From the Lakes of Killarney to the Golden Horn

The same idea takes a more terrible form in the sacrifice of Isaac. We see the struggles of his father Abraham, who is bowed with sorrow, and the heart-broken looks of Sarah, his wife. The latter part, as it happened, was taken by a person of a very sweet face, the effect of which was heightened by being overcast with sadness, and also by the Oriental costume, which, covering a part of the face, left the dark eyes which peered out from under the long eyelashes, to be turned on the beholders. Everything in the appearance of Abraham, his bending form and flowing beard, answered to the idea of the venerable patriarch. The couleur locale was preserved even in the attendants, who looked as if they were Arabian servants who had just dismounted from camels at the door of the tent. Isaac appears, an innocent and confiding boy, with no presumption of the dark and terrible fate that is impending over him. And when the gentle Sarah appears, tenderly solicitous for the safety of her child, the coldest spectator could hardly be unmoved by a scene pictured with such touching fidelity. It is with a feeling of relief that, as this fearful tragedy approaches its consummation, we hear the voice of the angel, and behold that the Lord has himself provided a sacrifice.

But all these scenes of darkness and sorrow, of guilt and sacrifice, are now to find their culmination and their explanation in the death of our Lord, to which all ancient types converge, and on which all ancient symbols cast their faint and flickering, but not uncertain, light. As the scenes approach this grand climax, they grow in pathos and solemnity. Each is more tender and more effective than the last.

One of the most touching, as might be supposed, is that of the Last Supper, in which we recognize every one of the disciples, so closely has the grouping been studied from the painting of Leonardo da Vinci and other old masters with whom this was a favorite subject. There are Peter and John and the rest, all turning with an eager, anxious look towards their Master, and all with an indescribable sadness on their faces. Again the scene changes, and we see our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane. There are the three disciples slumbering, overcome with weariness and sorrow; and there on the sacred mount at midnight

"The suffering Saviour prays alone."

Again the curtain falls, and the chorus, in tones still more plaintive and mournful, announce that the end is near. The curtain rises, and we behold the Crucifixion. Here there are thirty or forty persons introduced. In the foreground are three or four figures "casting lots," careless of the awful scene that is going on above them. The Roman soldier is looking upward with his spear. The three Marys are at the feet of their Lord; Mary Magdalen nearest of all, with her arms clasped around the cross; Mary, the mother of Christ, looking up with weeping eyes; and a little farther Mary, the wife of Cleophas. The two thieves are hanging, with their arms thrown over the cross-tree, as they are represented in many of the paintings of the Crucifixion. But we scarcely notice them, as all eyes are fixed on the Central Figure. The man who takes the part of the Christus in this Divine Tragedy, has made a study of it for years, and must have trained himself to great physical endurance for a scene which must tax his strength to the utmost. His arms are extended, his hands and feet seem to be pierced with the nails, and flowing with blood. Even without actual wounds the attitude itself must be extremely painful. How he could support the weight of his body in such a posture was a wonder to all. It was said that he rested one foot on something projecting from the cross, but even then it seemed incredible that he could sustain such a position for more than a single instant. Yet in the performance of the Passion Play it is said that he remains thus suspended twenty minutes, and is then taken down, almost in a fainting condition.

Some may ask, How did the sight affect me? Twenty-four hours before I could not have believed that I could look upon it without a feeling of horror, but so skilfully had the points of the sacred drama been rendered thus far, that my feelings had been wound up to the highest pitch, and when the curtain rose on that last tremendous scene, I was quite overcome, the tears burst from my eyes, I felt as never before, under any sermon that I ever heard preached, how solemn and how awful was the tragedy of the death of the Son of God. So excited were we, and to appearance all in the building, that it was a relief when the curtain fell.

