successive decades has
taken this part. A man of attractive presence and lofty bearing, one
whom every eye follows as he goes about the town on the round of his
daily duties, yet simple-hearted and modest, as becomes one who takes
on himself not only the dress but the name and figure of the Saviour.

Essays have been written on "Christus" Mayr and his conception of
Jesus, and I can only assent to the general impression. To me it seems
that Mayr's thought of Christ is one which all must accept. He appears
as "one driven by the Spirit,"--the great mild teacher, the man who can
afford to be silent before kings and before mobs, and to whom the pains
of Calvary are not more deep than the sorrows of Gethsemane, the man
who comes to do the work of his Father, regardless alike of human
praise or of human contempt. The great strength of the presentation is
that it brings to the front the essentials of Christ's life and death.
There is no suggestion of theological subtleties nor of the ceremonies
of any church. It is simply true and terrible.

From one of his fellow-actors, I learned this of Josef Mayr. He has
always been what he is now, a hand-worker ("_gemeiner Arbeiter_") in
Oberammergau. He has never been away from his native town except once,
when he went as a workman to Vienna, and once when, in 1870, the play
was interrupted by the war with France, and Mayr himself was taken into
the army. Out of respect to his art, he was never sent to the front,
but kept in the garrison at Munich. When the war was over, and he came
back, in 1871, the grateful villagers resumed the play as their "best
method of thanking God who had given them the blessings of victory and
peace."

Canon Farrar, of Westminster, has given us the best and most
sympathetic account yet published of the various actors. Of Mayr he
said: "It is no small testimony to the goodness and the ability of
Josef Mayr that in his representation of Christ he does not offend us
by a single word or a single gesture. If there were in his manner the
slightest touch of affectation or of self-consciousness; if there were
the remotest suspicion of a strut in his gait, we should be compelled
to turn aside in disgust. As it is, we forget the artist altogether.
For it is easy to see that Josef Mayr forgets himself, and wishes only
to give a faithful picture of the events in the Gospel story."

As the Master enters the temple, he finds that its courts are filled
with a