said: "Ich spiele auch, schau nur," and kneeling down he stammered the first words of a hymn. Is it strange that, beginning thus in babyhood, they attain perfection in riper years? Let us enter now the theater. Already the sound of the cannon has announced the readiness of the actors to begin the play, and before the curtain rises we can survey the audience. Before us is a building uncovered, save a small portion at the rear, and with the greater part of the stage open to the sky. This stage is divided into three parts, the center with movable scenery, representing the different localities of Christ's sojourn upon earth; and the side scenes immovable, representing the houses of Caiaphas and Pilate, and the two streets of Jerusalem. While we wait the chorus enter from each side. They are men and women clad in white, with a colored toga thrown across the shoulders, and a circlet of gold about the head. Their voices are strong and well-trained, but the music which they sing demands little from them. They advance to the front of the stage, while the leader, the choragus, explains the object and meaning of the Passion play, in man's fall and Christ's Redemption. The chorus then begin their song, and dividing and retreating, allow the curtain to rise, and the tableaux to appear. These tableaux are scenes from the Old Testament, illustrating the relation of many of its incidents to the life of Christ, and the chorus is the golden chain which binds the Old and New together. The rehearsals for the chorus begin early in November, and continue constantly until the first of May. They are conducted by the schoolmaster of the village, one of whose essential qualifications must be that he is a good musician.

The music was composed by a native of Ober-Ammergau, and is sweet, plaintive, and in thorough good taste. In several of the choruses the use of the violins is especially fine. I tried to obtain the score, but found that it was not printed and could not be procured.

After the two tableaux, representing Adam and Eve's temptation and the adoration of the cross, a sound of tumult and shouting is heard, the chorus sing "All hail," and from the side scenes issue a vast crowd of people, men, women, and little children, bearing palms and crying also: "All hail to Jesus of Nazareth," who rides in their midst upon an ass.

It is in the treatment of such masses in such a scene as this, that the villagers of Ober-Ammergau show their power. There are nearly five hundred persons upon the stage. Their grouping is constantly varied, and yet even the little children. know their rôle so perfectly that, as they meet and separate, the lines are all graceful, all harmonious, and there is no confusion. The dresses are rich in color, and the constant shifting of place forms an artistic picture which is rarely surpassed. Two of the tableaux illustrate the same thing, the fall of manna, a tableau used before the breaking of bread by Christ with his disciples, and the raising of the brazen serpent, typical of Christ's healing of nations by his crucifixion. They both represent scenes in the desert: in the first Moses stands in the center, dignified in figure and pose, while around him are grouped the families of Israel, who have paused in their usual vocations, and with outstretched hands grasp after the manna, which flutters slowly down upon them through the sunlight, mothers with sunnyhaired little children (my little angel among them, perhaps), strong bearded men and aged women, all with eager hands reaching in glad surprise for the golden manna.

The second scene is one of terror and distress. The same families are in the desert, sick and dying. Anguish is stamped on every face and is in every gesture. In and out among the tortured, lie curled the cruel serpents, while in the center of the picture Moses bows his head in prayer to God to stay this bitter plague.

There are nearly three hundred persons in each of these tableaux, and although the curtain remained raised one moment and a half, not even one muscle moved among the little children. So vivid and real was the picture, that it was a relief to look at the green and smiling hills beyond the stage over which the cloud shadows flitted, and know that God's mercy still existed.

Let us now speak of the central figure of this play,—of him who is but foreshadowed by these types, of the Jesus of Nazareth of Joseph Maier. And first let us confess that there is nothing undignified in it, but neither is there aught that is God-like. It is the work of a simple peasant, upon whom an ideal of character has been stamped, as a religion, by other minds,

A strongly intellectual man would have impressed his own individuality upon it, and it is perhaps for this reason that the Christ of Joseph Maier is so unobjectionable, so free from all which can offend. In the scene in the garden, and also in the judgment-hall, he fails in divinity. He is a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief; he is led as a lamb to the slaughter; he is mildly submissive, but he is at no time conscious of his Godhead. He does not turn upon his accusers, and like a king say: "Know ye not that I could summon legions of angels?" and in the judgment scene with Pilate, in his "Ye have said," there is no consciousness of divinity.

