he had come to live in was situated in the valley of the leopard’s den, which is but half-a-mile from our brook.  I will go thither with thee this evening, but first drink from my water-bottle, I said, for I could see he needed water, and I spoke to him of the number of hermits we had lost lately from wild animals, but he did not heed me, and as soon as he had soothed his parched tongue with my water-bottle he began to tell me that he had come from the shores of the Dead Sea and was about to begin to preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins, and that we must not indulge in hope of salvation because we have Abraham for our father.

His words seemed to be true words, and I pondered on them, and along the Jordan everybody was asking whether he was the promised Christ.  I walked miles to hear him, leaving my flock in another’s charge, or waited for him to return to his cave, and often spent the night watching over him lest a wild beast should break in upon him while he slept.  I had known none but my brethren, nor any city, and John had travelled through all Judea, and it was from him I learnt that the world was nearing its end, and that if man did not repent at once God would raise another race out of the stones by the wayside, so needful was the love of man to God; and though it had always seemed to me God was gentler than he seemed to be in John’s prophesying, yet his teaching suddenly seemed to be right to me.  I got baptism from him in Jordan and went into the wilderness to read the Book of Daniel, in which he said all had been foretold, and, having read, at his advice I bade farewell to the brethren.  Manahem, Saddoc, Mathias, Caleb and Eleazar remember my departure; you regretted it and tried to dissuade me, but I answered you, saying that God had called me to preach in my own country, Galilee, that whosoever has two coats should give one to the poor; for it is the poor that will intercede for us on the last day; and, carrying John’s doctrine further, I declared that it were easier for a sword to pass through an eye of a needle than for a rich man to go to heaven, which may be true, but such judgments should be left to God, and, carrying it still further, I said it was as hard for a rich man to go to heaven as for cow to calve in a rook’s nest.

In my teaching I wandered beyond our doctrines and taught that this world is but a mock, a shame, a disgrace, and that naught was of avail but repentance.  John’s teaching took possession of me, but I would not have you think here that I am about to lay my sins at John’s door, for sin it is for a man to desire that which God has not given, and I should have remained an Essene shepherd following my flocks in the hills, whereas John did well to come out of his desert and preach that the end of the world was approaching and that men must repent, for God willed him to preach these things.  His teaching was true when he was the teacher, but when I became his disciple his teaching became false; it turned me from my natural