248 THE GERMAN PASSION-PLA Y 



gospels have rendered us familiar with the Christianity of 

 Jesus ; the experience of everyday life shows us the 

 active elements in the Christianity of to-day. A study 

 of the mediaeval passion-plays will, perhaps, most easily, 

 and with the least danger of wide misconception, bring 

 before us an intermediate link in the chain of evolution. 

 Thus the potent truth of the relativity of religious 

 feeling may be recognised within the bounds of those 

 impressions arid beliefs which have been an essential 

 factor in the development of our own western civilisa- 

 tion. 



Nor is it from the standpoint of comparative religion 

 only that a study of the passion-plays may prove to 

 be of interest. The want of a deep sympathy with 

 the past that past which in its struggles, by its very 

 failures as well by its successes, has achieved what we 

 value most highly in literature and art can never be 

 fully compensated for by a knowledge, however com- 

 plete, of modern thought and current literature. Our 

 civilisation is the product of the past ; its traditions and 

 customs are the growth of the past ; and without a 

 sympathetic study of the past we cannot realise the 

 richness of our own civilisation, nor appreciate its cap- 

 abilities. One phase of our past growth is too often 

 neglected, especially by the narrower school of Protest- 

 ants. It is often assumed that the Middle Ages were 

 Dark Ages, that Eoman Catholicism was merely a super- 

 stition, hampering the forward movement of humanity ; 

 that Medisevalism has no intellectual value for an en- 

 lightened nineteenth century. Yet Medievalism has, 

 perhaps, even a higher claim than Hellenism to be 



