What is it, for whose sake the highest as well as the lowest, the richest and the poorest, prince and peasant, would sleep on a layer of straw, without a murmur, if no bed could be had? Why will the most pampered endure hunger and thirst, the most delicate heat and cold, the most timid fearlessly undertake the hard journey across the Ettal mountain? Is it mere curiosity to hear a number of poor wood-carvers, peasants, and wood-cutters repeat under the open sky, exposed to sun and rain, in worse German than is heard at school the same old story which has already been told a thousand times, as the enemies of the Passion Play say? Would this bring people every ten years from half the inhabited world, from far and near, from South and North, from the mountains and the valleys, from palaces and huts, across sea and land? Certainly not? What is it then? A miracle?

Whoever has seen the Passion Play understands it, but it is difficult to explain the mystery to those who have not.

The deity remains concealed from our earthly vision and unattainable, like the veiled statue of Sais. Every attempt to raise this veil by force is terribly avenged.

What is gained by those modern Socinians and Adorantes who, with ill-feigned piety, seek to drag the mystery to light and make the God a human being, in order to worship in the wretched puppet themselves? Even if they beheld Him face to face, they would still see themselves only, and He would cry: "You are like the spirit which you understand, not me."

And what do the Pantheists gain who make man God, in order to embrace in Him the unattainable? Sooner or later they will perceive that they have mistaken the effects for the cause, and the form for the essence. Loathing and disappointment will be their lot, as it is the lot of all who have nothing but--human beings.

But those to whom the visible is only the symbol of the invisible which teaches them from the effect to learn the cause, will, with unerring logical correctness, pass from the form to the essence, from the illusion to the truth.

That is the marvel of the modern Gethsemane, which this book will narrate.