"Poor Mary! To others he is the Christ, the Saviour of mankind,
setting forth upon his mighty mission to redeem the world. To
loving Mary Mother, he is her son: the baby she has suckled at her
breast, the little one she has crooned to sleep upon her lap, whose
little cheek has lain against her heart, whose little feet have made
sweet music through the poor home at Bethany: he is her boy, her
child; she would wrap her mother's arms around him and hold him safe
against all the world, against even heaven itself.
"Never, in any human drama, have I witnessed a more moving scene
than this. Never has the voice of any actress (and I have seen some
of the greatest, if any great ones are living) stirred my heart as
did the voice of Rosa Lang, the Burgomaster's daughter. It was not
the voice of one woman, it was the voice of Motherdom, gathered
together from all the world over.
"Oliver Wendell Holmes, in The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, I
think, confesses to having been bewitched at different times by two
women's voices, and adds that both these voices belonged to German
women. I am not surprised at either statement of the good doctor's.
I am sure if a man did fall in love with a voice, he would find, on
tracing it to its source, that it was the voice of some homely-
looking German woman. I have never heard such exquisite soul-
drawing music in my life, as I have more than once heard float from
the lips of some sweet-faced German Fraulein when she opened her
mouth to speak. The voice has been so pure, so clear, so deep, so
full of soft caressing tenderness, so strong to comfort, so gentle
to soothe, it has seemed like one of those harmonies musicians tell
us that they dream of, but can never chain to earth.
"As I sat in the theatre, listening to the wondrous tones of this
mountain peasant-woman, rising and falling like the murmur of a sea,
filling the vast sky-covered building with their yearning notes,
stirring like a great wind stirs Aeolian strings, the thousands of
trembling hearts around her, it seemed to me that I was indeed
listening to the voice of the 'mother of the world,' of mother
Nature herself.
"They saw him, as they had often seen him in pictures, sitting for
the last time with his disciples at supper. But yesterday they saw
him, not a mute, moveless figure, posed in conventional, meaningless
attitude, but a living, loving man, sitting in fellowship with the
dear friends that against all the world had believed in him, and had
followed his poor fortunes, talking with them for the last sweet
time, comforting them.
"They heard him bless the bread and wine that they themselves to
this day take in remembrance of him.
"They saw his agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, the human shrinking
from the cup of pain. They saw the false friend, Judas, betray him
with a kiss. (Alas! poor Judas! He loved Jesus, in a way, like the
rest did. It was only his fear of poverty that made him betray his
Master. He was so poor - he wanted the money so badly! We cry out
in horror against Judas. Let us pray rather that we are never
tempted to do a shameful action for a few pieces of silver. The
fear of poverty ever did, and ever will, make scamps of men. We
would like to be faithful, and noble, and just, only really times
are so bad that we cannot afford it! As Becky Sharp says, it is so
easy to be good and noble on five thousand a year, so very hard to
be it on the mere five. If Judas had only been a well-to-do man, he
might have been Saint Judas this day, instead of cursed Judas. He
was not bad. He had only one failing - the failing that makes the
difference between a saint and a villain, all the world over - he was
a coward; he was afraid of being poor.)
"They saw him, pale and silent, dragged now before the priests of
his own countrymen, and now before the Roman Governor, while the
voice of the people - the people who had cried 'Hosanna' to him -
shouted 'Crucify him! crucify him!' They saw him bleeding from the
crown of thorns. They saw him, still followed by the barking mob,
sink beneath the burden of his cross. They saw the woman wipe the
bloody sweat from off his face. They saw the last, long, silent
look between the mother and the son, as, journeying upward to his
death, he passed her in the narrow way through which he once had
ridden in brief-lived triumph. They heard her low sob as she turned
away, leaning on Mary Magdalen. They saw him nailed upon the cross
between the thieves. They saw the blood start from his side. They
heard his last cry to his God. They saw him rise victorious over
death.
"Few believing Christians among the vast audience but must have
passed out from that strange playhouse with their belief and love
strengthened. The God of the Christian, for his sake, became a man,
and lived and suffered and died as a man; and, as a man, living,
suffering, dying among other men, he had that day seen him.
"The man of powerful imagination needs no aid from mimicry, however
excellent, however reverent, to unroll before him in its simple
grandeur the great tragedy on which the curtain fell at Calvary some
eighteen and a half centuries ago.
"A cultivated mind needs no story of human suffering to win or hold
it to a faith.
"But the imaginative and cultured are few and far between, and the
peasants of Ober-Ammergau can plead, as their Master himself once
pleaded, that they seek not to help the learned but the lowly.
