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THE FAITH 
 OF ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 BY 
 EDWARD A. G. HERMANN 
 
 *'iSo take and use Thy work: 
 Amend what flaws may lurk. 
 What strain o' ihe stuff, what 
 warpings past the aim!'' 
 
 Rabbi Ben Ezra 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 
 
 1916 
 
1^ 
 
 p'^ 
 
 Cl.-A'4'4 5912 
 
 DEC -I 1916 
 
 Copyright, 1916 
 Sherman, French & Company 
 
 *i<^ / . 
 
IN 
 
 GRATITUDE AND LOVE 
 
 THIS LITTLE BOOK 
 
 IS DEDICATED 
 
 TO 
 
 MY WIFE 
 
 COMPANION AND HELPER 
 
 IN THE 
 
 LIFE OF FAITH 
 
 AND IN 
 
 THE WORK OF MY MINISTRY 
 
" He gathers earth's whole good into his arms ; 
 Standing, as man now, stately, strong and wise, 
 Marching to fortune, not surprised by her. 
 One great aim, like a guiding-star, above — 
 Which tasks strength, wisdom, stateliness, to lift 
 His manhood to the height that takes the prize; 
 A prize not near — lest overlooking earth 
 He rashly spring to seize it — nor remote. 
 So that he rest upon his path content; 
 But day by day, while shimmering grows shine. 
 And the faint circlet prophesies the orb. 
 He sees so much as, just evolving these. 
 The stateliness, the wisdom and the strength. 
 To due completion, will suffice this life, 
 And lead him at his grandest to the grave." 
 — Colomhe's Birthday. 
 
Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch, 
 A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death, 
 A chorus-ending from Euripides, — 
 And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears 
 As old and new at once as nature's self, 
 To rap and knock and enter in our soul. 
 Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring. 
 Round the ancient idol, on his base again, — 
 The grand Perhaps ! We look on helplessly. 
 There the old misgivings, crooked questions are: 
 This good God, — what He could do, if He 
 
 would. 
 Would, if He could — then must have done long 
 
 since : 
 If so, when, where and how? some way must be; 
 Once feel about, and soon or late you hit 
 Some sense, in which it might be, after all. 
 
 . . . That way 
 Over the mountain, which who stands upon 
 Is apt to doubt if it be meant for a road; 
 While, if he views it from the waste itself. 
 Up goes the line there, plain from base to brow. 
 Not vague, mistakable! what's a break or two 
 Seen from the unbroken desert either side.^ 
 And then (to bring in fresh philosophy) 
 What if the breaks themselves should prove at 
 
 last 
 The most consummate of contrivances 
 To train a man's eye, teach him what is faith ? " 
 — Bishop Blougram's Apology. 
 
THE FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 In an attempt to interpret the faith of 
 Robert Browning it may not be necessary to 
 go back to the source and trace the course of 
 all those streams of thought that flowed down 
 into the life of the last century. We must, 
 however, take into account some of the more 
 important intellectual tendencies of modern 
 times, for we can hardly hope to understand 
 Robert Browning's message, nor fully appre- 
 ciate the greatness of his faith, unless we real- 
 ize to some extent the power of those deep, 
 silent under-currents and cross-currents of 
 error which swept so many from their old 
 moorings and carried them into an unknown 
 sea, only to make shipwreck of their faith. 
 Browning not only resisted these treacherous 
 currents but made progress in spite of them. 
 Amid the storms that raged about his intel- 
 lectual life he always felt secure because Hope 
 was his anchor, and he came into port grandly 
 because God had been the Captain of his soul. 
 
 In many ways the century that produced 
 Robert Browning was the greatest in the his- 
 tory of the world. The progress of the last 
 1 
 
2 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 fifty years has been unprecedented. It has 
 been a century of material, intellectual and 
 moral achievement. Notwithstanding the pres- 
 ence in our civilization of a crass materialism 
 and its progeny of evils, we may say that faith 
 played no little part in this wonderful progress 
 and the century ended with a shout of triumph. 
 
 But the nineteenth century began with a wail 
 of despair. What was wrong with humanity.? 
 Humanity had lost its faith in God. Back in 
 the past something had happened that had 
 shaken the very foundations of belief and a 
 satisfactory readjustment had not yet taken 
 place. 
 