In his conflict in the garden, when he asks his disciples: "Could ye not have watched with me one hour?" there is a craving for human sympathy, but no anguish which will not pass; and in the scene upon the cross, there is the same quiet submission to a will higher than his own. Yet while we feel the need, the want of this, there is a simple, dignified quiet in the personation, which, however it may fail in satisfying our ideal, appeals strongly to our sympathies. We pass through all the sad scenes of the Passion-week with our hearts touched and softened, if not deeply moved, and we perhaps find the Bible story more divine, because so humbly personated, and with such reverence.

Far different is the acting of Judas. He is the only real actor among them all. He is covetous, bold, and treacherous, and in it all his by-play is most excellent. Especially fine is the scene in the temple, where he first entertains the idea of his treachery. You are sure that here you have to do with a man of strong individuality, who has been allowed to act as he would, and one is not surprised to learn that he is the best wood-carver in the village.

The acting of Pilate is also most excellent. He is the proud Roman, yet conscious of the power of the Jewish crowd, and his acting shows that in some way he has been made sensible of the strength of the Roman empire, and of the power of a civilization so different from the simple life to which he is accustomed.

The apostles, with the exception of Judas, are merely common-place, except that it is far from common-place to fill so difficult a rôle without offense.

It is only in the parts which the women fill, that we are sensible of aught that is unpleasant. They do not rise to the dig nity of their character. Their voices are high and harsh, and their gestures ungraceful, but it is but a slight blot upon a picture otherwise so perfect.

The character of Caiaphas, the high-priest, is most capitally taken by Johann Lang, the burgomeister of the village, a man whose dignity and strong character are well adapted to the part. It is to his executive ability that the visitors at OberAmmergau owe so much of their comfort.

While we have thus spoken of this drama, it has slowly advanced to its sad termination. The chorus have woven together the tableaux and the story, and the large audience have breathlessly watched the development of both. In and out of the audience-room, over the heads of the spectators, the birds have flitted, the clouds have cast their shadows, and before the stage two butterflies, the symbols of immortality, have slowly back and forth winged their unsteady flight, while six thousand spectators have watched the story of a peasant of Galilee, as told by the peasant of Ober-Ammergau. It is nearly over now. The chorus robed in black enter again, and, their sad song finished, the curtain rises upon the scene of the crucifixion.

Christ is already nailed upon the cross, and near him stand the brutal Roman soldiers, ready to cast lots for his garments. It is all so real, so true to life, that we avert our eyes, while with every detail the scene upon Calvary is reënacted, and when the "It is finished" is heard, and with a slight shudder the head has dropped upon the breast, it is difficult to realize that we have not been at the foot of the cross upon Calvary, eighteen hundred years ago.

With infinite tenderness the relations proceed to their sad task, and when the body of Christ is ready for its burial, we leave the theater and wander out among the fields where the daisies bloom in God's sun-light, as they have done through all the centuries, and feel more sure of the truth of this faith which thus out of the mouth of simple peasants has been again revealed to us.

ARTICLE V.-HORACE BUSHNELL.

Life and Letters of Horace Bushnell. New York: Harper & Brothers.

THIS volume meets a long and deep felt and widely experienced want. The name of Horace Bushnell is one of the great names of modern theological literature, and one destined to become still greater and more widely honored as his quickening thought penetrates more deeply the thought and theology of the age. To some this name is, or has been, one of reproach and heresy, cast out as evil, as that of all good and great reformers has been,-as that of the divine Master and of his first disciples were, the disturber of the churches, and the great antagonist of orthodoxy. To many it is that of a brilliant but erratic genius, of unsurpassed intellectual force and acumen, a thoughtful and eloquent preacher, a fresh and original writer, whose words have a wondrously vital and quickening power, beyond all rhetoric to explain,-a deep feeling and poetic soul, who if he had not been a theologian would have been a poet, and who carried the imaginings and fancies of poetry into the realm of religious truth, mistaking often, his own visions and poetic conceptions for divine revelations and the truth of God.

To a few, and a continually increasing number, he is no mere heretic, or poetic dreamer, and not simply a writer of genius and an eloquent divine, but a great religious teacher and reformer, a true prophet and interpreter of the ways of God, one of the few raised up and inspired of God to enlarge the boundaries of truth by discovering and exploring new continents in the world of revelation; as Columbus enlarged those of geography, and Copernicus and Newton of science, and Augustine, and Luther, and Edwards of theology, which discoveries necessarily displaced and reconstructed the old boundaries of knowledge.

We are aware that to those who hold the assumption that all religious truth and doctrine is immutably fixed by the