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
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.