t fifteen years ago the good people of America were shocked at the
proposition to put on the theatrical stage of New York the Passion Play,
or a dramatic representation of the sufferings of Christ. It was to be
an imitation of that which had been every ten years, since 1634, enacted
in Ober-Ammergau, Germany. Every religious newspaper and most of the
secular journals, and all the pulpits, denounced the proposition. It
would be an outrage, a sacrilege, a blasphemy. I thought so then; I
think so now. The attempt of ordinary play actors amid worldly
surroundings, and before gay assemblages, to portray the sufferings of
Christ and His assassination would have been a horrible indecency that
would have defied the heavens and invoked a plague worse than that for
the turning back of which the Passion Play at Ober-Ammergau was
established. We might have suggested for such a scene a Judas, or a
Caiaphas, or a Pilate, or a Herod. But who would have been the Christ?

The Continental protest which did not allow the curtain of that
exhibition to be hoisted was right, and if a similar attempt should ever
be made in America I hope it may be as vehemently defeated. But as
certain individuals may have an especial mission which other individuals
are not caused to exercise, so neighbourhoods and provinces and
countries may have a call peculiar to themselves.

Whether the German village of Ober-Ammergau which I have just been
visiting, may have such an especial ordination, I leave others to judge
after they have taken into consideration all the circumstances. The
Passion Play, as it was proposed for the theatrical stage in New York,
would have been as different from the Passion Play as we saw it at
Ober-Ammergau a few days ago as midnight is different from mid-noon.

Ober-Ammergau is a picture-frame of hills.

The mountains look down upon the village, and the village looks up to
the mountains. The river Ammer, running through the village, has not
recovered from its race down the steeps, and has not been able to
moderate its pace. Like an arrow, it shoots past. Through exaltations
and depressions of the rail train, and on ascending and descending
grades, we arrived at the place of which we had heard and read so much.
The morning was as glorious as any other morning that was let down out
of the heavens. Though many thousands of people from many quarters of
the earth had lodged that night in Ober-Ammergau, the place at dawn was
as silent as