 Just as before and after a volcanic eruption 
 you can feel the vibrations in the earth, indi- 
 cating that something is about to happen, or 
 has happened, in the world of nature, so, for 
 a long time before and after the Renaissance 
 and the Reformation, disturbing influences were 
 at work in the intellectual and religious life of 
 the world. The sub-normal conditions of Eu- 
 ropean society in the Middle Ages made an 
 upheaval necessary. The soul-life of human- 
 ity may be buried for centuries in a grave dug 
 by a selfish materialism, or a false philosophy, 
 or a tyrannical ecclesiasticism, but in some 
 great crisis, — some joyous resurrection day, 
 — it will arise again and assert its power. 
 When these upheavals occur, whether we think 
 
FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 3 
 
 of them in relation to the past as a resurrec- 
 tion or in relation to the future as a new birth, 
 the new knowledge acquired and the new forces 
 set in motion impose upon future generations 
 the task of readjusting the new knowledge to 
 the growing life. This is what has actually 
 happened in our modern era. We have been 
 busy during these past few centuries trying to 
 find our place in the new universe that has 
 come into existence through Copernicus and 
 others, and we are just beginning to get our 
 bearings and to recover our sense of an imma- 
 nent God. 
 
 The Renaissance was a new birth in the in- 
 tellectual life and the Reformation a new birth 
 in the religious life of the world, — upheavals, 
 if you please, from which have come influences 
 whose power for evil and for good has not yet 
 been full^'^ spent. For the time being the far- 
 away God of the Dark Ages was rediscovered 
 in this world. The former attitude of other- 
 worldliness gave place to a humanistic tend- 
 ency, and interest was centered not in a dis- 
 tant heaven but in the affairs of this life. 
 Reason and Faith began to breathe the air of 
 freedom. But even in this new atmosphere 
 lurked the germs of a morbid pessimism which 
 was destined to disease the mind of a later gen- 
 eration. The shifting of emphasis to this 
 world, during the Renaissance, caused a reac- 
 
4 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 tion afterwards into an extreme form of pan- 
 theism in which God, as a spirit pervading all 
 things, was vaguely felt, but the sense of God 
 as a Personality entirely lost. And pantheism 
 inevitably leads either to atheism or to agnos- 
 ticism. 
 
 On the other hand, the narrow orthodoxy 
 of the seventeenth and the eighteenth century 
 reacted into Deism which pushed God so far 
 away again that it was practically a renun- 
 ciation of Him. Reason was enthroned and 
 infidelity ran rampant. Compte thought that 
 humanity had gotten along so far that it could 
 henceforth easily dispense with a God. He 
 declared that " science would conduct God to 
 the frontier of His universe and politely bow 
 Him out, with thanks for His provisional serv- 
 ices." That is practically what Deism did, — 
 with the "thanlcs" omitted! The light by 
 which the good God had meant to lead His chil- 
 dren into a clearer conception of the truth was 
 revealed so suddenly and with such intensity 
 that many were blinded and were left to grope 
 in the darkness of unbelief. The reaction that 
 set in after the Reformation is well stated by 
 Symonds. In referring to the modern age of 
 the disintegration of old beliefs he says : " We 
 are undergoing the greatest cataclysm of 
 thought that the world has ever suffered, and 
 in the midst of it all some must perish. The 
 
FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 5 
 
 cataclysm began with the Reformation. That 
 was the first and most powerful introduction 
 of a scepticism which since has never ceased to 
 work, successfully undermining in the world at 
 large ... all creeds, from the most insignifi- 
 cant to the most vital. And in this destructive 
 work science has helped." I quote this well- 
 known passage not only to point out the perils 
 of an intellectual democracy but also to show 
 the tendency toward the scientific materialism 
 which robbed so many thinkers of the nine- 
 teenth century of their faith in God. 
 
 During these few centuries the pendulum of 
 thought swung constantly between the ex- 
 tremes of pantheism and transcendentalism. 
 In discussing the religious problem and show- 
 ing that the modern trend is toward immanence 
 Eucken says that both these views, — the pan- 
 theistic and the transcendental, — result in a 
 life devoid of religion. " At first the divine is 
 brought near to our existence ; then it is closely 
 associated with it as an inspiring force, and 
 finally it totally disappears, or vanishes to an 
 unapproachable distance." 
 
