the rector of our
village should do so. But, as St. Paul found to his cost later on, the
discarding of circumcision for baptism was to the Jews as startling a
heresy as the discarding of transubstantiation in the Mass was to the
Catholics of the XVI century.

JESUS JOINS THE BAPTISTS

Jesus entered as a man of thirty (Luke says) into the religious life of
his time by going to John the Baptist and demanding baptism from him,
much as certain well-to-do young gentlemen forty years ago "joined the
Socialists." As far as established Jewry was concerned, he burnt his
boats by this action, and cut himself off from the routine of wealth,
respectability, and orthodoxy. He then began preaching John's gospel,
which, apart from the heresy of baptism, the value of which lay in its
bringing the Gentiles (that is, the uncircumcized) within the pale of
salvation, was a call to the people to repent of their sins, as the
kingdom of heaven was at hand. Luke adds that he also preached the
communism of charity; told the surveyors of taxes not to over-assess the
taxpayers; and advised soldiers to be content with their wages and not
to be violent or lay false accusations. There is no record of John going
beyond this.

THE SAVAGE JOHN AND THE CIVILIZED JESUS

Jesus went beyond it very rapidly, according to Matthew. Though, like
John, he became an itinerant preacher, he departed widely from John's
manner of life. John went into the wilderness, not into the synagogues;
and his baptismal font was the river Jordan. He was an ascetic, clothed
in skins and living on locusts and wild honey, practising a savage
austerity. He courted martyrdom, and met it at the hands of Herod. Jesus
saw no merit either in asceticism or martyrdom. In contrast to John
he was essentially a highly-civilized, cultivated person. According
to Luke, he pointed out the contrast himself, chaffing the Jews for
complaining that John must be possessed by the devil because he was a
teetotaller and vegetarian, whilst, because Jesus was neither one nor
the other, they reviled him as a gluttonous man and a winebibber,
the friend of the officials and their mistresses. He told straitlaced
disciples that they would have trouble enough from other people without
making any for themselves, and that they should avoid martyrdom and
enjoy themselves whilst they had the chance. "When they persecute you in
this city," he says, "flee into the next." He preaches in the synagogues