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 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