CHAPTER XL.

Near the Goal.

CONCLUSION.

From Illusion to Truth.

INTRODUCTION.

It was in the Garden of Gethsemane that the risen Son of God showed

Himself, as a simple gardener, to the penitent sinner. The miracle has

become a pious tradition. It happened long, long ago, and no eye has

ever beheld Him since. Even when the risen Lord walked among the men

and women of His own day, only those saw Him who wished to do so.

But those who wish to see Him, see Him now; and those who wish to seek

Him, find Him now.

The Garden of Gethsemane has disappeared--the hot sun of the East has

withered it. All things are subject to change. The surface of the earth

alters and where the olive tree once grew green and the cedar stretched

its leafy roof above the head of the Redeemer and the Penitent, there

is nothing now save dead, withered leafage.

But the Garden blooms once more in a cool, shady valley among the

German mountains. Modern Gethsemane bears the name of Oberammergau. As

the sun pursues its course from East to West, so the salvation which

came from the East has made its way across the earth to the West.

There, in the veins of young and vigorous nations, still flow the

living streams that water the seeds of faith on which the miracle is

nourished, and the stunted mountain pine which has sprung from the hard

rocks of the Ettal Mountain is transformed to a palm tree, the poor

habitant of the little mountain village to a God. It is change, and yet

constancy amid the change.

The world and its history also change in the passage of the centuries.

The event before which the human race sank prostrate, as the guards

once did when the risen Christ burst the gates of the tomb, gradually

passed into partial oblivion. The thunder with which the veil of the

temple was rent in twain died away in the misty distance; heaven closed

forever behind the ascended Lord, the stars pursued their old courses

in undisturbed regularity; revelations were silent. Men rubbed their

eyes as though waking from a dream and began to discuss what portion

was truth and what illusion. The strife lasted for centuries. One

tradition overthrew another, one creed crowded out another. With sword

in hand and the trumpet of the Judgment Day the _Ecclesia Militans_

established the dogma, enforced unity in faith. But peace did not last

long under the rule of the church. The Reformation again divided the

Christian world, the Thirty Years War, the most terrible religious

conflict the earth has ever witnessed began, and in the fury of the

battle the combatants forgot the _cause_ of the warfare. Amid the

streams of blood, the clouds of smoke rising from burning cities and

villages, the ruins of shattered altars, the cross, the holy emblem for

which the battle raged, vanished, and when it was raised again, it was

still but an emblem of warfare, no longer a symbol of peace.

There is a single spot of earth where, untouched by the tumult of the

world, sheltered behind the lofty, inhospitable wall of a high

mountain, the idea of Christianity has been preserved in all its

simplicity and purity--Oberammergau. As God once suffered the Saviour

of the World to be born in a manger, among poor shepherds, He seems to

have extended His protecting hand over this secluded nook and reserved

the poor mountaineers to repeat the miracle. Concealed behind the steep

Ettal mountain was a monastery where, from ancient times, the beautiful

arts had been sedulously fostered.

One of the monks was deeply grieved because, in the outside world,

iconoclasm was rudely shaking the old forms and, in blind fear, even

rejecting religious art as "Romish." As no holy image would be

tolerated; the Saviour and His Saints must disappear entirely from the

eyes of men. Then, in his distress, the inspiration came that a sacred

drama, performed by living beings, could produce a more powerful effect

than word or symbol. So it was determined in the monastery that one

should be enacted.

The young people in the neighborhood, who had long been schooled by the

influence of the learned monks to appreciate beauty, were soon trained

to act legends and biblical poems. With increasing skill they gained

more and more confidence, till at last their holy zeal led them to show

mankind the Redeemer Himself, the Master of the world, in His own

bodily form, saying to erring humanity; "Lo, thus He was and thus He

will be forever."

And while in the churches paintings and relics were torn from the walls

and crucifixes destroyed, the first Passion play was performed, A. D.

1634, under the open sky in the churchyard of Oberammergau--for this

spot, on account of its solemn associations, was deemed the fitting

place for the holy work. The disgraced image of love, defiled by blood

and flames, once more rose in its pure beauty! Living, breathing! The

wounds inflicted more than a thousand years before again opened, fresh

drops of blood trickled from the brow torn by its diadem of thorns,

again the "Continue ye in My love" fell from the pallid lips of the

Lamb of God, and what Puritanism had destroyed in its _dead_ form was

born anew in a _living one_. But, amid the confusion and roar of

battle, the furious yells of hate, no one heard the gentle voice in the

distant nook beyond the mountains.

