and in the open air indifferently, just as they come. He repeatedly
says, "I desire mercy and not sacrifice," meaning evidently to clear
himself of the inveterate superstition that suffering is gratifying to
God. "Be not, as the Pharisees, of a sad countenance," he says. He is
convivial, feasting with Roman officials and sinners. He is careless of
his person, and is remonstrated with for not washing his hands before
sitting down to table. The followers of John the Baptist, who fast, and
who expect to find the Christians greater ascetics than themselves, are
disappointed at finding that Jesus and his twelve friends do not fast;
and Jesus tells them that they should rejoice in him instead of being
melancholy. He is jocular and tells them they will all have as much
fasting as they want soon enough, whether they like it or not. He is
not afraid of disease, and dines with a leper. A woman, apparently to
protect him against infection, pours a costly unguent on his head, and
is rebuked because what it cost might have been given to the poor.
He poohpoohs that lowspirited view, and says, as he said when he was
reproached for not fasting, that the poor are always there to be helped,
but that he is not there to be anointed always, implying that you should
never lose a chance of being happy when there is so much misery in the
world. He breaks the Sabbath; is impatient of conventionality when it is
uncomfortable or obstructive; and outrages the feelings of the Jews
by breaches of it. He is apt to accuse people who feel that way
of hypocrisy. Like the late Samuel Butler, he regards disease as
a department of sin, and on curing a lame man, says "Thy sins are
forgiven" instead of "Arise and walk," subsequently maintaining, when
the Scribes reproach him for assuming power to forgive sin as well as
to cure disease, that the two come to the same thing. He has no modest
affectations, and claims to be greater than Solomon or Jonah. When
reproached, as Bunyan was, for resorting to the art of fiction when
teaching in parables, he justifies himself on the ground that art is
the only way in which the people can be taught. He is, in short, what we
should call an artist and a Bohemian in his manner of life.

JESUS NOT A PROSLETYST

A point of considerable practical importance today is that he expressly
repudiates the idea that forms of religion, once rooted, can be weeded
out and replanted with the flowers of a foreign faith. "If you try to