“Quite right, Jack. These theatrical touches seem to be growing on me, of late. I must really try to cure myself. But, all the same, I mean to keep my eye on the Reverend John. If he sets up as a prophet--and I expect he will do that one of these days--I’ll take the risk and put him down. But it’s a tricky business, I can tell you. Until he actually becomes dangerous, I shall let him go on.” It was only natural, after that, for me to take more interest in the career of the Reverend John. I even attended one of his open-air meetings from start to finish; and I was still more impressed by his command over his hearers. The material of his sermons seemed to me commonplace in the extreme: it was not by the novelty of his subjects but by his personal force that he impressed his audiences and raised them to a state of exaltation. Zion, the River, The Tree of Life, Eden, the loosing of burdens, rest and joy eternal: all the old phrases were utilised. From what I heard of his preaching, it seemed to me innocuous. A brief time of suffering and sorrow upon earth and then the heavens would open and the Elect would enter into their endless happiness: these appeared to be the elements of the creed which he expounded; and I could see little reason for Nordenholt’s anxiety. At last, however, I began to notice something novel in the sermons. The change came so gradually that I could hardly be sure when it began. Probably he had opened up his fresh line so tentatively that I had not observed it at the time; and it was only after he had already been changing step by step in his subject that I became clearly conscious of his new tone. With the greatest skill he contrived to use the old expressions while inflecting them with a fresh intention. At last, however, there could be no doubt as to his meaning. It was no longer Christianity that he preached, but a kind of bastard Buddhism. Up to that point in his career he had spoken of earthly affairs as a trial through which we must pass in order to attain to bliss in the Hereafter; but in his newer phase the things of the material world became entirely secondary. Eternal rest, eternal joy, eternal peace: these were his main themes; and to the exhausted and nerve-racked population they had an attraction of the most subtle kind. The Reverend John was a psychologist like Nordenholt, though he worked in a narrower groove; and he well knew how to utilise the levers of the human consciousness. Eternal rest! What more attractive prospect could be held out to that toil-worn race? Slowly, with the most gradual of transitions, he began to assume the mantle of a prophet; and with that phase new names began to emerge in his discourses. The Four Truths, the Middle Path, the Five Hindrances, Arahatship, Karma: these cropped up from time to time in sermons which were daily becoming wilder in their phraseology.