The message of peace died away, the Crucified One shed His blood

unseen.

Years passed, the misery of the people constantly increased, lands were

ravaged, the ranks of the combatants thinned.

At last the warriors began to be paralyzed, the raging storm subsided

and pallid fear stared blankly at the foes who had at last gained their

senses--the plague, that terrible Egyptian Sphinx, lured by the odor of

corruption emanating from the long war, stole over the earth, and those

at whom she gazed with the black fiery eyes of her torrid zone, sank

beneath it like the scorched grass when the simoom sweeps over the

desert.

Silence fell, the silence of the grave, for wherever this spectre

stalks, death follows.

Fear reconciled enemies and made them forget their rancor in union

against the common foe, the cruel, invincible plague. They gazed around

them for some helping hand, and once more turned to that over which

they had so long quarrelled. Then amid the deathlike stillness of the

barren fields, the empty houses, the denuded churches, and the

desolated land, they at last heard the little bell behind the Ettal

mountain, which every decade summoned the Christian world to the

Passion Play, for this was the vow taken by the Ammergau peasants to

avert the plague and the divine wrath. Again the ever patient Saviour

extended His arms, crying: "Come unto Me, all ye who are weary and

heavy laden!" And they did come. They threw themselves at His feet, the

wearied, hunted earthlings, stained with dust and blood, and He

comforted and refreshed them, while they again recognized Him and

learned to understand the meaning of His sacrifice.

Those who thus saw Him and received the revelation announced it to

others, who flocked thither from far and near till the little

church-yard of Oberammergau became too narrow, and could no longer

contain the throngs; the open fields became a sacred theatre to receive

the pilgrims, who longed to behold the Redeemer's face.

And, strangely enough, all who took part in the sacred play, seemed

consecrated, the plague passed them by, Ammergau alone was spared.

So the pious seed grew slowly, often with periods when it stood still,

but the watchful eye can follow it in history.

Peace at last came to the world. Purer airs blew. The Egyptian hyena,

satiated, left the ravaged fields, new life bloomed from the graves,

and this new life knew naught of the pangs and sufferings of the old.

From the brutality and corruption of the long war, the new generation

longed for more refined manners, culture, and the pleasures of life.

But, as usual after such periods of deprivation and calamity, one

extreme followed another. The desire for more refined manners and

education led to hyperculture, the love of pleasure into epicureanism

and luxury, grace into coquetry, mirth into frivolity. Then came the

so-called age of gallantry. The foil took the place of the sword, the

lace jabot of the leather jerkin, the smoke of battle gave way to the

clouds of powder scattered by heads nodding in every direction.

Masked shepherds and shepherdesses danced upon the graves of a former

generation, a new Arcadia was created in apish imitation and peopled

with grimacing creatures who tripped about on tiptoe in their

high-heeled shoes. Instead of the mediaeval representations of martyrs

and emaciated saints appeared the nude gods and cupids of a Watteau and

his school. Grace took the place of majesty. Instead of moral law, men

followed the easy code of convenience and everything was allowable

which did not transgress its rules. Thus arose a generation of

thoughtless pleasure seekers, which bore within itself a moral

pestilence that, in contrast with the "Black Death," might be termed

the "Rosy Death" for it breathed upon the cheeks of all whom it

attacked the rosy flush of a fever which wasted more slowly, but none

the less surely.

And through this rouged, dancing, skipping age, with the click of its

high-heeled shoes, its rustling hooped petticoats, its amorous glances

and heaving bosoms, the chaste figure of the Man of Sorrows, with a

terrible solemnity upon his pallid brow, again and again trod the stage

of Ammergau, and whoever beheld Him dropped the flowing bowl of

pleasure, while the laugh died on his lips.

Again history and the judgment of the world moved forward. The "Rosy

Death" had decomposed and poisoned all the healthful juices of society

and corrupted the very heart of the human race--morality, faith, and

philosophy, everything which makes men manly, had gradually perished

unobserved in the thoughtless whirl. The tinsel and apish civilisation

no longer sufficed to conceal the brute in human nature. It shook off

every veil and stood forth in all its nakedness. The modern deluge, the

French Revolution burst forth. Murder, anarchy, the delirium of fever

swept over the earth in every form of horror.

Again came a change, a transformation to the lowest depths of

corruption. Grace now yielded to brutality, beauty to ugliness, the

divine to the cynical. Altars were overthrown, religion was abjured,

the earth trembled under the mass of destroyed traditions.

