ews and damps"--for these are given symbolic
pageants of the Holy Sepulchre crusaders.

Then there is a visible parable, showing a marketplace in some wicked
capital, neither Babylon, Tyre, nor Nineveh, but all of them in essential
character. First come spectacles of rejoicing, cruelty, and waste. Then
from Heaven descend flood and fire, brimstone and lightning. It is like
the judgment of the Cities of the Plain. Just before the overthrow, the
line is projected upon the screen: "He hath loosed the fateful lightning
of his terrible swift sword." Then the heavenly host becomes gradually
visible upon the air, marching toward the audience, almost crossing the
footlights, and blowing their solemn trumpets. With this picture the line
is given us to read: "Our God is marching on." This host appears in the
photoplay as often as the refrain sweeps into the poem. The celestial
company, its imperceptible emergence, its spiritual power when in the
ascendant, is a thing never to be forgotten, a tableau that proves the
motion picture a great religious instrument.

Then comes a procession indeed. It is as though the audience were
standing at the side of the throne at Doomsday looking down the hill of
Zion toward the little earth. There is a line of those who are to be
judged, leaders from the beginning of history, barbarians with their
crude weapons, classic characters, Caesar and his rivals for fame;
mediaeval figures including Dante meditating; later figures, Richelieu,
Napoleon. Many people march toward the strange glorifying eye of the
camera, growing larger than men, filling the entire field of vision,
disappearing when they are almost upon us. The audience weighs the worth
of their work to the world as the men themselves with downcast eyes seem
to be doing also. The most thrilling figure is Tolstoi in his peasant
smock, coming after the bitter egotists and conquerors. (The
impersonation is by Edward Thomas.) I shall never forget that presence
marching up to the throne invisible with bowed head. This procession is
to illustrate the line: "He is sifting out the hearts of men before his
Judgment Seat." Later Lincoln is pictured on the steps of the White
House. It is a quaint tableau, in the spirit of the old-fashioned Rogers
group. Yet it is masterful for all that. Lincoln is taking the chains
from a cowering slave. This tableau is to illustrate the line: "Let the
hero born of woman crush the serpent with his heel." Now it is the e