Not that "Jezreel" was mad. Not at all. To him as Prophet and Patriarch of these New Israelites was given up the whole property of those who entered the House, to be held in common; and he made a very good thing of the infatuation of the hundreds of wealthy middle-class converts who had a fancy for this singular kind of communistic religion. It was an article of his followers' creed that they were the first portion of the 144,000, twice told, who will receive Christ when he comes again to reign a thousand years on earth. To support his character as leader of this House, "Jezreel" pretended to have received a communication from a messenger of God, who inspired him to write an extraordinary farrago of Biblical balderdash, without argument, beginning, or end, called the "Flying Roll." The curious may obtain three volumes of this nonsense, but the only preternatural thing in these books of _Extracts from the Flying Roll_ is their gross and unapproachable stupidity which completely addles the brain of him who reads them, hoping thereby to discover the tenets of the sect or any single thread of argument that may be followed for more than a consecutive paragraph or two. The effect upon one reading those pages is the same as that which Mark Twain tells us was produced on him when Artemus Ward, having plied him with strong drink, began purposely to enter upon a preposterous conversation, having a specious air of a grave and lucid argument, but which was merely an idiotic string of meaningless sentences. Mark Twain thought himself had gone daft, and felt his few remaining senses going; and that is just what happens to any one who sits down and seriously tries to understand what "Jezreel's" _Extracts_ are all about.