with healing in its wings. To many people his works are a latter evangel of reasonable Christianity. Browning restates, in language proper to our day, the need, the fitness, one might say the inevitableness of two correlative beings, the soul and God. While he acknowledges that these two existences are unprovable, being beyond the region of scientific experiment, he, for his own part, takes them as selfevident and the 'knowledge' of them as intuitive. Like Wordsworth, he looks within, not without, for the sources of knowledge.1 Knowledge from within he deems absolute truth and, at the same time, transcendent mystery. The existence of the soul is the root of Browning's philosophy, the one thing in it which is taken for granted. The soul being allowed as the subject that which perceives, that which is perceived-God, follows as a matter of course, the object complementary to the subject. Browning has a fine passage in Red Cotton Night-Cap Country in which he definitely confronts the insidious idea of soul and body being one and the same, 'the new Religio Medici,' as he calls it, and there he explains his own concept of body, as ministrant and servant to soul, not including soul in itself. To recapitulate:-the soul represents to Browning the fundamental fact of life, it is the basis of his philosophy, and the only part of it which transcends logical proof. In every further step Browning 1 XV. 243. Jochanan Hakkadosh. addresses himself to the intellect and submits his While his process arguments to its severest tests. is intellectual, it is far from being colourless. A philosopher, dealing with abstract ideas, appeals solely to intellect, so does a historian, discussing the value of documentary evidence, but Browning is above every thing a poet, and a poet ascribing the deepest thrill of his inspiration to a religion which represents the vitalising and personal element in philosophy and history. Both the man and the theme are in touch with the heart and the emotions. Herein lies the value to religion of a great poet when enlisted in its service, he above all men having the faculty for raising the key of the appeal so that it enters the soul by the double gateway of intellect and feelings. There is something very sustaining to weaker faith in the unfaltering vigour of Browning's. One of the greatest intellects of the age encounters materialistic thought with a constant determination to 'hope hard in the subtle thing that's spirit.' In the very uncertainty of the unseen, Browning finds the foremost evidence of its truth. Life is probation, the race-ground of the soul, and souls develop only when will and faith have perfectly free play. He never tires of stating and exemplifying this cardinal idea, he looks at it from every side, and never finds it fail. In Fears and Scruples we have one of his strangest illustrations of the spiritual 2 1 XIV. 4. Prologue to Pacchiarotto. > 1 uses of uncertainty. The existence of evil offers development to man's moral energy, just as the noblest possibility of human love is provided for by the existence of pain and weakness. Our failures are an evidence of our ultimate triumph, and life's shortness and imperfection imply immortality. Browning is Wagner in literature; for both, discords exist to be quenched in concord.2 Given God's power and knowledge, His love is as inevitable as the third angle of the triangle. Man's sublimest love being the strength of weakness, Browning sees nothing for it but that God's love should be similar in manifestation. This is the point at which he is touched by the appeal of Christ.3 God's love once proved a necessity, no way lies open by which it can meet man half-way but by clothing its strength in weakness like man's own. How can man bridge the gulf between his own need and the claim Christ made? Shall he reject Christ through very need of Him'? No, for Christianity is the only hypothesis by which Browning, and those who have been able to follow him thus far, can solve all questions in the earth and out of it,'5 even while taking every opposing difficulty into consideration. To Browning all secondary dogma is subject to the relativity of truth. Man's knowledge and condi 1 VI. 117. Saul, and XIV. La Saisiaz. 2 VII. 108. Abt Vogler, and XVI. 224. With Charles Avison. 3 VI. 122. Saul, and XVI. 30. Ferishtah: The Sun. + VII. 141. A Death in the Desert. 5 VII. 139. A Death in the Desert. tions suit his degree of development. He is accorded just so much truth as will prick him on to earn more. Education comes to the race, as to every child,1 by gradual steps, by concessions to weakness and ignorance, by a slowly increasing grant of opportunities to develop and leave childish horizons and old illusions, i.e. old aids, behind. Law deals the same with soul and body."2 Browning affirms the existence of 'a falsish false' and 'a falsish true,' as well as truth pure and simple, the difference between them being that the falsity is fleeting, a means to the end, which is truth itself.4 Delusions are essential to man's growth, and whom God deludes, Browning considers well deluded. 3 "When faith is ripe for sight,-why, reasonably then 5 Comes the great clearing-up. Wait threescore years and ten !" Browning's ever present thought is the individual soul as judged individually. He constantly reiterates the independent personal relation that exists between the soul and God. While he believes that every man shall give account of his own soul first and foremost, he thinks no less of the other side of the shield, the working out, or rather the witness, of soul in love and sacrifice. He never tires of saying, "Love is best," ," "Love is all and Death is nought," "Renounce 1 Asolando, p. 123. Development, and VII. 115. Rabbi Ben Ezra. 2 XVI. 118. Parleyings, Bernard de Mandeville. 3 XII. 65. Red Cotton Night-Cap Country. 4 XI. 332, 333. Fifine at the Fair. 5 V. 291, 292. Christmas Eve and Easter Day, VII. 254, Epilogue, and XVI. 72, Ferishtah's Fancies: A Bean-Stripe. joy for my fellows' sake? That's joy beyond joy." The question Browning would ask at the end of any man's life is not, What has he done? but, What did he try to do? Other lives may follow this, let them suffice for perfection, all man can do here is to tend upward. If his reach be beyond his grasp, so much the better, therein lies his warrant of immortality. A comparison between the spirituality of Browning and that of Lord Tennyson is suggested by the conclusion of Apparent Failure, which closely resembles much in In Memoriam. Generally speaking, where · Lord Tennyson is meditative, Browning is argumentative, showing us his thought in process as it moves from point to point. In this, the difference between the two poets resembles the similar difference between S. John and S. Paul. But while Browning delights in demonstrating the entire structure of his belief, Lord Tennyson's belief is a sentiment, a pensive desire, a temperamental bias, shaken by materialistic thought. Though Browning weaves in the ideas, terms, and tales of science as much as does his great compeer, he is far less affected by its pessimism. He is really disregardful of it, being principally occupied with the spiritual region which science ignores. There is no record in Browning's work of a personally sceptical stage. Even Pauline, far from being touched with a young man's infidelity, such as finds extreme expression in Shelley's earlier work, is markedly religious, even devout. Dramatically, of course, as in Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day, Browning frequently travels over the |