In a word, evangelicalism, as conceived of by Trollope, puzzled, perplexed, and irritated him. Of the evangelical teachers, with the shibboleths they parade as well as the stultifying inconsistencies these imply, he would say, “Your profession does not make you a Christian. For that, you must act like one. Yet,” he added, “we are told good works, though the test of religion, are also a snare, and certainly make for perdition if performed by those not in a state of grace or merely as moral duties.” “You tell me,” I once heard Trollope say to an evangelical monitor perhaps almost old enough to have sat under Grimshaw or Romaine, “that, in effect, virtue becomes vice if its practical pursuit be not sanctified by a mystical motive not within the understanding of all. Such a theory, I retort, can in its working have only one of two results--the immorality of antinomianism, or a condition of perplexity and confusion which must drive men from religion in disgust and despair.”
_Barchester Towers_ contained Trollope’s earliest embodiment of Low-churchmanship in Mr. Slope, with his baneful influence on Mrs. Proudie. Primarily the Barchester bishopess personified the tendency of her sex to mistake worry for work and fuss for energy. In simple truth, the Established Church was to Trollope, from his pervadingly official point of view, a branch of the Civil Service, which could not properly be carried on if irregular influences and emotions or imperfectly qualified persons were allowed to have a voice in it. Hence the famous caricature of the she ecclesiastic in 1857.
In the year now reached by this narrative, 1863, Trollope renewed his attack upon the religionists he detested, after a fashion and under circumstances that give to the book _Rachel Ray_ a genuine biographical significance. The genesis of _Rachel Ray_ is indeed throughout a revelation of its author’s idiosyncrasies, shown perhaps even more in the facts connected with its publication than in the unrelieved bitterness of its sectarian strictures. Trollope, at the time of its publication being arranged for, was in the full tide of his success and fame. He could make his own terms with editors or publishers. _Good Words_, when--from 1862 to 1872--conducted by a Presbyterian minister, Norman Macleod, though in no sense a denominational organ, could not afford to fly in the face of evangelical prejudices. Naturally Trollope understood this so well that when applied to by its editor for a story, he deprecated the offer on the ground of his not being a “goody-goody” writer, as well as of his inability or indisposition to suit his sentiments or his language to Macleod’s public. In reply to those objections, the novelist received from the editor the promise of a free hand and the assurance that no attempt to gag him should be made. Trollope therefore reluctantly accepted the engagement, and proceeded to fulfil it in a temper deeply resenting the pressure that had been placed upon him. “Vous l’avez voulu, George Dandin;”[24] _caveat emptor_: on such principles Trollope made the bargain and set to work. For, if _Good Words_ would not have the novel, a forfeit could be squeezed out and another publisher found. This is what actually happened. The author’s misgivings were fulfilled to the letter. The magazine manager sent back to the author the manuscript, accompanied by the fine, and the book found its publishers in Chapman and Hall.