"Come," He Says, Kindly, Trying To Lead Me On, "What Did You Think
About It?"
"Well," I reply, after musing for a while, "I think that a play of
eighteen acts and some forty scenes, which commences at eight
o'clock in the morning, and continues, with an interval of an hour
and a half for dinner, until six o'clock in the evening, is too
long.
I think the piece wants cutting. About a third of it is
impressive and moving, and what the earnest student of the drama at
home is for ever demanding that a play should be - namely, elevating;
but I consider that the other two-thirds are tiresome."
"Quite so," answers B. "But then we must remember that the
performance is not intended as an entertainment, but as a religious
service. To criticise any part of it as uninteresting, is like
saying that half the Bible might very well have been omitted, and
that the whole story could have been told in a third of the space."
TUESDAY, THE 27TH - CONTINUED
We talk on. - An Argument. - The Story that Transformed the World.
"And now, as to the right or wrong of the performance as a whole.
Do you see any objection to the play from a religious point of
view?"
"No," I reply, "I do not; nor do I understand how anybody else, and
least of all a really believing Christian, can either. To argue as
some do, that Christianity should be treated as a sacred mystery, is
to argue against the whole scheme of Christianity.
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