sparling got the better of him; and in the third year of her Church Militancy, forces of a new, a more placid, and a more undefeatable type were let loose against him.