Then amid the heat of the lecture rooms, the throng of students of art and science, comes a long-forgotten voice from the days of our childhood! And the straining eyes suddenly turn from the teachers and the dissecting tables, from the glittering visions of art and the material world to the stage of Oberammergau and the Passion Play.
There stands the unassuming figure with the crown of thorns and the sorrowful, questioning gaze. And with one accord their hearts rush to meet Him and, as the son who has grown rich in foreign lands, after having eaten and enjoyed everything, longs to return to the poverty of his home and falls repentantly at the feet of his forsaken father, the human race, in the midst of this intoxication of knowledge and pleasure, sinks sobbing before the pale flower of Christianity and longingly extends its arms toward the rude wooden cross on which it blooms!
That powerful thinker, Max Müller, says in his comparative study of religions:[[1]] "When do we feel the blessings of our country more warmly and truly than when we return from abroad? It is the same with regard to religion." That fact is apparent here! It is an indisputable verity that, at the precise period when art and science have attained their highest stages of development, the Oberammergau Passion Play enjoys a degree of appreciation never bestowed before, that during this critical age, from decade to decade, people flock to the Passion Play in ever increasing throngs. Not only the uncultivated and ignorant, nay, the most cultured--artists and scholars, statesmen and monarchs. The poor village no longer has room to shelter all its guests; it is positively startling to see the flood of human beings pour in on the evening before the commencement of the play, stifling, inundating everything. And then it is marvellous to notice how quiet it is on the morning of the play, as it flows into the bare room called the theatre, how it seems as it were to grow calm, as if every storm within or without was subdued under the influence of those simple words, now more than two thousand years old. How wonderful it is to watch the people fairly holding their breath to listen to the simple drama for seven long hours without heeding the time which is far beyond the limit our easily wearied nerves are accustomed to bear.
What is it, for whose sake the highest as well as the lowest, the richest and the poorest, prince and peasant, would sleep on a layer of straw, without a murmur, if no bed could be had? Why will the most pampered endure hunger and thirst, the most delicate heat and cold, the most timid fearlessly undertake the hard journey across the Ettal mountain? Is it mere curiosity to hear a number of poor wood-carvers, peasants, and wood-cutters repeat under the open sky, exposed to sun and rain, in worse German than is heard at school the same old story which has already been told a thousand times, as the enemies of the Passion Play say? Would this bring people every ten years from half the inhabited world, from far and near, from South and North, from the mountains and the valleys, from palaces and huts, across sea and land? Certainly not? What is it then? A miracle?
Whoever has seen the Passion Play understands it, but it is difficult to explain the mystery to those who have not.
The deity remains concealed from our earthly vision and unattainable, like the veiled statue of Sais. Every attempt to raise this veil by force is terribly avenged.
What is gained by those modern Socinians and Adorantes who, with ill-feigned piety, seek to drag the mystery to light and make the God a human being, in order to worship in the wretched puppet themselves? Even if they beheld Him face to face, they would still see themselves only, and He would cry: "You are like the spirit which you understand, not me."
And what do the Pantheists gain who make man God, in order to embrace in Him the unattainable? Sooner or later they will perceive that they have mistaken the effects for the cause, and the form for the essence. Loathing and disappointment will be their lot, as it is the lot of all who have nothing but--human beings.
But those to whom the visible is only the symbol of the invisible which teaches them from the effect to learn the cause, will, with unerring logical correctness, pass from the form to the essence, from the illusion to the truth.
That is the marvel of the modern Gethsemane, which this book will narrate.