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. Jesus is going to
face sorrow and death at Jerusalem.
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