tors. Christ
even washes the feet of Judas. Was there in all time or eternity past,
or will there be in all time or eternity to come, such a scene of
self-abnegation? The Lord of heaven and earth stooping to such a service
which must have astounded the heavens more than its dramatisation
overpowered us! What a stunning rebuke to the pride and arrogance and
personal ambition of all ages!

The Hand of God on Human Foot in Ablution!

No wonder the quick-tempered Peter thought it incongruous, and forbade
its taking place, crying out: "Thou shalt never wash my feet!" But the
Lord broke him down until Peter vehemently asked that his head and his
hands be washed as well as his feet.

During eight hours on that stage it seems as though we were watching a
battle between the demons of the Pit and the seraphs of Light, and the
demons triumph. Eight hours telling a sadness, with every moment worse
than its predecessor. All the world against Him, and hardly any let up
so that we feel like leaving our place and rushing for the stage and
giving congratulations with both hands to Simon of Cyrene as he lightens
the Cross from the shoulder of the sufferer, and to Nicodemus who voted
an emphatic "No" at the condemnation, and to Joseph of Arimathea who
asks the honour of being undertaker at the obsequies.

Scene after scene, act after act, until at the scourging every stroke
fetches the blood; and the purple mantle is put upon Him in derision,
and they slap His face and they push Him off the stool upon which He
sits, laughing at His fall. On, until from behind the curtain you hear
the thumping of the hammers on the spikes; on, until hanging between two
bandits, He pledges Paradise within twenty-four hours to the one, and
commits His own broken-hearted mother to John, asking him to take care
of her in her old age; and His complaint of thirst brings a sponge
moistened with sour wine on the end of a staff; and blasphemy has hurled
at Him its last curse, and malice has uttered concerning Him its last
lie, and contempt has spit upon Him its last foam, and the resources of
perdition are exhausted, and from the shuddering form and white lips
comes the exclamation, "It is finished!"

At that moment there resounded across the river Ammer and through the
village of Ober-Ammergau a crash that was responded to by the echoes of
the Bavarian mountains. The rocks tumbled back off the stage, and the
heavens roared and the graves of the dead were wrec