 These were some of the influences that en- 
 tered into the intellectual life of the nineteenth 
 century, and they naturally helped to create an 
 atmosphere of pessimism. It is no wonder 
 that a wail of despair went up from the heart 
 of humanity, for, if we may use Matthew Ar- 
 
6 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 nold's phrase in this connection, humanity was 
 lying helpless and hopeless between two worlds, 
 — " one dead, the other powerless to be born." 
 We need only to read the literature of this 
 period to see how deeply the atmosphere was 
 colored with gloom. Literature is like a vast 
 mirror reflecting the life of the age which pro- 
 duces it. Schopenhauer, prince of pessimistic 
 philosophers, while personally not only unat- 
 tractive but even repulsive and, therefore, 
 often friendless, had a host of unconscious fol- 
 lowers who, like him, felt only pain and want 
 and deemed it sheer folly to seek peace in this 
 world or to hope for happiness in a world to 
 come. Their creed is well expressed in 
 Thompson's familiar lines : 
 
 " O length of the intolerable hours ! 
 O nights that are as aeons of slow pain! 
 O Time, too ample for our vital powers ! 
 O Life whose woeful vanities remain 
 Immutable for all of all our legions 
 Through all the centuries and in all the regions, 
 Not of your speed and variance do we complain. 
 We do not ask a longer term of strife, 
 Weakness and weariness and nameless woes; 
 We do not claim renewed and endless life 
 When this which is our torment here shall close, 
 And everlasting conscious inanition! 
 We yearn for speedy death in full fruition. 
 Dateless oblivion and divine repose." 
 
FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 7 
 
 Can you imagine a philosophy of life more 
 hopeless than this? Even Buddha's creed was 
 nobler. An intellectual atmosphere in which 
 such a poem could be produced must have been 
 devoid of vital faith. 
 
 Into an atmosphere saturated, or at least 
 tainted, with such pessimistic ideas three great 
 religious poets were born. One was a repre- 
 sentative of the classic type whose beauty of 
 form almost makes one long for the intellectual 
 culture of ancient Greece ; another, a singer 
 whose sweet music is often in the minor key, 
 yet so mystic in its rhythm that somehow it 
 has the power to subdue the heart's restlessness 
 and sorrow; the third, a rugged, fearless 
 prophet whose glowing idealism and moral 
 militancy summon us to a life of heroic thought 
 and action. I said that all three were religious 
 poets, but we must yield to Robert Browning 
 the place of pre-eminence as a poet of faith. 
 For the sake of contrast I shall quote a few 
 characteristic lines, first from Matthew Arnold 
 and then from Alfred Tennyson. 
 
 Arnold's religious attitude is admirably set 
 forth in his poem entitled " Dover Beach " : 
 
 " The sea is calm tonight, 
 The tide is full, the moon lies fair 
 Upon the straits ; — on the French coast the light 
 Gleams, and is gone ; the cliffs of England stand. 
 Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. 
 
8 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 Come to the window; sweet is the night air, 
 Only, from the long line of spray- 
 Where the sea meets the moon -blanched sand. 
 Listen! you hear the grating roar 
 Of pebbles which the waves draw back and fling, 
 At their return, up the high strand. 
 Begin, and cease, and then again begin. 
 With tremulous cadence slow, and bring 
 The eternal note of sadness in. 
 
 *' Sophocles long ago 
 Heard it on the ^gean, and it brought 
 Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow 
 Of human misery; we 
 Find also in the sound a thought 
 Hearing it by this distant northern sea. 
 
 " The sea of faith 
 Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore 
 Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. 
 But now I only hear 
 Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, 
 Retreating to the breath 
 
 Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear, 
 And naked shingles of the world. 
 
 " Ah, Love, let us be true 
 To one another, for the world which seems 
 To lie before us like a land of dreams. 
 So various, so beautiful, so new. 
 Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light. 
 Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help in pain; 
 
FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 9 
 
 And we are here as on a darkling plain. 
 Swept with confused alarms of struggle and 
 
 flight. 
 Where ignorant armies clash by night." 
 
 These melancholy moods, so characteristic 
 of Matthew Arnold, were born of a sense of 
 spiritual loss. He is not a poet of faith, but 
 of despair. His face is ever turned toward the 
 past, and he sighs for the golden glory of a 
 day that will never come back again. 
 