As if to give a further relief to the over-wrought feelings of the audience, occasioned by this mournful sight, the next scene was of a different character. It was not the Resurrection, though it might have been intended to symbolize it, as in it the actor appears as if he had been brought back from the dead. It is the story of Joseph, which is introduced to illustrate the method of Divine Providence, by which is brought "Light out of Darkness." We see the aged form of Jacob, bowed with grief at the loss of his son. Then comes the marvellous succession of events by which the darkness is turned to light. Bewildered at the news of his son being in Egypt, at first he cannot believe the good tidings, till at length convinced, he rises up saying "Joseph my son, is yet alive; I will go and see him before I die." Then follows the return to Egypt, and the meeting with him who was dead and is alive again, when the old man falls upon his neck, and Joseph's children (two curly-headed little fellows whom we had the privilege of kissing before the day was over) were brought to his knees to receive his blessing. This was a domestic rather than a tragic scene, and such is the natural pathos of the story, that it touched every heart.

The last scene of all was the Ascension, which was less impressive than some that had gone before, as it could of course only be imperfectly represented. The Saviour appears standing on the mount, with outstretched hands, in the midst of his disciples, but there the scene ends, as it could go no further; there could be no descending cloud to receive him out of their sight.

With this last act the curtain fell. The whole representation had occupied three hours.

Now as to the general impression of this extraordinary scene: As a piece of acting it was simply wonderful. The parts were filled admirably. The characters were perfectly kept. Even the costumes were as faithfully reproduced as in any of those historical dramas which are now and then put upon the stage, such as tragedies founded on events in ancient Greek or Roman history, where the greatest pains are taken to render every detail with scrupulous fidelity. This is very extraordinary, especially when it is considered that this is all done by a company of Bavarian peasants, such as might be found in any Alpine village. The explanation is, that this representation is the great work of their lives. They have their trades, like other poor people, and work hard for a living. But their great interest, that which gives a touch of poetry to their humble existence, and raises them above the level of other peasants, is the representation of this Passion Play. This has come down to them from their fathers. It has been acted among them for two hundred years. There are traditions handed down from one generation to another of the way in which this or that part should be performed. In the long intervals of ten years between one representation and another, they practice constantly upon their several parts, so that at the last they attain a wonderful degree of perfection.

As to the propriety of the thing: To our cold Protestant ideas it seems simply monstrous, a horrid travesty of the most sacred scenes in the Word of God. So I confess it would appear to me if done by others. Anywhere else what I have witnessed would appear to me almost like blasphemy; it would be merely acting, and that of the worst kind, in which men assume the most sacred characters, even that of our blessed Lord himself.

But this impression is very much changed when we consider that here all this is done in a spirit of devotion. These Bavarian peasants are a very religious people (some would prefer to call it superstition), but whatever it be, it is universal. Pictures of saints and angels, or of Christ and the Virgin Mary, are seen in every house; crosses and images, and shrines are all along the roads. Call it superstition if you will, but at least the feeling of religion, the feeling of a Divine Power, is present in every heart; they refer everything to supernatural agencies; they hear the voice of God in the thunder that smites the crest of the hills, or the storm that sweeps through their valleys.

And so when they come to the performance of this Passion Play, it is not as unbelievers, whose offering would be an offence, "not being mixed with faith in them that did it." They believe, and therefore they speak, and therefore they act. And so they go through their parts in the most devout spirit. Whenever the Passion Play is to be performed, all who are to take part in it first go to the communion; and thus with hearts penitent and subdued, they come to assume these sacred characters, and speak these holy words.

And so, while the attempt to transport the Passion Play anywhere else would be very repulsive, it may be left where it is, in this lonely valley of the Bavarian mountains, an unique and extraordinary relic of the religious customs of the Middle Ages.

But while one such representation is quite enough, and we are well content that it should stand alone, and there should be not another, yet he must be a dull observer who does not derive from it some useful hints both as to the power of the simplest religious truth, and the way of presenting it.

