“Ha!  Come, thou serpent, entwine my neck and strangle the betrayer,” and hastily ties it about his neck and tightens it, then rushes up to the branch of a tree for suicide, and the curtain closes before the 4,000 breathless auditors.

Do I approve of the Passion Play at Ober-Ammergau?

My only answer is that I was never so impressed in all my life with the greatness of the price that was paid for the redemption of the human race.  The suffering depicted was so awful that I cannot now understand how I could have endured looking upon its portrayal.  It is amazing that thousands in the audience did not faint into a swoon as complete as that of the soldiers who fell on the stage at the Lord’s reanimation from Joseph’s mausoleum.

Imagine what it would be to see a soldier seemingly thrust a spear into the Saviour’s side, and to see the crimson rush from the laceration.

Would I see it acted again?  No.  I would not risk my nerves again under the strain of such a horror.  One dreams of it nights after.

When Christ carrying His cross falls under it, and you see Him on His hands and knees, His forehead ensanguined with the twisted brambles, and Veronica comes to Him offering a handkerchief to wipe away the tears, and sweat and blood, your own forehead becomes beaded with perspiration.  As the tragedy moves on, solemnity is added to solemnity.  Not so much as a smile in the eight hours, except the slight snicker of some fool, such as is sure to be found in all audiences, when the cock crew twice after Peter had denied him thrice.

What may seem strange to some, I was as much impressed with Christ’s mental agony as with his physical pangs.  Oh! what a scene when in Gethsemane He groaned over the sins of the world for which He was making expiation, until the angelic throngs of heaven were so stirred by His impassioned utterance that one of their white-winged number came out and down to comfort the Angel of the New Covenant!

Some of the tableaux or living pictures between the acts of this drama were graphic and thrilling, such as Adam and Eve expelled from arborescence into homelessness; Joseph, because of his picturesque attire sold into serfdom, from which he mounts to the Prime Minister’s chair; the palace gates shut against Queen Vashti because she declines to be immodest; manna snowing down into the hands of the hungry Israelites; grapes of Eshcol so enormous that one cluster is carried by two men on a staff between them; Naboth stoned to death because Ahab wants his vineyard; blind Samson between the pillars of the Temple of Dagon, making very destructive sport for his enemies.  These tableaux are chiefly intended as a breathing spell between the acts of the drama.  The music rendered requires seven basses and seven tenors, ten sopranos and ten contraltos.  Edward Lang has worked thirty years educating the musical talent of the village.  The Passion Play itself is beyond criticism, though it would have been mightier if two hours less in its performance.  The subtraction would be an addition.