The drama progresses from the entering into Jerusalem to the condemnation by the Sanhedrim, showing all the world that crime may be committed according to law as certainly as crime against the law.

Oh, the hard-visaged tribunal; countenances as hard as the spears, as hard as the spikes, as hard as the rocks under which the Master was buried!  Who can hear the metallic voice of that Caiaphas without thinking of some church court that condemned a man better than themselves?  Caiaphas is as hateful as Judas.  Blessed is that denomination of religionists which has not more than one Caiaphas!

On goes the scene till we reach the goodby of Mary and Christ at Bethany.  Who will ever forget that woman’s cry, or the face from which suffering has dried the last tear?  Who would have thought that Anna Flunger, the maiden of twenty-five years, could have transformed her fair and happy face into such concentration of gloom and grief and woe?  Mary must have known that the goodbye at Bethany was final, and that the embrace of that Mother and Son was their last earthly embrace.  It was the saddest parting since the earth was made, never to be equalled while the earth stands.

What groups of sympathetic women trying to comfort her, as only women can comfort!

On goes the sacred drama till we come to the foot-washing.  A few days before, while we were in Vienna, we had explained to us the annual ceremony of foot washing by the Emperor of Austria.  It always takes place at the close of Lent.  Twelve very old people are selected from the poorest of the poor.  They are brought to the palace.  At the last foot-washing the youngest of the twelve was 86 years of age, and the oldest 92.  The Imperial family and all those in high places gather for this ceremony.  An officer precedes the Emperor with a basin of water.  For many days the old people have been preparing for the scene.  The Emperor goes down on one knee before each one of these venerable people, puts water on the arch of the foot and then wipes it with a towel.  When this is done a rich provision of food and drink is put before each one of the old people, but immediately removed before anything is tasted.  Then the food and the cups and the knives and the forks are put in twelve sacks and each one has his portion allotted him.  The old people come to the foot-washing in the Emperor’s carriage and return in the same way, and they never forget the honour and splendour of that occasion.

Oh, the contrast between that foot-washing amid pomp and brilliant ceremony and the imitated foot-washing of our Lord at Ober-Ammergau.  Before each one of the twelve Apostles Christ comes down so slowly that a sigh of emotion passes through the great throng of spectators.  Christ even washes the feet of Judas.  Was there in all time or eternity past, or will there be in all time or eternity to come, such a scene of self-abnegation?  The Lord of heaven and earth stooping to such a service which must have astounded the heavens more than its dramatisation overpowered us!  What a stunning rebuke to the pride and arrogance and personal ambition of all ages!