Mr. Trimblerigg’s acceptance of the phenomena of spiritualism, though it drew mass-meetings to hear him, gave a bad jolt to Free Evangelical unity. Thenceforth pulpits were divided; and Mr. Trimblerigg had the run of only half of them. But when, following upon that, he announced his conversion to Second Adventism, a special conference of the connection was called, and secession followed. Mr. Trimblerigg went out hopefully into the wilderness, drawing a tail of all the Free Churches after him; and though for a time they lacked funds, and found many doors closed against them, they had not to be long in doubt that theirs was the winning cause. What the world wanted--the religious even more than the secular--was a real bird-in-the-hand; proof positive, quick results, practice not theory, ocular demonstration, moral certainty, wheels which actually went round, whose buzz could be heard to the far ends of earth. A race for Heaven without obstacles, and a goal visibly to be won were the materials to make religion once more popular. Spiritualism and Second Adventism run together seemed to meet the demand. The Free Churches Militant began, in an expressive American phrase, ‘to palp with emotion’; and as the new spiritual Combine devised by Mr. Trimblerigg, with joined effects of dark séance and lurid anticipation of coming events, filled its hired halls to overflowing with suffocating converts, the churches grew empty. With the sword of his spirit unsheathed and high uplifted, Mr. Trimblerigg did not spare his old associates who hung back in this day of battle for the new birth of spiritual democracy; and, to ears which had drunk in the sound of it, the old gang’s trumpetings ceased henceforth to avail or mean anything. Starting upon his fiery crusade to the sound of a hundred drums hired for the occasion, he stood at the door of his Pulman car, in the special that had been provided for him, and flourished defiance to all opposers over the heads of the seething multitude which filled the terminus, frantic with joy at having found a leader whose single aim was to keep things on the run. He stood there at the crowning point of his career; for here at last he had created his own atmosphere; at the touch of his magician’s wand a new and densely populated environment had sprung up to spread itself round him. Power had been given him, vision, and the gift of tongues; the future of revealed religion in the Free Churches hung trembling in the balances of his mind. But though it trembled (as it might well), he himself did not. From all over the world he felt a responsive rush of wings to meet him; the right button had been touched, his call to make Heaven safe for Democracy had come at last and the means to it had been found. All the rest had been but a preparation; this was the real thing.