Preachers are not actors, and when some sensational preachers try to introduce into the pulpit the arts which they have learned from the stage, they commonly make lamentable failures. To say that a preacher is theatrical, is to stamp him as a kind of clerical mountebank. And yet there is a use of the dramatic element which is not forced nor artificial, which on the contrary is the most simple and natural way of speaking. The dramatic element is in human nature. Children use gestures in talking, and vary their tones of voice. They never stand stiff as a post, as some preachers do. The most popular speakers are dramatic in their style. Cough, the temperance lecturer, who has probably addressed more and larger audiences in America and Great Britain than any other man living, is a consummate actor. His art of mimicry, his power of imitating the expression of countenance and tones of voice, is wonderful. And our eloquent friend Talmage, in Brooklyn, owes much of his power to the freedom with which he walks up and down his platform, which is a kind of stage, and throws in incidents to illustrate his theme, often acting, as well as relating them, with great effect.

But not only is the dramatic element in human nature, it is in the Bible, which runs over with it. The Bible is not merely a volume of ethics. It is full of narrative, of history and biography, and of dialogue. Many of the teachings of our Saviour are in the form of conversations, of which it is quite impossible to give the full meaning and spirit, without changes of manner and inflections of voice. Take such an exquisite portion of the Old Testament as the story of Ruth, or that of Joseph and his brethren. What an outrage upon the sacred word to read such sweet and tender passages in a dull and monotonous voice, as if one had not a particle of feeling of their beauty. One might ask such a reader "Understandest thou what thou readest?" and if he is too dull to learn otherwise, these simple Bavarian peasants might teach him to throw into his reading from the pulpit a little of the pathos and tenderness which they give to the conversations of Joseph with his father Jacob.

Of course, in introducing the dramatic element into the pulpit, it is to be done with a close self-restraint, and with the utmost delicacy and tenderness. But so used, it may subserve the highest ends of preaching. Of this a very illustrious example is furnished in the annals of the American pulpit, in the Blind Preacher of Virginia, the impression of whose eloquence is preserved by the pen of William Wirt. When that venerable old man, lifting his sightless eyeballs to heaven, described the last sufferings of our Lord, it was with a manner adapted to the recital, as if he had been a spectator of the mournful scene, and with such pathos in his tones as melted the whole assembly into tears, and the excitement seemed almost beyond control; and the stranger held his breath in fear and wonder how they were ever to be let down from that exaltation of feeling. But the blind man held them as a master. He paused and lifted his hands to heaven, and after a moment of silence, repeated only the memorable exclamation of Rousseau: "Socrates died like a philosopher, but Jesus Christ like a God!" In this marvellous eloquence the preacher used the dramatic element as truly as any actor in the Passion Play, the object in both cases being the same, to bring most vividly before the mind the life and death of the Son of God.

And is not that the great object, and the great subject, of all our preaching? The chief lesson which I have learned to-day, concerns not the manner, but the substance, of what we preach. This Passion Play teaches most impressively, that the one thing which most interests all, high and low, rich and poor, is the simple story of Jesus Christ, and that the power of the pulpit depends on the vividness with which Christ and His Cross are brought, if not before the eyes, at least before the minds and hearts of men. It is not eloquent essays on the beauty of virtue, or learned discussions on the relations of Science and Religion, that will ever touch the heart of the world, but the old, old story of that Divine life, told with the utmost simplicity and tenderness. I think it lawful to use any object which can bring me nearer to Him. That which has been conceived in superstition may minister to a devout spirit. And so I never see one of these crosses by the roadside without its turning my thoughts to Him who was lifted up upon it, and in my secret heart I whisper, "O Christ, Redeemer of the world, be near me now!"

Some, I know, will think this a weak sentimentalism, or even a sinful tolerance of superstition. But with all proper respect for their prejudices, I must hail my Saviour wherever I can find Him, whether in the city or the forest, or on the mountain. What a consolation there is in carrying that blessed image with us, wherever we go! How it stills our beating hearts, and dries our tears, to think of Him who has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows! Often do I repeat to myself those sweet lines of George Herbert:

Christ leads us through no darker roomsThan He went through before;Whoso into God's kingdom comesMust enter by this door.

