e age as Jesus,[2] and
very young according to the ideas of the time. In mental development,
he was the brother rather than the father of Jesus. The two young
enthusiasts, full of the same hopes and the same hatreds, were able to
make common cause, and mutually to support each other. Certainly an
aged teacher, seeing a man without celebrity approach him, and
maintain toward him an aspect of independence, would have rebelled; we
have scarcely an example of a leader of a school receiving with
eagerness his future successor. But youth is capable of any sacrifice,
and we may admit that John, having recognized in Jesus a spirit akin
to his own, accepted him without any personal reservation. These good
relations became afterward the starting-point of a whole system
developed by the evangelists, which consisted in giving the Divine
mission of Jesus the primary basis of the attestation of John. Such
was the degree of authority acquired by the Baptist, that it was not
thought possible to find in the world a better guarantee. But far from
John abdicating in favor of Jesus, Jesus, during all the time that he
passed with him, recognized him as his superior, and only developed
his own genius with timidity.

[Footnote 1: Matt. iii. 13, and following; Mark i. 9, and following;
Luke iii. 21, and following; John i. 29, and following; iii. 22, and
following. The synoptics make Jesus come to John, before he had played
any public part. But if it is true, as they state, that John
recognized Jesus from the first and welcomed him, it must be supposed
that Jesus was already a somewhat renowned teacher. The fourth Gospel
brings Jesus to John twice, the first time while yet unknown, the
second time with a band of disciples. Without touching here the
question of the precise journeys of Jesus (an insoluble question,
seeing the contradictions of the documents and the little care the
evangelists had in being exact in such matters), and without denying
that Jesus might have made a journey to John when he had as yet no
notoriety, we adopt the information furnished by the fourth Gospel
(iii. 22, and following), namely, that Jesus, before beginning to
baptize like John, had formed a school. We must remember, besides,
that the first pages of the fourth Gospel are notes tacked together
without rigorous chronological arrangement.]

[Footnote 2: Luke i., although indeed all the details of the
narrative, especially those which refer to the relationship of