JESUS was born in the artisan class and rose to be an original teacher among a people who made a rigorous religious ritual out of the way their ancestors had washed the dishes, and that sort of thing. His imagination was molded by the history and traditions of his own people, but the fresh life in him revolted from the suffocatingly traditional forms in which academic minds attempted to fix the spiritual activities of the time. Though at maturity he did not hold with the ascetic sects, in early middle life he was much influenced by the preaching of John, an ascetic in the style of the elder prophets. John was attempting to produce a penitential movement in expectation of a savior of the people, whose coming was a matter of ancient prediction.
Jesus became convinced that he himself was the foretold savior. He fostered that belief in his followers. Of the bystanders, some said that he was "a good man" and others said that he was "misleading the people." Indisputably, they were both right. Jesus was a good man. Jesus did mislead the people in ten thousand tragic ways.
It seems clear, however, that he himself contemplated no such exodus from the power of the Roman law as the multitude hoped for, but rather an escape into an inner world of "spiritual freedom." He desired