 Tennyson stands half-way between Arnold 
 and Browning. Like the latter, he is the 
 product of the scientific age which produced 
 Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, John Stuart 
 Mill and Herbert Spencer. He was thor- 
 oughly familiar with current scientific knowl- 
 edge and in his efforts to reconcile science with 
 religion he coined many striking phrases. But 
 in order to prove the correctness of some pet 
 theory, or to defend some favorite doctrine, he 
 is quoted by sceptics as often as by believers. 
 Professor Royce, of Harvard, in his " Studies 
 of Good and Evil," devotes an entire chapter 
 to a discussion of the " Pessimism of Tenny- 
 son," and shows what a great change had come 
 over the poet's faith from the time he wrote 
 " Locksley Hall " to the time he wrote " Locks- 
 ley Hall Sixty Years After." Indeed, we 
 know that even in his earlier years Tennyson 
 
10 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 was so profoundly touched by the mystery of 
 human sorrow that his faith was well nigh 
 eclipsed. In that great religious poem, " In 
 Memoriam," in which he faces the problem 
 which in another form baffled the mind of 
 yEschylus and Job, he confesses that we who 
 love, and lose, and suffer, are like mere chil- 
 dren " crying in the night," like children " cry- 
 ing for the light, and with no language but a 
 cry." And again he cries out pathetically: 
 
 " I falter where I firmly trod, 
 And, falling with my weight of cares 
 Upon the great world's altar stairs 
 That slope through darkness up to God, 
 
 " I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, 
 And gather dust and chafF, and call 
 To what I feel is Lord of all, 
 And faintly trust the larger hope." 
 
 In the vast world of life " so various, so 
 beautiful, so new," Arnold could see " neither 
 joy, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor 
 help in pain." Browning, too, had heard the 
 " melancholy roar " of the " sea of faith," but 
 its sadness did not depress him. For mingled 
 with what seemed to Arnold the " eternal note 
 of sadness " Browning heard an " eternal 
 note " of joy. Browning, too, heard all 
 around him the shrieks of human despair, but 
 
FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 11 
 
 he could sing hymns of hope through stormy, 
 starless nights, because his spiritual instincts 
 always foretold the dawning of the new day. 
 
 " Love, hope, fear, faith — these make humanity," 
 
 he said. 
 
 And in the indistinct twilight which comes 
 between the darkness and the day, where Ten- 
 nyson only " groped," and " faltered," and 
 " faintly trusted " the " larger hope," Brown- 
 ing was confident and courageous. As he said 
 of Sordello, we may say of him: 
 
 " He at least believed in soul, was very sure of 
 God,"— 
 
 a line which Miss Ethel Naish says represents 
 the " irreducible minimum " of his optimistic 
 creed. And he could reach no sublimer mood 
 than when he cried out with the joy which is 
 the fruit of assurance: 
 
 " God ! Thou art Love ! I build my faith on 
 that ! " 
 
 At a time when men's minds were most be- 
 fogged there was need for such a man of vision 
 who could read the spiritual meaning back of 
 the conflicts of the new age, give a fresh in- 
 terpretation of the eternal verities, and start 
 
12 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 humanity again on its upward march toward 
 God. 
 
 One of the foremost literary critics of our 
 day has pronounced Browning as " the most 
 profoundly subtle mind that has exercised it- 
 self in poetry since Shakespeare." A man of 
 intense personal sympathy, his imagination 
 penetrated into every phase of human experi- 
 ence, and his lofty idealism enabled him to win 
 
 " God out of knowledge and good out of infinite 
 pain. 
 And sight out of blindness and purity out of a 
 stain." 
 
 His exuberant spirit sometimes took a playful 
 mood, but he was never a mere sentimentalist. 
 With warmth of feeling there was always depth 
 of thought. Indeed, so deeply did he delve 
 into the most intricate problems of existence 
 and so earnestly did he search for an intellec- 
 tual solution that he is regarded by some as a 
 philosopher no less than as a poet. It is often 
 difficult to draw a sharp line between Browning 
 the poet and Browning the philosopher. It 
 would not be improper to say, as Professor 
 Jones suggests, that he was a philosopher in 
 the sense in which Plato was a poet. His 
 genius was consecrated to the noble task of 
 revealing both beauty and truth. It was, no 
 doubt, the consciousness of great intellectual 
 
FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 13 
 
 strength that led him, after the death of Mrs. 
 Browning, to wander into the dangerous field 
 of metaphysics, but this latter part of his lit- 
 erary career has been considered as the period 
 of decadence. Much of his last work lacks the 
 daring intellectual force and the moral vigor 
 of his earlier years, and there are weak places 
 where the speculations of the would-be philoso- 
 pher break down. The cause of this decline 
 has been attributed to failing health and the 
 grief which the poet felt over the loss of his 
 devoted wife, who during her life-time had been 
 the inspiration of his best work. 
 