But from the turmoil of the throng, fiercely rending one another, from

the smoke and exhalations of this conflagration of the world, yonder in

the German Garden of Gethsemane again rose victoriously, like a

Ph[oe]nix from its ashes, the denied, rejected God, and the undefiled

sun of Ammergau wove a halo of glory around the sublime figure which

hung high on the cross.

It was a quiet, victory, of which the frantic mob were ignorant; for

they saw only the foe confronting them, not the one battling above. The

latter was vanquished long ago, He was deposed, and that settled the

matter. The people in their sovereignty can depose and set up gods at

pleasure, and when once dethroned, they no longer exist; they are

hurled into Tartarus. And as men can not do without a god, they create

an idol.

The country groaned beneath the iron stride of the Emperor and, without

wishing or knowing it, he became the avenger of the God in whose place

he stood. For, as the Thirty Years War ended under the scourge of the

pestilence, and the age of mirth and gallantry under the lash of

the Revolution, the Revolution yielded to the third scourge, the

self-created idol!

He, the man with compressed lips and brow sombre with thought, ruled

the unchained elements, became lord of the anarchy, and dictated laws

to a universe. But with iron finger he tore open the veins of humanity

to mark upon the race the brand of slavery. The world bled from a

thousand wounds, and upon each he marked the name "Napoleon."

Then, wan as the moon floats in the sky when the glow of the setting

sun is blazing in the horizon, the sovereign of the world in his bloody

splendor confronted the pallid shadow of the Crucified One, also robed

in a royal mantle, still wet with the blood He had voluntarily shed.

They gazed silently at each other--but the usurper turned pale.

At last, at the moment he imagined himself most like Him, God hurled

the rival god into the deepest misery and disgrace. The enemy of the

world was conquered, and popular hatred, so long repressed, at last

freed from the unbearable restraint, poured forth upon the lonely grave

at St. Helena its foam of execration and curses. Then the conqueror in

Oberammergau extended His arms in pardon, saying to him also: "Verily I

say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise."

A time of peace now dawned, the century of _thought_. After the great

exertions of the war of liberation, a truce in political life followed,

and the nations used it to make up for what they had lost in the

development of civilization during the period of political strife. A

flood of ideas inundated the world. All talent, rejoicing in the mental

activity which had so long lain dormant, was astir. There was rivalry

and conflict for the prize in every department. The rising generation,

conscious of newly awakening powers, dared enterprise after enterprise

and with each waxed greater. With increasing production, the power of

assimilation also increased. Everything grand created in other

centuries was drawn into the circle of their own nation as if just

discovered. That for which the enlightened minds of earlier days had

vainly toiled, striven, bled, now bloomed in luxuriant harvests, and

the century erected monuments to those who had been misjudged and

adorned them with the harvest garland garnered from the seeds which

they had sowed in tears.

What Galvani and Salomon de Caeus, misunderstood and unheard, had

planned, now made their triumphal passage across the earth as a panting

steam engine or a flashing messenger of light, borne by and bearing

ideas.

The century which produced a Schiller and a Goethe first understood a

Shakespeare, Sophocles and Euripides rose from the graves where they

had lain more than a thousand years, archaeology brought the buried

world of Homer from beneath the earth, a Canova, a Thorwaldsen, a

Cornelius, Kaulbach, and all the great masters of the Renaissance of

our time, took up the brushes and chisels of Phidias, Michael Angelo,

Raphael, and Rubens, which had so long lain idle. What Aristotle had

taught a thousand, and Winckelmann and Lessing a hundred years before,

the knowledge of the laws of art, the appreciation of the beautiful,

was no longer mere dead capital in the hands of learned men, but

circulated in the throbbing veins of a vigorously developing

civilization; it demanded and obtained the highest goal.

The circle between the old and the new civilization has closed, every

chasm has been bridged. There is an alternate action of old and new

forces, a common labor of all the nations and the ages, as if there was

no longer any division of time and space, as if there was but one

eternal art, one eternal science. Ascending humanity has trodden matter

under foot, conquered science, made manufactures useful, and

transfigured art.

But this light which has so suddenly flamed through the world also

casts its shadows. Progress in art and science matures the judgment,

but judgment becomes criticism and criticism negation. The dualism

which permeates all creation, the creative and the destructive power,

the principle of affirmation and of denial, cannot be shut out even

now, but must continue the old contest which has never yet been

decided. Critical analysis opposes faith, materialism wars against

idealism, pessimism contends with optimism. The human race has reached

the outermost limit of knowledge, but this does not content it in its

victorious career, it wishes to break through and discover _the God_

concealed behind. Even the heart of a God must not escape the scalpel

which nothing withstood. But the barrier is impenetrable. And one

party, weary of the fruitless toil, pulls back the aspiring ones.

