We must admit that he did not, like so many others, owe his influence to his environment. In New South Wales, where he made his _debut_ as a preacher at Sydney, his eloquence and his learning made so great an impression--especially after he had emerged victorious from a controversy with the Anglican bishop, Vaughan, brother to the Cardinal--that the governor of the province, Sir Henry Parkes, offered him an important Government position. He refused to accept it, desiring, as he said, to consecrate his life to the work of God. Persuaded--or wishing to persuade others--that he had been personally chosen by God to fulfil the prophecy of St. Mark xvi. 17, 18, he took up the practice of the laying-on of hands, claiming that in this way, with the help of prayer, the sick could be cured. On these words of the evangelist his whole doctrine was based. Through assiduous reading he familiarised himself with medical science, as well as with hypnotism, telepathy and suggestion, his aim being to organise and direct a crusade against medicine as practised by the faculty. He gathered together materials for a declaration of war against the medicos, attacking them in their, apparently, most impregnable positions, and showing up, often through their own observations, the fatal inanity--in his eyes--of their therapeutics. At the same time he managed to acquire experience of commerce, finance and administration, and, thus equipped, he opened his campaign. Thaumaturgy, science, occultism, eloquence, knowledge of men and of the world--all these he brought into play. The prestige he gained was remarkable, and of course the unimpeachable truth of Bible prophecy was sufficient to establish the fact of his identity with the expected Elias! "Logic itself commands you to believe in me," he said in his official manifesto. "John the Baptist was the messenger of the Alliance (which is the Scotch Covenant), and Elias was its prophet. But Malachi and Jesus promised the return of the messenger of the Alliance, and of Elias the Restorer. . . . If we are deceived, it is God who has deceived us, and that is impossible. For the office with which we are charged is held directly from God, and those who have helped us in founding our Church, and who have given us their devotion, testify that they have been instructed to do so by personal revelations."