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 wrecked, and it seemed as if the earth itself had foundered in its voyage through the sky.  The great audience almost leaped to its feet at the sound of that tempest and earthquake.

Look! the ruffians are tossing dice for the ownership of the Master’s coat.  The darkness thickens.  Night, blackening night.  Hark!  The wolves are howling for the corpse of the slain Lord.  Then, with more pathos and tenderness than can be seen in Rubens’ picture, “Descent from the Cross,” in the cathedral at Antwerp, is the dead Christ lowered, and there rises the wailing of crushed motherhood, and with solemn tread the mutilated body is sepulchred.  But soon the door of the mausoleum falls and forth comes the Christ and, standing on the shoulder of Mount Olivet, He is ready for ascension.  Then the “Hallelujah Chorus” from the 700 voices before and behind the scenes closes the most wonderful tragedy ever enacted.