 But Browning never ceased to be stimulating 
 and helpful. If his faith is occasionally over- 
 shadowed with a cloud of doubt we somehow 
 feel that behind the cloud the sun is still shin- 
 ing and in a moment or two will burst out 
 again in all its glory. His intellectual cour- 
 age often fills us with the love of adventure, 
 and we begin our quest of truth in some un- 
 tried and unknown land. We are lured across 
 green, sunlit meadows where song-birds flood 
 the air with melody, and where we may pluck 
 the rarest flowers of the imagination. Then 
 comes the climb over the steep hills, and we get 
 a vision of the mystic heights beyond. The 
 road winds, and is often rough and stony, but 
 though the feet bleed and the heart grow 
 weary, we go on in our quest until — we real- 
 
14 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 ize that we have wandered into a vast wilder- 
 ness of thought and are " lost," and can hardly 
 find our way out! We fain would travel back 
 again over the old beaten road, and stifle for- 
 ever the questionings of the mind and the un- 
 satisfied hunger of the heart. But it is in such 
 moments of mental darkness that the spirit of 
 the adventurer comes to our aid, and quickens 
 our faltering faith, and guides us out of dark- 
 ness into the light of truth. 
 
 " If I stoop 
 Into a dark, tremendous sea of cloud, 
 It is but for a time ; I press God's lamp 
 Close to my breast ; its splendor, soon or late, 
 Will pierce the gloom; I shall emerge some day." 
 
 But it is Browning the poet, not the philoso- 
 pher, who inspires us with his gospel of cour- 
 age and hope. His greatness is not due to the 
 artistic form in which he clothed his thoughts. 
 It is the religious element that runs through 
 all his work that sets him apart as a man of 
 faith. His art is merely the channel through 
 which he ministers to the needs of the higher 
 life. He was one of the greatest exponents of 
 the art of optimism that the world has ever 
 seen. One of his best interpreters puts him in 
 that class of poets who are also prophets, and 
 says : " He was never the ' idle singer of an 
 empty day,' but one for whom poetic enthusi- 
 
FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 15 
 
 asm was intimately bound up with religious 
 faith, and who ' spoke in numbers ' not merely 
 because ' the numbers came,' but because they 
 were for him the necessary vehicle of an in- 
 spiring thought." 
 
 Because of the strong dramatic element in 
 Browning's writings it has seemed difficult for 
 some to determine just what is the poet's own 
 faith, for as a literary artist he could easily 
 hide his own feelings behind the many charac- 
 ters created by his vivid and versatile imag- 
 ination. But as we move among Browning's 
 men and women we cannot escape the influence 
 of his wonderful personality. The great soul 
 of the man cannot be hid. His faith is like a 
 vein of gold running through the cumbersome 
 mass of science, philosophy and art, sometimes 
 shining clearly on the surface, at other times 
 imbedded in the crude rock. But if we have 
 the eye for spiritual beauty and the instinct of 
 the lover of the truth we can readily distin- 
 guish what is pure gold from what is worthless 
 or inferior foreign matter. The vein here and 
 there runs deep, and he who would possess the 
 gold must dig. We have picked up from this 
 mine of intellectual and spiritual treasure only 
 a few nuggets which may serve as specimens of 
 the rich quality of his faith. 
 
 Ernest Haeckel has declared that " God, 
 freedom and immortality are the three great 
 
16 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 buttresses of superstition which it is the busi- 
 ness of science to destroy." I shall not try 
 to prove that he was wrong. But I should like 
 to contrast with his rank materialism Brown- 
 ing's fine spiritual idealism, and stress the 
 practical value of his faith. These three 
 " buttresses of superstition " at which Haeckel 
 would point the destructive guns of science are 
 the very foundation-stones that support 
 Browning's massive temple. He could see no 
 such fatal antagonism between science and re- 
 ligion. It was precisely along these lines that 
 he built up his sublime faith, notwithstanding 
 the fact that he accepted the best conclusions 
 of contemporary science as the most satisfac- 
 tory explanations of natural phenomena. He 
 believed in God and man and immortality, and 
 he was no worse off than Haeckel. On the 
 other hand, the application of his faith to the 
 experiences and problems of life proved him to 
 be a man of good, practical common-sense. 
 His virile manhood was the direct outgrowth 
 of his vital faith. Superstition cannot pro- 
 duce a type of noble character, nor can science 
 rob us of that which is best in life and religion. 
 Perhaps Browning was not always orthodox in 
 the strictly evangelical sense, but who can deny 
 that with open mind he ever sought for truth, 
 and having found it, followed it with an intel- 
 lectual honesty and a moral courage that mark 
 
FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 17 
 
 him as a true man and a prophet of God? 
 Instead of destroying his faith in a God of 
 whom he thought as Wisdom, Goodness, Power, 
 Love, science only strengthened and deepened 
 it. When God seemed lost in all the intricate 
 and complex machinery of natural law, this 
 brave man took the telescope from the hands 
 of the sceptical scientist and, looking up, cried 
 out : " Behold ! I see an angel standing in the 
 sun ! " Likewise he took the microscope and 
 read the mystic secret of life that slumbered in 
 the heart of a rose, — " I saw God everywhere." 
 Science gave him the idea of God as a First 
 Great Cause, eternally creating, faithfully sus- 
 taining, lovingly permeating the life of Nature 
 and the life of man. He conceived of God as 
 the source, the substance and the sum of all 
 things, animate and inanimate; mysteriously 
 transcending His creation and yet unceasingly 
 working in it; carrying out His purposes of 
 holy love in accordance with an orderly 
 method. And the see-er becomes the say-er; 
 the poet turns prophet and acts as mediator 
 between science and religion. If he saw God 
 everywhere it was his joyous privilege to in- 
 terpret God to those who were in doubt. 
 
 " I spoke as I saw; 
 I report as a man may of God's work, — all's love, 
 yet all's law. 
 
18 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 Now I lay down the judgeship He lent me. Each 
 faculty tasked 
 
 To perceive Him, has gained an abyss where a dew- 
 drop was asked." 
 
 But it was not through a purely rational 
 process that Browning found God. It is true 
 that as a great religious philosopher he de- 
 lighted to test his strength, and piled up argu- 
 ment upon argument until the apex of his 
 intellectual pyramid touched the very heavens 
 wherein the Divine being sat enthroned. But 
 personally he did not need the proof of logic 
 to convince him of the existence of God. It 
 was rather through a process of spiritual intu- 
 ition that he made this greatest of all discov- 
 eries, — God ! The scientist may sweep the 
 starry heavens with his telescope in his search 
 for God and still cry out with Job in the bitter 
 agony of disappointment : " O that I knew 
 where I might find Him ! " But this was to 
 him the grandest, most self-evident fact in the 
 universe. His faith here has all the assurance 
 of certain knowledge. It is sheer folly to at- 
 tempt to prove mathematically what authenti- 
 cates itself as the truth to the receptive mind 
 and believing heart. 
 
 " I hnow that He is there, as I am here, 
 By the same proof which seems no proof at all. 
 It so exceeds familiar forms of proof." 
 
FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 19 
 
 He knows God through spiritual fellowship, — 
 feels Him as a sublime Reality throbbing at 
 the very centre of life and things. 
 
 In " Pauline," his first published poem, we 
 already see that lofty idealism which is charac- 
 teristic of all his finest work. In these years of 
 early manhood, — he was then only twenty, — 
 there struggled in his soul mysterious forces 
 which drew him irresistibly toward God. His 
 spiritual attitude determined his moral growth : 
 
 " I have always had one lode-star ; now 
 As I look back I see that I have halted 
 Or hastened as I looked toward that star, — 
 A need, a trust, a yearning after God." 
 
 " My soul must still advance. 
 I cannot chain my soul; it will not rest 
 In its clay prison, this narrow sphere; 
 It has strange impulse, tendency, desire 
 Which no wise I account for, nor explain. 
 But cannot stifle, being bound to trust 
 * All feelings equally." 
 
