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.