In Palestine, at the commencement of the Christian era, the ceremonial Jews or Pharisees,[D] though a numerically small section, were the dominant party of Judaism, and were represented by dignitaries of an overbearingly proud demeanour. Suppressed by them, the spirituality of the Essene Buddhists was thrown into the shade, and, when the voice crying in the wilderness was no longer to be heard and the commanding personality of St. John the Essene disappeared from the scene, Essenism as an organization came to an end.
[D] An indiscriminate denunciation of the Pharisees is, I think, unjustifiable. They must be held deserving of commendation in so far as they were guided by conscience to a close adherence to the letter of that Law which had been delivered to them by the Almighty, through Ezra the Lawyer, for strict and undeviating observance.
To contend with these ceremonialists of Palestine and the corrupt Brahmanism of India, and to further the success of their respective missions in the face of these formidable forces, both Jesus in the one case and Gotama in the other realized the expediency of initiating a mode of proselytism which, by the humble bearing and unworldly aspect of its agents, would differentiate it from the arrogant and exclusive methods of the priestly classes. The missionaries whom these new lights sent forth into the world to propagate the doctrine of salvation received explicit instructions not to provide themselves with gold or silver, or change of raiment and shoes; in fact, they were to pose as examples of that humility and forbearance which was the keynote, in their ethical significance, of the two systems as formulated for the redemption of humanity. In both cases the spell of this evangelism was soon to be lost in a resurgence of the very evils it was intended to suppress--the pride of ecclesiasticism and the ascendancy of ritual--under the widening shadows of which the underlying truths of symbolism became obscured.
As told in the story of the Great Renunciation, Gotama goes into retirement at an early age; Jesus also becomes a recluse. It is probable that he spent the years elapsing between his adolescence and the commencement of his ministry among the Essenes, who dwelt in caves in the vicinity of the Dead Sea, where he would have found ample opportunity for meditation, as well as genial companionship at hand, if desired.