But if, in less than a year, such a city could spring up mushroom-like from the soil, with a mere used-up playground set about with toy-palaces as its nucleus, what might it not do within a decade under a new dispensation? Its huge neighbour, unplanned, haphazard, fortuitous in the slow growth through which it had attained its present dimensions, and replete with vested interests opposed to so dislocating a change, paled at the mere thought of it. But the plan was already in operation, building was going on; and half the farmers and dairymen of the surrounding counties had signed contracts of future service entirely subversive to the supply-system of a city ten times its size. The trade-interests tried to get an act through Parliament, but the electoral power of Second Adventism was too strong. They tried to engineer a strike in the building trade, but Second Adventism was paying its workers too well. In every department there was prosperity and contentment; and when the Trade Unions and their leaders themselves became converts to Second Adventism, what more could the enemy do? They tried to get Mr. Trimblerigg’s co-operative currency prohibited as a base imitation of the coin of the realm; but Mr. Trimblerigg’s currency had been designed with holes through it--haloes with the heads missing--so that it could deceive nobody; and the Courts ruled that as a trade-token for convenience in commerce, it was allowable. Then they tried to swamp out its value by forging it; but as it had its full worth of silver in the world’s exchange, forgeries did not matter. Of course no bank would handle it; but that also did not matter. The New Jerusalem was going to have a bank of its own; and when the present state of things came to an end, it might well be the only bank that would count. For Second Adventism did not teach that the world was going to end in fire, and earthquake, and physical overthrow; but that a new spirit would come hovering, responsive to the call of its worshippers; and entering into the place prepared for it, there set up a light; and all the world would see a working object-lesson of the new society that was soon to be; co-operation would take the place of competition; a reorganization of industry would make strikes superfluous; internationalism would arise, not from the adjustment of racial differences but from religious unity. And out of that would come Peace. The originality of Mr. Trimblerigg’s idea had been this--first to make religion irresistibly popular, by running it as a kind of ‘stunt’--big business and beatific vision combined--and then having made piety prosperous, to substitute, for the solution of the world’s ills, the religious organization for the political.