rity.[3] The retreat to the desert thus became
the condition and the prelude of high destinies.

[Footnote 1: Malachi iv. 5, 6; (iii. 23, 24, according to the Vulg.);
_Ecclesiasticus_ xlviii. 10; Matt. xvi. 14, xvii. 10, and following;
Mark vi. 15, viii. 28, ix. 10, and following; Luke ix. 8, 19; John i.
21, 25.]

[Footnote 2: The ferocious Abdallah, pacha of St. Jean d'Acre, nearly
died from fright at seeing him in a dream, standing erect on his
mountain. In the pictures of the Christian churches, he is surrounded
with decapitated heads. The Mussulmans dread him.]

[Footnote 3: _Isaiah_ ii. 9-11.]

No doubt this thought of imitation had occupied John's mind.[1] The
anchorite life, so opposed to the spirit of the ancient Jewish people,
and with which the vows, such as those of the Nazirs and the
Rechabites, had no relation, pervaded all parts of Judea. The Essenes
or Therapeutae were grouped near the birthplace of John, on the eastern
shores of the Dead Sea.[2] It was imagined that the chiefs of sects
ought to be recluses, having rules and institutions of their own, like
the founders of religious orders. The teachers of the young were also
at times species of anchorites,[3] somewhat resembling the
_gourous_[4] of Brahminism. In fact, might there not in this be a
remote influence of the _mounis_ of India? Perhaps some of those
wandering Buddhist monks who overran the world, as the first
Franciscans did in later times, preaching by their actions and
converting people who knew not their language, might have turned their
steps toward Judea, as they certainly did toward Syria and Babylon?[5]
On this point we have no certainty. Babylon had become for some time a
true focus of Buddhism. Boudasp (Bodhisattva) was reputed a wise
Chaldean, and the founder of Sabeism. _Sabeism_ was, as its etymology
indicates,[6] _baptism_--that is to say, the religion of many
baptisms--the origin of the sect still existing called "Christians of
St. John," or Mendaites, which the Arabs call _el-Mogtasila_, "the
Baptists."[7] It is difficult to unravel these vague analogies. The
sects floating between Judaism, Christianity, Baptism, and Sabeism,
which we find in the region beyond the Jordan during the first
centuries of our era,[8] present to criticism the most singular
problem, in consequence of the confused accounts of them which have
come down to us. We may believe, at all events, that many of the
external practices of John, of the Essenes,