and its Passion Play is as much a product of our century as the poetry
of Tennyson. Miracle Plays were shown at Oberammergau and in the town
about it more than five hundred years ago, but the Passion Play of
to-day is not like them. The imps and devils and all the machinery of
superstition are gone. Harmony has taken the place of crudity, and the
Christ of Oberammergau is the Christ of modern conception. The Miracle
Play, dead or dying everywhere else, has lived and been perfected at
Oberammergau.

It has been pre-eminently the work of the Church of Rome to teach the
common people, and to train them to obedience. In its teaching it has
made use of every means which could serve its purposes. Didactic
teaching is not effective with tired and sleepy peasants. Sermons
soothe, rather than instruct, after a week of hard labor in the fields.
Hence comes the need of object-teaching, if teaching is to be real.

Images have been used in this way in the Catholic Church--not as
objects to be worshiped, but as representations of sacred things.
Paintings have served the same purpose. The noblest paintings in the
world have been wrought to this end. It was in such lines alone that
art could find worthy recognition. In like manner, processions and
"Passion[1] Plays" have served the same purpose.

The old Miracle Plays were grotesque enough--made by common people for
the instruction of common people. Even amid the pathos of divine
suffering the peasants must be amused. Care was taken that the
character of Judas should meet this demand. So Judas was made at once
a traitor and a clown. His pathway was beset by devils of the most
ridiculous sort. And when at last he hung himself on the stage, his
body burst open, and the long links of sausages which represented