What groups of sympathetic women trying to comfort her, as only women can comfort!
On goes the sacred drama till we come to the foot-washing. A few days before, while we were in Vienna, we had explained to us the annual ceremony of foot washing by the Emperor of Austria. It always takes place at the close of Lent. Twelve very old people are selected from the poorest of the poor. They are brought to the palace. At the last foot-washing the youngest of the twelve was 86 years of age, and the oldest 92. The Imperial family and all those in high places gather for this ceremony. An officer precedes the Emperor with a basin of water. For many days the old people have been preparing for the scene. The Emperor goes down on one knee before each one of these venerable people, puts water on the arch of the foot and then wipes it with a towel. When this is done a rich provision of food and drink is put before each one of the old people, but immediately removed before anything is tasted. Then the food and the cups and the knives and the forks are put in twelve sacks and each one has his portion allotted him. The old people come to the foot-washing in the Emperor's carriage and return in the same way, and they never forget the honour and splendour of that occasion.
Oh, the contrast between that foot-washing amid pomp and brilliant ceremony and the imitated foot-washing of our Lord at Ober-Ammergau. Before each one of the twelve Apostles Christ comes down so slowly that a sigh of emotion passes through the great throng of spectators. Christ even washes the feet of Judas. Was there in all time or eternity past, or will there be in all time or eternity to come, such a scene of self-abnegation? The Lord of heaven and earth stooping to such a service which must have astounded the heavens more than its dramatisation overpowered us! What a stunning rebuke to the pride and arrogance and personal ambition of all ages!
The Hand of God on Human Foot in Ablution!
No wonder the quick-tempered Peter thought it incongruous, and forbade its taking place, crying out: "Thou shalt never wash my feet!" But the Lord broke him down until Peter vehemently asked that his head and his hands be washed as well as his feet.
During eight hours on that stage it seems as though we were watching a battle between the demons of the Pit and the seraphs of Light, and the demons triumph. Eight hours telling a sadness, with every moment worse than its predecessor. All the world against Him, and hardly any let up so that we feel like leaving our place and rushing for the stage and giving congratulations with both hands to Simon of Cyrene as he lightens the Cross from the shoulder of the sufferer, and to Nicodemus who voted an emphatic "No" at the condemnation, and to Joseph of Arimathea who asks the honour of being undertaker at the obsequies.
Scene after scene, act after act, until at the scourging every stroke fetches the blood; and the purple mantle is put upon Him in derision, and they slap His face and they push Him off the stool upon which He sits, laughing at His fall. On, until from behind the curtain you hear the thumping of the hammers on the spikes; on, until hanging between two bandits, He pledges Paradise within twenty-four hours to the one, and commits His own broken-hearted mother to John, asking him to take care of her in her old age; and His complaint of thirst brings a sponge moistened with sour wine on the end of a staff; and blasphemy has hurled at Him its last curse, and malice has uttered concerning Him its last lie, and contempt has spit upon Him its last foam, and the resources of perdition are exhausted, and from the shuddering form and white lips comes the exclamation, "It is finished!"
At that moment there resounded across the river Ammer and through the village of Ober-Ammergau a crash that was responded to by the echoes of the Bavarian mountains. The rocks tumbled back off the stage, and the heavens roared and the graves of the dead were wrecked, and it seemed as if the earth itself had foundered in its voyage through the sky. The great audience almost leaped to its feet at the sound of that tempest and earthquake.
Look! the ruffians are tossing dice for the ownership of the Master's coat. The darkness thickens. Night, blackening night. Hark! The wolves are howling for the corpse of the slain Lord. Then, with more pathos and tenderness than can be seen in Rubens' picture, "Descent from the Cross," in the cathedral at Antwerp, is the dead Christ lowered, and there rises the wailing of crushed motherhood, and with solemn tread the mutilated body is sepulchred. But soon the door of the mausoleum falls and forth comes the Christ and, standing on the shoulder of Mount Olivet, He is ready for ascension. Then the "Hallelujah Chorus" from the 700 voices before and behind the scenes closes the most wonderful tragedy ever enacted.
As we rose for departure we felt like saying with the blind preacher, whom William Wirt, the orator of Virginia, heard concluding his sermon to a backwoods congregation: