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. Jesus is going to face sorrow and death
at Jerusalem. Mary's instinct tells her that this is so, and she pleads
to him to stay.
"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.
"The unbeliever, also, passes out into the village street full of food
for thought. The rude sermon preached in this hillside temple has shown
to him, clearer than he could have seen before, the secret wherein lies
the strength of Christianity; the reason why, of all the faiths that
Nature has taught to her children to help them in their need, to satisfy
the hunger of their souls, this faith, born by the Sea of Galilee, has
spread the farthest over the world, and struck its note the deepest into
human life. Not by his doctrines, not even by his promises, has Christ
laid hold upon the hearts of men, but by the story of his life."