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.
