ee that
waved above it, and went back to my room to prepare myself by reading
and meditation for the great religious drama which I was to witness at
four o'clock in the afternoon--Wagner's latest and highest
inspiration--the story of the sacred brotherhood, the knights of San
Graal--_Parsifal_!

PARSIFAL

The blood of God!--mystic symbol of divine life--"for the blood is the
life thereof." That is the key-note of _Parsifal_, the Knight of the
Sangrail. Wine is the ready symbolical vehicle--the material link
between the divine and the human life. In the old religions, that
heightened consciousness, that intensity of feeling produced by
stimulant, was thought to be the very entering in of the "god"--the
union of the divine and human spirit; and in the Eleusinian mysteries,
the "sesame," the bread of Demeter, the earth mother, and the "kykeon,"
or wine of Dionysos, the vine god, were thus sacramental.

The passionate desire to approach and mingle with Deity is the one
mystic bond common to all religions in all lands. It is the "cry of the
human;" it traverses the ages, it exhausts many symbols and transcends
all forms.

To the Christian it is summed up in the "Lord's Supper."

The medieval legend of the Sangrail (real or royal blood) is the most
poetic and pathetic form of transubstantiation; in it the gross
materialism of the Roman Mass almost ceases to be repulsive; it
possesses the true legendary power of attraction and assimilation.

As the Knights of the Table Round, with their holy vows, provided
medieval Chivalry with a center, so did the Lord's table, with its
Sangrail, provide medieval Religion with its central attractive point.
And as all marvelous tales of knightly heroism circled round King
Arthur's table, so did the great legends embodying the Christian
conceptions of sin, punishment, and redemption circle round the Sangrail
and the sacrifice of the "Mass."

In the legends of _Parsifal_ and _Lohengrin_ the knightly and religious
elements are welded together. This is enough. We need approach
_Parsifal_ with no deep knowledge of the various Sagas made use of by
Wagner in his drama. His disciples, while most eager to trace its
various elements to their sources, are most emphatic in declaring that
the _Parsifal_ drama, so intimately true to the spirit of Roman
Catholicism, is nevertheless a new creation.

Joseph of Arimathea received in a crystal cup the blood of Christ as it
flowed from the spe