THE ARREST OF INQUIRY. 43 



ing 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 enthusi- 

 astic ascetic named John the Baptist. At his hands 

 Jesus submitted to the baptismal rite, and then en- 

 tered 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 hearts of his 

 h'earers. Women, often of the outcast class, were 

 drawn to him by the sympathy which attracted even 

 more than his teaching. Among a people to whom 

 the unvarying order of Nature was an idea wholly 

 foreign — for Greek speculations had not penetrated 

 into Palestine — stories of miracle-working found 

 easy credit, falling in, as they did, with popular be- 

 lief in the constant intervention of deity. Thus, to 

 the reports of what Jesus taught were added those 

 of the wonders which he had wrought, from feeding 

 thousands of folk with a few loaves of bread to rais- 

 ing the dead to life. His itinerant mission secured 

 him a few devoted followers from various towns and 

 villages, while the efifect of success upon himself 

 was to heighten his own conception of the impor- 

 tance of his work. The skill of the Romans in fusing 

 together subject races had failed them in the case of 



