His next phase of development, however, opened my eyes. By this time he had become a great power among the people. Many a king has been treated with less reverence than his followers showed to him. Crowds flocked to his meetings, standing thickly even when they stretched far beyond the reach of that magnificent voice. In the streets he was saluted as though he were a superhuman agent. There were attempts made to get him to touch the sick in the hope that he might heal them.
From afar, Nordenholt watched all this rising surge of emotion. In some ways, the two men resembled each other; but their motives were wide apart as the Poles. Both had their ideals, higher than the normal; but these ideals were in deadly antagonism to each other. Both, it is possible, were right; but the clash of right with right is the highest form of tragedy; and collision between them was inevitable.
“The Reverend John has been a great disappointment to me, Jack,” Nordenholt admitted to me one day. “That man has the makings of a great demagogue or a great saint in him; and it seems to me that the spin of the coin has gone against me, for I thought the saint would come uppermost. He isn’t as big as I thought he was. His head has been turned by all this adulation; and unless I am mistaken again we shall find him becoming a public danger before very long. He thinks he has his own work to do, preparing for the Kingdom of Heaven; and in doing that he seems to sweep aside all earthly affairs as trifles. He despises them. I don’t. To me, he seems to be like a child in a game who won’t abide by the rules. His heaven may be all right; but if it is to be attained by shirking one’s work on earth—not striving to live—it seems to me a poor business. I think life is important, or it wouldn’t exist; and I’m working to keep it in existence. He seems to believe it is of no value, if he really means what he says. We can’t agree, that’s evident.”
It was not long before the Reverend John’s campaign filled even my mind with apprehension. His style of preaching changed and grew more incoherent; his phraseology became wilder; and a minatory tone crept into his sermons. And the tremendous personality of the speaker, coupled with all the art of the orator, made even these obscure ravings powerful to influence the minds of his hearers.
He began to speak of curses from heaven upon a generation which had forgotten the right path. The Famine was a sign that all life was to be swept from the earth’s face. And thence he passed to the proposition that any struggling against the Famine was a hindrance to the workings of the universe.
I think that it was about this time that he discarded ordinary clothes and began to go about clad in a curious garment manufactured from the skin of some animal. Except for his fiery beard, he recalled the sandal-shod John the Baptist represented in old illustrated Bibles. Nor was he alone in this fashion: some of his more prominent adherents also adopted it, though in their cases the results were not so imposing.
And now things moved rapidly towards their end.
The Reverend John preached daily in the streets, predicting a universal entry into Nirvana. His curses against those who worked for the physical salvation of the people to the detriment of their Karma became louder and more frequent; and it was not long until he spent most of his energies in comminations. From cursings, he passed to threats; and his attacks upon Nordenholt grew in vehemence day by day. And still Nordenholt, to my growing wonder, held his hand and forbore to strike.
By this time the religious mania was spreading rapidly throughout the population of the Area. The skin-clad followers of the Reverend John ran nightly through the streets crying that the Great Day was at hand and calling upon the people to repent of their sins and turn to righteousness. Strange scenes were witnessed; and stranger doctrines preached. It was a weird time.
Meanwhile, the preaching of the revivalist was becoming more and more exalted. He named himself a Prophet, the last and the greatest. He began to be more definite in his predictions; events which he foreshadowed were foretold as coming to pass at stated dates. At last he gave out that three days later he and his followers would publicly ascend to heaven in a cloud of glory; and that the world of earthly things would pass away as he did so.