Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/123

 CHRISTIAN SOCIOLOGY 109

It was in fact because he was so normal that Jesus' career was darkened by men's distrust. John the Baptist, whose work in a fashion Jesus may be said to have continued and com- pleted, was quite another man. The prophet's dress and the pauper's food together with his sternly ascetic preaching gave him a popularity and a permanent position among the Jews which Jesus during his life can hardly be said to have attained. 1 Even nowadays it is by no means so easy to attract the crowds by respectability as by eccentricity and sensations. It is infi- nitely easier to preach against fashionable extravagances and social absurdities than to recall men to gentlemanly unobtrusive- ness in goodness. Too many men measure their goodness by their sense of deprivation, making misery the thermometer of holiness. But Jesus was evidently not of this class of charlatans and semi-ascetics. It cannot have escaped the notice of even the con- ventional reader of the New Testament that in the fourth gospel Jesus begins his Galilean ministry by providing a wedding com- pany with new means for enjoyment. 2 And this was only one instance out of many in which Jesus used social gatherings for the furthering of his mission. In fact much of his teaching was connected with dining the social meal giving either the occa- sion or the analogy for his thought. He distinctly rejected fasting as a religious form, 3 and destroyed all ceremonial dis- tinctions in food. 4 If sometimes he himself fasted, 5 it was from no desire to acquire merit, and if he withdrew into solitude it

1 The hold that John had upon the minds of his contemporaries is to be seen not only in the oldest sources of our gospels (see for instance Mark I : 1-8) but also in the pages of Josephus (Ant. 18 ; 5 :2 )- Uy the latter writer the misfortunes that filled the later days of Herod Antipas are said to have been popularly regarded as judgments for the killing of John. Even if, as very likely is the case, this reference to John has been subjected to interpolations, it stands on much securer critical ground than Josephus' reference to Jesus himself (Ant. 18:3:3). ther tributes to the permanence of John's influence are seen in Acts 18 : 25 ; iu

John 2: 1-I2. It is impossible to think that the conditions of this story are ful- filled by the assumption that the wine provided by Jesus was non-alchoholtc.

3 Matt. 9: 14; 6: 17, 18. In this connection the picture of the boasting Pharisee (Luke 18 : 10) is especially striking.

Mark 7:17. 19. * Matt. 4:12. Luke 4 : 2.