er and
love at the human things around it."

"Yes," assented B. "You can put in that if you like. There is no harm
in it. And then you can go on to speak of the play itself, and give your
impressions concerning it. Never mind their being silly. They will be
all the better for that. Silly remarks are generally more interesting
than sensible ones."

"But what is the use of saying anything about it at all?" I urge. "The
merest school-boy must know all about the Ober-Ammergau Passion Play by
this time."

"What has that to do with you?" answers B. "You are not writing for
cultured school-boys. You are writing for mere simple men and women.
They will be glad of a little information on the subject, and then when
the schoolboy comes home for his holiday they will be able, so far as
this topic, at all events, is concerned, to converse with him on his own
level and not appear stupid.

"Come," he says, kindly, trying to lead me on, "what did you think about
it?"

"Well," I reply, after musing for a while, "I think that a play of
eighteen acts and some forty scenes, which commences at eight o'clock in
the morning, and continues, with an interval of an hour and a half for
dinner, until six o'clock in the evening, is too long. I think the piece
wants cutting. About a third of it is impressive and moving, and what
the earnest student of the drama at home is for ever demanding that a
play should be--namely, elevating; but I consider that the other
two-thirds are tiresome."

"Quite so," answers B. "But then we must remember that the performance
is not intended as an entertainment, but as a religious service. To
criticise any part of it as uninteresting, is like saying that half the
Bible might very well have been omitted, and that the whole story could
have been told in a third of the space."

TUESDAY, THE 27TH--CONTINUED

We talk on.--An Argument.--The Story that Transformed the World.

"And now, as to the right or wrong of the performance as a whole. Do you
see any objection to the play from a religious point of view?"

"No," I reply, "I do not; nor do I understand how anybody else, and least
of all a really believing Christian, can either. To argue as some do,
that Christianity should be treated as a sacred mystery, is to argue
against the whole scheme of Christianity. It was Christ himself that
rent the veil of the Temple, and brought religion down into the streets
and market-places of the world.