ii THE ARREST OF ENQUIRY 39 



divine nature while subjecting it to human limita- 

 tions. This he had done that he might, as sinless 

 man, become an expiatory sacrifice to offended 

 deity, and to the requirements of divine justice, for 

 the sins which the human race had committed since 

 the transgression of Adam and Eve, or which men 

 yet to be born might commit. 



The ' miraculous ' birth of Jesus took place at 

 Nazareth in Galilee, in the reign of Caesar Augustus, 

 about 750 A.U.C. as the Romans reckoned time. 

 Tradition afterwards fixed his birthday on the 2 5th 

 December, which, curiously enough, although, perhaps, 

 explaining the choice, was the day dedicated to the 

 sun-god Mithra, an Oriental deity to whom altars 

 had been raised and sacrifices performed, with rites 

 of baptisms of blood, in hospitable Rome. 



Jesus is said to have lived in the obscurity of his 

 native mountain village till his thirtieth year. Ex- 

 cept one doubtful story of his going to Jerusalem 

 with his parents when he was twelve years old, 

 nothing is recorded in the various biographies of 

 him between his birth and his appearance as a 

 public teacher. Probably he followed his father's 

 trade as a carpenter. The event that seems to have 

 called him from home was the preaching of an 

 enthusiastic ascetic named John the Baptist. At 

 his hands Jesus submitted to the baptismal rite, and 

 then entered on his career, wandering from place to 

 place. The fragments of his discourses, which have 

 survived in the short biographies known as the 

 Gospels, show him to have been gifted with a simple, 

 winning style, and his sermons, brightened by happy 

 illustration or striking parable, went home to the 



