Never mind their being silly.
They will be all the better for that. Silly remarks are generally
more interesting than sensible ones."
"But what is the use of saying anything about it at all?" I urge.
"The merest school-boy must know all about the Ober-Ammergau Passion
Play by this time."
"What has that to do with you?" answers B. "You are not writing for
cultured school-boys. You are writing for mere simple men and
women. They will be glad of a little information on the subject,
and then when the schoolboy comes home for his holiday they will be
able, so far as this topic, at all events, is concerned, to converse
with him on his own level and not appear stupid.
"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. It was Christ
himself that rent the veil of the Temple, and brought religion down
into the streets and market-places of the world. Christ was a
common man. He lived a common life, among common men and women. He
died a common death. His own methods of teaching were what a
Saturday reviewer, had he to deal with the case, would undoubtedly
term vulgar. The roots of Christianity are planted deep down in the
very soil of life, amid all that is commonplace, and mean, and
petty, and everyday. Its strength lies in its simplicity, its
homely humanness. It has spread itself through the world by
speaking to the hearts, rather than to the heads of men. If it is
still to live and grow, it must be helped along by such methods as
these peasant players of Ober-Ammergau employ, not by high-class
essays and the learned discussions of the cultured.
"The crowded audience that sat beside us in the theatre yesterday
saw Christ of Nazareth nearer than any book, however inspired, could
bring him to them; clearer than any words, however eloquent, could
show him. They saw the sorrow of his patient face. They heard his
deep tones calling to them. They saw him in the hour of his so-
called triumph, wending his way through the narrow streets of
Jerusalem, the multitude that thronged round him waving their
branches of green palms and shouting loud hosannas.
"What a poor scene of triumph! - a poor-clad, pale-faced man, mounted
upon the back of a shuffling, unwilling little grey donkey, passing
slowly through the byways of a city, busy upon other things. Beside
him, a little band of worn, anxious men, clad in thread-bare
garments - fishermen, petty clerks, and the like; and, following, a
noisy rabble, shouting, as crowds in all lands and in all times
shout, and as dogs bark, they know not why - because others are
shouting, or barking. And that scene marks the highest triumph won
while he lived on earth by the village carpenter of Galilee, about
whom the world has been fighting and thinking and talking so hard
for the last eighteen hundred years.
"They saw him, angry and indignant, driving out the desecrators from
the temple. They saw the rabble, who a few brief moments before had
followed him, shouting 'Hosanna,' slinking away from him to shout
with his foes.
"They saw the high priests in their robes of white, with the rabbis
and doctors, all the great and learned in the land, sitting late
into the night beneath the vaulted roof of the Sanhedrin's council-
hall, plotting his death.
"They saw him supping with his disciples in the house of Simon.
They saw poor, loving Mary Magdalen wash his feet with costly
ointment, that might have been sold for three hundred pence, and the
money given to the poor - 'and us.' Judas was so thoughtful for the
poor, so eager that other people should sell all they had, and give
the money to the poor - 'and us.' Methinks that, even in this
nineteenth century, one can still hear from many a tub and platform
the voice of Judas, complaining of all waste, and pleading for the
poor - 'and us.'
"They were present at the parting of Mary and Jesus by Bethany, and
it will be many a day before the memory of that scene ceases to
vibrate in their hearts. It is the scene that brings the humanness
of the great tragedy most closely home to us.
