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.