Hear him talk about sin, and you realise the man's spell.
"At one moment he is full of humour and robust talk, a genial, merry, shrewd-eyed old gentleman; at the next--at the mention of real sin--his brows contract, his eyes flash, and his tongue hisses out such hatred and contempt and detestation as no sybarite could find on the tip of his tongue for anything superlatively coarse or ill-flavoured.
"'Sin!' he cries to me.

'Sin is a real thing--a damnable thing! I don't care what science calls it, or what some of the pulpits are calling it.

I know what it is.

Sin is devilish.

It is sin and only sin which is stopping progress.