"Down to matter, whence you came. What are you seeking? Science has

attained the highest goal, she has discovered the protoplasm whence all

organism proceeded. What is the Creator of modern times? A

physiological--chemical, vital function within the substance of a cell.

Will ye pray to this, suffer for this, ye fools?"

Others turn in loathing from this cynical interpretation of scientific

results and throw themselves into the arms of beauty, seeking in it the

divinity, and others still wait, battling between earth and heaven, in

the dim belief of being nearest to the goal.

It is a tremendous struggle, as though the earth must burst under the

enormous pressure of power demanding room, irreconcilable contrasts.

Then amid the heat of the lecture rooms, the throng of students of art

and science, comes a long-forgotten voice from the days of our

childhood! And the straining eyes suddenly turn from the teachers and

the dissecting tables, from the glittering visions of art and the

material world to the stage of Oberammergau and the Passion Play.

There stands the unassuming figure with the crown of thorns and the

sorrowful, questioning gaze. And with one accord their hearts rush to

meet Him and, as the son who has grown rich in foreign lands, after

having eaten and enjoyed everything, longs to return to the poverty of

his home and falls repentantly at the feet of his forsaken father, the

human race, in the midst of this intoxication of knowledge and

pleasure, sinks sobbing before the pale flower of Christianity and

longingly extends its arms toward the rude wooden cross on which it

blooms!

That powerful thinker, Max Mueller, says in his comparative study of

religions:[1] "When do we feel the blessings of our country more warmly

and truly than when we return from abroad? It is the same with regard

to religion." That fact is apparent here! It is an indisputable verity

that, at the precise period when art and science have attained their

highest stages of development, the Oberammergau Passion Play enjoys a

degree of appreciation never bestowed before, that during this critical

age, from decade to decade, people flock to the Passion Play in ever

increasing throngs. Not only the uncultivated and ignorant, nay, the

most cultured--artists and scholars, statesmen and monarchs. The poor

village no longer has room to shelter all its guests; it is positively

startling to see the flood of human beings pour in on the evening

before the commencement of the play, stifling, inundating everything.

And then it is marvellous to notice how quiet it is on the morning of

the play, as it flows into the bare room called the theatre, how it

seems as it were to grow calm, as if every storm within or without was

subdued under the influence of those simple words, now more than two

thousand years old. How wonderful it is to watch the people fairly

holding their breath to listen to the simple drama for seven long hours

without heeding the time which is far beyond the limit our easily

wearied nerves are accustomed to bear.

What is it, for whose sake the highest as well as the lowest, the

richest and the poorest, prince and peasant, would sleep on a layer of

straw, without a murmur, if no bed could be had? Why will the most

pampered endure hunger and thirst, the most delicate heat and cold, the

most timid fearlessly undertake the hard journey across the Ettal

mountain? Is it mere curiosity to hear a number of poor wood-carvers,

peasants, and wood-cutters repeat under the open sky, exposed to sun

and rain, in worse German than is heard at school the same old story

which has already been told a thousand times, as the enemies of the

Passion Play say? Would this bring people every ten years from half the

inhabited world, from far and near, from South and North, from the

mountains and the valleys, from palaces and huts, across sea and land?

Certainly not? What is it then? A miracle?

Whoever has seen the Passion Play understands it, but it is difficult

to explain the mystery to those who have not.

The deity remains concealed from our earthly vision and unattainable,

like the veiled statue of Sais. Every attempt to raise this veil by

force is terribly avenged.

What is gained by those modern Socinians and Adorantes who, with

ill-feigned piety, seek to drag the mystery to light and make the God a

_human being_, in order to worship in the wretched puppet _themselves_?

Even if they beheld Him face to face, they would still see themselves

only, and He would cry: "You are like the spirit which you understand,

not me."

And what do the Pantheists gain who make man _God_, in order to embrace

in Him the unattainable? Sooner or later they will perceive that they

have mistaken the _effects_ for the _cause_, and the form for the

essence. Loathing and disappointment will be their lot, as it is the

lot of all who have nothing but--human beings.

But those to whom the visible is only the _symbol_ of the _invisible_

which teaches them from the effect to learn the cause, will, with

unerring logical correctness, pass from the form to the essence, from

the _illusion_ to the _truth_.

_That_ is the marvel of the modern Gethsemane, which this book will

narrate.