Whenever in doubt, adopting the method of old Uncle Trimblerigg, he turned to the Scriptures: he did not search them, for that would have been self-willed and presumptuous; he merely opened them, putting a blind finger to the spot where divine guidance awaited him. It was in this way that Uncle Trimblerigg had become rich; forty years ago he had invested his savings in house property all through having set thumb to the text, ‘I have builded an house to Thy name.’ And without searching the Scriptures further he had built twenty of them. At a later date, slate-quarrying having started in the district, their value was doubled. So one day, in a like faith, our own Mr. Trimblerigg committed himself to the same experiment. His first point on opening drew a startling reply, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan, for thou savourest not the things which be of God, but the things which be of men.’ Very right and proper, of course: Satan thus safely disposed of, he tried again. ‘Remember Lot’s wife,’ failed for the moment to convey any meaning; he knew that it could not refer to him: it seemed rather to indicate that his Bible had not yet given him its thorough attention. To warm it to its task he lifted it as a heave-offering, administered to it the oath, as he had seen done in a police court, kissed it, and set it down again. This time it answered sharply, but still not to the point: ‘Ye generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?’ Evidently the Lord was trying him. He turned from the New Testament to the old: perhaps it was only the old he should have consulted, for he had an idea that this was an Old Testament method. That would account for the delay. The Old Testament made a better response to his appeal. ‘The zeal of Thy House hath eaten me up,’ suggested something at any rate, but did not make the way quite clear; ‘Down with it, down with it, even unto the ground!’ was practical in its bearing upon the Lord’s House, but puzzling; ‘Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth’ gave him the light he sought. For at that time Bethesda, the chapel of the Free Evangelicals, had fallen lamentably into disrepair, and since Uncle Trimblerigg, the only man of substance in the district, had retired from the innovation of hymn-singing to a stricter Bethel of his own, there seemed little chance of raising the necessary funds for demolition and restoration. And so decay went on, while still, from old habit, the chapel continued to be insured.