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successive decades has taken this part. A man of attractive presence and lofty bearing, one whom every eye follows as he goes about the town on the round of his daily duties, yet simple-hearted and modest, as becomes one who takes on himself not only the dress but the name and figure of the Saviour. Essays have been written on "Christus" Mayr and his conception of Jesus, and I can only assent to the general impression. To me it seems that Mayr's thought of Christ is one which all must accept. He appears as "one driven by the Spirit,"--the great mild teacher, the man who can afford to be silent before kings and before mobs, and to whom the pains of Calvary are not more deep than the sorrows of Gethsemane, the man who comes to do the work of his Father, regardless alike of human praise or of human contempt. The great strength of the presentation is that it brings to the front the essentials of Christ's life and death. There is no suggestion of theological subtleties nor of the ceremonies of any church. It is simply true and terrible. From one of his fellow-actors, I learned this of Josef Mayr. He has always been what he is now, a hand-worker ("_gemeiner Arbeiter_") in Oberammergau. He has never been away from his native town except once, when he went as a workman to Vienna, and once when, in 1870, the play was interrupted by the war with France, and Mayr himself was taken into the army. Out of respect to his art, he was never sent to the front, but kept in the garrison at Munich. When the war was over, and he came back, in 1871, the grateful villagers resumed the play as their "best method of thanking God who had given them the blessings of victory and peace." Canon Farrar, of Westminster, has given us the best and most sympathetic account yet published of the various actors. Of Mayr he said: "It is no small testimony to the goodness and the ability of Josef Mayr that in his representation of Christ he does not offend us by a single word or a single gesture. If there were in his manner the slightest touch of affectation or of self-consciousness; if there were the remotest suspicion of a strut in his gait, we should be compelled to turn aside in disgust. As it is, we forget the artist altogether. For it is easy to see that Josef Mayr forgets himself, and wishes only to give a faithful picture of the events in the Gospel story." As the Master enters the temple, he finds that its courts are filled with a
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