“The people around the country, Barnes, do not understand how New York seethes and boils with excitement since Jesus began to do his public work. It is indescribable. It must be said, in justice to the facts, that the churches of all denominations are a unit in their enthusiastic support of and belief in him. There is an upheaval in social circles in New York. And it looks now as if some radical changes would occur that will be permanent.

“Among them is a complete change of definition of the police force. The new mayor accepts Jesus’s definition of a police force as a life-saving missionary body and has begun the appointment already of a new type of officer, choosing men and women of devout Christian character who, he says, will love people and save them.

“The whole thing got too much for me. I felt the need to come home. Barnes, this has been a long spiel. Some of it, I know, has not sounded like me. Perhaps it isn’t like me. But I felt as if I must tell it to someone or I would simply choke.

“I went to New York to prove this Jesus of yours a fake. I didn’t succeed. I wonder what I did do. Barnes, what do you think is the matter with me, if I say I believe I am beginning to have a real admiration for this Jesus of yours?”

“Thank God!” Barnes cried impulsively. “I believe you are not far from the kingdom, Mr. Carter. Oh, why not give yourself to him heart and mind? He is the Son of God!”

“I don’t know.” Carter looked at Barnes with a wistful gaze, as if he longed to know the secret of Barnes’s happiness. “I’m not ready yet.”

He abruptly dismissed Barnes, who went out with a great heartthrob of hope for Carter. And when the door was shut, Carter stood still a moment, then locked the door and went over to his desk, opened it, took the manuscript Jesus had left him out of a drawer, and sat down to read it over.

The man’s soul was chaos. He could not resume his regular work until he settled this matter. And in his memory as he struggled, there beat back and forth ends of verses he had heard from the Gospels when he was a boy, and among them the phrases, “Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!”

“I will not have this man to rule over me!”

Call him Master? Let him control and direct his self-centered life? All the while he was talking there at Drake’s table, asking Drake those tremendous questions about himself, Carter knew the same stern judgment exactly fitted himself.