“I stick to what I know, Nordenholt, as I’ve often told you. I’m no psychologist; and I have to look on the material side because I’m out of my depth in the other. But let’s hear what you have in your mind about the state of affairs.”
“Well, you’ve been busy enough with your own work; so probably you haven’t had time to observe how things are going; but I can put the thing in a nutshell. We’ve weathered a good many difficulties; but now we’re up against the biggest of them all. I see all the signs of a revival in the near future—and it isn’t going to be a Christian revival. It spells trouble of the worst description.”
Now that my attention had been drawn to the point, a score of incidents flashed across my mind in confirmation of what he said. I had noticed an increased attendance at the meetings of street-preachers; and also a growth in the number of the preachers themselves. As I went about the city in the evenings I had seen in many places knots of people assembled round some speaker who, with emotion-contorted visage, was striving to move them by his eloquence.
Once I had even stopped for a few minutes to listen to a sermon being preached outside the Central Station by the Reverend John P. Wester; and I still remembered the effect which it had produced upon me. He was a tall man with a flowing red beard and a voice which enabled him to make himself heard to huge audiences in the open air. He repelled me by the cloudiness of his utterances—I hate loose thinking—and also by the touch of fanaticism which clung to his discourses; for I instinctively detest a fanatic. Yet in spite of this I felt strangely attracted by him. He had the gift of gripping his hearers; and I could see how he played upon them as a great musician plays upon a favourite instrument. Remotely he reminded me of Nordenholt in the way in which he seemed to know by instinct the points to which his rhetorical attacks should be directed; but the resemblance between the two men ended at this. It was always reason to which Nordenholt appealed in the end; whilst emotional chords were the ones which the Reverend John fingered with success.
“Now you’ve told me, I believe you’re right,” I said. “I have seen signs of something like a revival. The crowds seem to be taking a greater interest in religion.”
“I wish they would,” Nordenholt returned, abruptly. “They won’t get it from the Reverend John. He’s out for something quite different. It’s just what I feared would happen, sooner or later. It always crops up under conditions like those we are in just now. We’ve strained the human machine to its utmost in all this work; and we’re on the edge of possibilities in the way of collective hysteria.
“Now that man Wester is at the root of half the trouble we are having just now. I don’t mean that he is creating it; nothing of that sort: but his personality forms a centre round which the thing collects. The thing itself is there anyway: but if it weren’t for him and some others, it would remain fluid; it wouldn’t become really dangerous. But Wester is a fanatic and with his oratorical powers he carries the weaker people off their feet, especially the women. He’s got a following. What worries me is, where he’s going to lead them. He’s got a kink in him. Still, I’m trusting that we may be able to weather the thing without using force even now. But if he goes too far, I’ll break him like that.”
He tapped a stick of sealing wax on his desk and broke it in two. Again I reflected how unlike this was to the Nordenholt I had known at first, the man who could unfold huge plans without so much as a gesture to help out his meaning. He must have read the thought in my eyes, for he laughed, half at himself, I think.
“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