I do not like to speak of my own feelings; for they are too private and sacred, and I shrink from any expression of them. But all this summer, while wandering in so many beautiful scenes, among lakes and mountains, I have felt the strongest religious craving. I have been looking for something which I did not find either in the populous city, or in the solitary place where no man was. Something had vanished from the earth, the absence of which could only be supplied by an invisible presence and spiritual grace. Amid great scenes of nature one is very lonely; and especially if there be a hidden weight that hangs heavy on the heart, he feels the need of a Presence of which "The deep saith, It is not in me," and Nature saith, "It is not in me." What is this but the human soul groping after God, if haply it may find him? The psalmist has expressed it in one word, when he says, "My heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God." How often has that cry been wrung from my heart in lonely and desolate hours, when standing on the deck of a ship, or on the peak of a mountain! And wherever I see any sign of religion, I am comforted; and so as I look around, and see upon all these hills the sign of the cross, I think of Him who died for me, and the cry which has so often been lifted up in distant lands, goes up here from the heart of the Bavarian Alps: "O Lamb of God, that takest away the sin of the world, grant me Thy peace!"

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE TYROL AND LAKE COMO

Cadenabbia, Lake Como, August 30th.

The Rev. Dr. Bellows of New York is to blame – or "to praise" – for our last week's wanderings; for he it was who advised me by no means to leave out the Tyrol in our European tour – and if he could have seen all the delight of these few days, I think he would willingly take the responsibility. The Tyrol is less visited than Switzerland; it is not so overrun with tourists (and this is a recommendation); but it is hardly less worthy of a visit. To be sure, the mountains are not quite so high as Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn (there are not so many snow-clad peaks and glaciers), but they are high enough; there are many that pierce the clouds, and the roads wind amid perpetual wildness, yet not without beauty also, for at the foot of these savage mountains lie the loveliest green valleys, which are inhabited by a simple, brave people, who have often defended their Alpine passes with such valor as has made them as full of historical interest as they are of natural grandeur.

Innsbruck is the capital of the Tyrol, and the usual starting point for a tour – but as at Ober-Ammergau we were to the west, we found a nearer point of departure at Partenkirchen, a small town lying in the lap of the mountains, from which a journey through Lermos, Nassereit, Imst, Landeck and Mals, leads one through the heart of the Tyrol, ending with the Stelvio Pass, the highest over the Alps. It is a long day's ride to Landeck, but we ordered a carriage with a pair of stout horses, and went to our rest full of expectation of what we should see on the morrow.

But the night was not promising; the rain fell in torrents, and the morning was dark and lowering; but "he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap," so with faith we set out, and our faith was rewarded, for soon the clouds broke away, and though they lingered in scattered masses, sufficient to shade us from the oppressive heat of the sun, they did not obscure the sight of the mountains and the valleys. The rains had laid the dust and cooled the air, and all day long we were floating through a succession of the most varied scenes, in which there was a mingled wildness and beauty that would have delighted our landscape artists.

The villages are less picturesque than the country. They are generally built very compact, apparently as a security against the winter, when storms rage through these valleys, and there is a feeling of safety in being thus "huddled" together. The houses are of stone, with arched passage-ways for the horses to be driven into a central yard. They look very solid, but they are not tasteful. There are not good accommodations for travellers. There are as yet none of those magnificent hotels which the flood of English tourists has caused to be built at every noted point in Switzerland; in the Tyrol one has to depend on the inns of the country, and these, with a few exceptions, are poor. Looking through the one long, narrow street of a Tyrolean village, one sees little that is attractive, but much to the contrary. Great heaps of manure lie exposed by the roadside, and often not only before the barns, but before the houses. These seem to be regarded as the agricultural riches of the cultivators of the soil, and are displayed with as much pride as a shepherd would take in showing his flocks and herds. These features of a hamlet in the Tyrol a traveller regards with disgust, and we used often to think of the contrast presented to one of our New England villages, the paradise of neatness and comfort.

