The Silver Trumpet, written by J. Wesley Ingles and published in 1930received 1930, received the John C. Green Award from the American Sunday-School Unionas Union as its unanimous choice for a manuscript whose subject was "the heroicappeal heroic appeal of Christianity to young people." The prize also provided monetary award of $2,000. It went through nearly twodozen two dozen printings through the 1950s, later republished under the titleThe title The Amazing D. Randall MacRae (Moody Press) and has made its way onlineas online as an "on-demand" book through Amazon.
Dedicated to "President Charles A. BlanchardwhoBlanchard who, of all my teachers, has left the deepest and most abiding impressupon impress upon my life," the novel follows the fortunes of D. Randall MacRae, wealthy worldling and hotshot football hero who, pursuing a prettyyoung pretty young lady, reluctantly transfers from magnificent, ivy-walledPrinceton walled Princeton to backside-of-nowhere "Wharton College," a repressive"fundamentalist" institution situated somewhere west of Chicago. MacRaepainfully MacRae painfully adjusts to campus life, fumbling about with less certitudethan certitude than his athletic reputation might suggest. His anxieties are graduallylightened gradually lightened as the semester progresses and he at last secures sweetromance–along sweet romance–along with a genuine, humbling faith in Christ. An airy, wholesome romp, Ingles's tale conjures the gentler, courtlier moods ofthe of the pre-War Midwest, the imminent thrill of the Big Game against NorthCentralNorth Central, autumn's chill and the coloring leaves against gray skies, blossoming friendships in depressed times and the promise of brightyoung bright young lives wholly devoted to Christ. In a day when there was no other "safe" place to attend college, alum of a certain age point to an earlyreading early reading of The Silver Trumpet as the deciding factor for choosingWheaton choosing Wheaton College, a fact bolstered by Rudolph Nelson in his biography ofEdward of Edward Carnell. He notes that "Dr. V. Raymond Edman…administered aquestionnaire a questionnaire to freshmen one year during the forties. In response to aquestion a question concerning their reasons for having decided to attend Wheaton, more than half of the entering class included in their list a readingof reading of The Silver Trumpet" (p. 28).
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