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, l