Such things seem to show an utter absence of taste; and yet this people are very fond of flowers. Almost every house has a little patch of ground for their cultivation, and the contrast is most strange between the filth on one side and the beauty and bloom on the other.

Another feature which strikes one, is the universal reverence and devotion. The Tyrolese, like the peasants of Bavaria, are a very religious people. One can hardly travel a mile without coming to a cross or a shrine by the wayside, with an image of Christ and the Virgin. Often on the highest points of the mountains, where only the shepherd builds his hut, that he may watch his flocks in the summer as they feed on those elevated pastures, may be seen a little chapel, whose white spire, gleaming in the sunset, seems as strange and lonely as would a rude chapel built by a company of miners on some solitary peak of the Rocky Mountains.

These summer pastures are a feature of the Tyrol. High up on the sides of the mountains one may descry here and there, amid the masses of rock, or the pine forest, a little oasis of green (called an Alp), where a few rods of more level ground permit of cultivation. It would seem as if these heights were almost inaccessible, as if only the chamois could clamber up such rocks, or find a footing where only stunted pines can grow. Yet so industrious are these simple Tyroleans, and so hard-pressing is the necessity which compels them to use every foot of the soil, that they follow in the path of the chamois, and turn even the tops of the mountains into greenness, and plant their little patches almost on the edge of the snows. Wherever the grass can grow, the cattle and goats find sustenance on the scanty herbage. To these mountain pastures they are driven, so soon as the snows have melted off from the heights, and the tender grass begins to appear, and there they are kept till the return of cold compels them to descend. We used often to look through our spyglass at the little clusters of huts on the very tops of the mountains, where the shepherds, by coming together, try to lighten a little the loneliness of their lot, banished for the time from all other human habitations. But what a solitary existence – the only sound that greets their ears the tinkling of the cow-bells, or the winding of the shepherd's horn, or the chime of some chapel bell, which, perched on a neighboring height, sends its sweet tones across the valley. Amid such scenes, we rode through a dozen villages, past hills crowned with old castles, and often looked down from the mountain sides into deep hollows glistening with lakes. As we came into the valley of the Inn, we remembered that this was all historic ground. The bridges over which we passed have often been the scene of bloody conflicts, and in these narrow gorges the Tyrolese have rolled down rocks and trees on the heads of their invaders.

We slept that night at Landeck, in a very decent, comfortable inn, kept by a good motherly hostess. The next morning we exchanged our private carriage for the stellwaggen, a small diligence which runs to Mals. Our journey was now made still more pleasant by falling in with a party of three clergymen of the Church of England – all rectors of important churches in or near London, who had been, like ourselves, to Ober-Ammergau, and were returning through the Tyrol. They had been also to the Old Catholic Conference at Bonn, where they met our friend Dr. Schaff. They had much to say of the addresses of Dr. Döllinger, and of the Old Catholic movement, of which they had not very high expectations, although they thought its influence, as far as it went, was good. We travelled together for three days. I found them (as I have always found clergymen of the Church of England) men of culture and education, as well as gentlemen in their manners. They proved most agreeable travelling companions, and their pleasant conversation, as we rode together, or walked up the steep ascents of the mountains, gave an additional enjoyment to this most delightful journey.

This second day's ride led us over the Finstermünz Pass in which all the features of Tyrolean scenery of the day before were repeated with increasing grandeur. For many miles the line of the Tyrol is close to that of Switzerland; across a deep gorge, through which flows a rapid river, lies the Engadine, which of late years has been a favorite resort of Swiss tourists, and where our friend Prof. Hitchcock with his family has been spending the summer at St. Moritz.