 In this divine restlessness of youth he bursts 
 out passionately: 
 
 " O God ! where do they tend, — these struggling 
 aims? 
 What would I have? What is this sleep which 
 seems 
 
20 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 To bound all? Can there be a waking point of 
 
 crowning life ? 
 And what is that I hunger for but God ? " 
 
 " My God ! My God ! Let me for once look on 
 Thee 
 As though naught else existed, we alone! 
 And as creation crumbles, my soul's spark 
 Expand till I can say, — even from my self, — 
 ' I need Thee and I feel Thee and I love Thee.' " 
 
 And " Pauline " concludes with this compre- 
 hensive statement which may be taken as the 
 poet's own confession of faith: 
 
 " I believe in God and truth and love." 
 
 To Browning God was not only an abstract 
 principle, nor even a divine spirit diffused 
 through the universe. He was a personality, 
 — a God of power, righteousness and love, 
 manifesting Himself in nature, in man and in 
 Christ. 
 
 Browning is not usually regarded as a poet 
 of nature, and yet he has much in common with 
 Shelley and Wordsworth, who were considered 
 the representative nature poets of the early 
 part of the nineteenth century. In " Pauline," 
 " Paracelsus " and " Sordello " we discover 
 traces of Shelley's influence. Shelley's music 
 
FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 21 
 
 struck a responsive chord in Browning's heart, 
 and the grace and beauty of his descriptions 
 stirred his imagination. But the soul that 
 thirsts for the water of life can never be satis- 
 fied merely with the delicate tracery on the out- 
 side of the silver cup which has been emptied of 
 its life-giving contents. Shelley's beauty of 
 form appealed to Browning, but Browning 
 hungered and thirsted for God! Poor Shelley 
 did not so much as mention the name of God. 
 While he was at Oxford he wrote an essay " On 
 the Necessity of Atheism," and in accordance 
 with his wish the simple epitaph on his tomb- 
 stone in Italy describes him as an " atheist." 
 Although he tried to abolish God from His uni- 
 verse, yet he did recognize a sort of spiritual 
 presence pervading the world: 
 
 " One remains, the many change and pass ; 
 Heaven's light forever shines; earth's shadows 
 
 flee. 
 Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, 
 Stains the white radiance of eternity 
 Until Death tramples it to fragments." 
 
 The '* One " to whom Shelley so beautifully 
 yet so vaguely refers is to Browning the un- 
 changing God of love and power. 
 
 Wordsworth goes a step farther than Shelley 
 and sees through nature's loveliness the spirit 
 of nature's God: 
 
22 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 " The clouds were touched 
 And in their silent faces did he read 
 Unutterable love ! " 
 
 It is the mature man who is speaking in '' Tin- 
 tern Abbey " : 
 
 " I have learned to look 
 On nature, not as in the hour 
 Of thoughtless youth; but hearing ofttimes the 
 
 still, sad music of humanity; 
 Not harsh, nor grating, though of ample power 
 To chasten and subdue." 
 
 But Wordsworth was not a poet of humanity 
 in the sense in which Browning was. A friend 
 once said to Browning, " You have not a great 
 love for nature, have you ? " to which the poet 
 replied, " Yes, I have, but I love men and women 
 better." Browning went beyond Shelley in that 
 he thought of nature, with Wordsworth, as 
 simply the garment of God. As a man of 
 faith Browning was superior to Wordsworth 
 in that he was not merely a poet of nature but 
 also a poet of the human soul. 
 
 And yet in his best religious passages Words- 
 worth seems to fall into a vague, pantheistic 
 mood as, for example, he continues in " Tintern 
 Abbey": 
 
 " I have felt 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 
FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING S3 
 
 Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean, and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and the mind of man; 
 A motion and a spirit that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought. 
 And rolls through all things." 
 
 But Browning's God is not only a " pres- 
 ence " or an indefinable " something " or a 
 " motion and a spirit " that pervades nature 
 like ether. He is a creative Cause and a con- 
 trolling Will. Browning was a pronounced 
 evolutionist before Alfred Russel Wallace and 
 Charles Darwin had given the world the result 
 of their investigations, but he was a Christian 
 evolutionist. He thought of evolution as a 
 principle of life, a method of development, 
 God's way of working. In describing the evo- 
 lutionary process Huxley somewhere says, in 
 his characteristic, agnostic style, " The human 
 species, like others, plashed and floundered 
 amid the general stream of evolution, keeping 
 its head above the water as best it might, and 
 thinking neither of whence nor whither." 
 Browning's spiritual instincts enabled him to 
 look at the evolutionary process from a higher 
 plane. He thought of it not as a blind upward 
 struggle, but as an orderly movement that had 
 its beginning and its end in God. He believed 
 
M FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 in a God who works according to law upward 
 physically through nature to man, and intel- 
 lectually, morally and spiritually through man 
 to the Christ ideal. While scientific material- 
 ism left the question of agency unsolved and 
 presented the doctrine of evolution as atheistic, 
 it is evident that Browning regards God as be- 
 ing back of and in the process, directing it to- 
 ward a divine goal. There is a remarkable 
 passage in " Paracelsus " which expresses his 
 faith in an immanent, eternally creative God. 
 It is all the more remarkable because it was 
 written in 1835, while Darwin's " Origin of Spe- 
 cies," which, in a certain sense, it anticipates, 
 was first published in 1859. In a letter to Dr. 
 Fumivall, written in 1881, touching this point, 
 Browning said : " All that seemed proved in 
 Darwin's scheme was a conception familiar to 
 me from the beginning." 
 
 " The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth, 
 And the earth changes like a human face ; 
 The molten ore bursts up among the rocks, 
 Winds into the stone's heart, out-branches bright 
 In hidden mines, spots barren river-beds, 
 Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask, — 
 God joys therein. The wroth sea's waves are 
 
 edged 
 With foam, white as the bitten lip of hate ; 
 When in the solitary wastes strange groups 
 Of young volcanoes come up, cyclops-like. 
 
FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 25 
 
 Staring together with their eyes on flame, — 
 God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride. 
 Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod; 
 But spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes 
 Over its breast to waken it; rare verdure 
 Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between 
 The withered tree-roots and the cracks of frost, 
 Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face; 
 The grass grows bright, the boughs are swollen 
 
 with blooms 
 Like chrysalids impatient for the air. 
 The shining dorrs are busy, beetles run 
 Along the furrows, ants make their ado; 
 Above, birds fly in merry flocks; the lark 
 Soars up and up, shivering for very joy; 
 Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing gulls 
 Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe 
 Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek 
 Their loves in wood and plain, — and God renews 
 His ancient rapture. Thus He dwells in all, 
 From life's minute beginnings, up at last 
 To man, — the consummation of this scheme 
 Of being, the completion of this sphere of life. 
 And man produced, all has its end thus far. 
 But in completed man begins anew 
 A tendency toward God." 
 
 Thus in his scheme it is seen that man is re- 
 lated physically to nature below him, and spir- 
 itually to the God above. If with the perfec- 
 tion of man's body natural evolution has 
 reached a state of arrested development, with 
 
26 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 man also begins a process of spiritual evolu- 
 tion which has its goal in the moral ideal. 
 
 " Progress is man's distinctive mark alone ; 
 Not God's, and not the beast's. God is; they 
 
 are; 
 Man partly is, but wholly hopes to be." 
 
 In " Prince Hoenstiel-Schwangau " this lower 
 side of man's relationship is emphasized: 
 
 " For many a thrill of kinship I confess to 
 With the powers called nature, animate and in- 
 animate ; 
 In parts or in the whole there's something there 
 Manlike that somehow meets the man in me." 
 
 But in " Rabbi Ben Ezra " there is the con- 
 sciousness of a nobler origin and a diviner 
 destiny : 
 
 " Rejoice we are allied 
 To that which doth provide. 
 And not partake, effect and not receive. 
 A spark disturbs our clod, 
 Nearer we hold of God 
 Who gives than of His tribes that take." 
 
 And again in " Ferishtah's Fancies " : 
 
 " I needs must blend the quality of man 
 With quality of God." 
 
 But this spiritual kinship with God does not 
 
FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 27 
 
 mean absolute identity. In " A Death in a 
 Desert " he makes it very clear that while man 
 partakes of the nature of God, he has a distinct 
 individuality : 
 
 " Man is not God, but hath God's end to serve ; 
 A master to obey, a Cause to take. 
 Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become." 
 
 A few lines from " Christmas Eve " will show 
 the spiritual kinship that exists between the 
 creature and Creator: 
 
 " Take all in a word: the truth in God's breast 
 Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed; 
 Though He is so bright and we so dim. 
 We are made in His image to witness Him." 
 
 In Rabbi Ben Ezra's fine interpretation of 
 life as struggle, growth, attainment there is 
 often the sense of failure. But that is all 
 right ! The motive, the intention, the dominat- 
 ing purpose of life is there ! 
 
 " All I could never be. 
 All men ignored in me. 
 This I was worth to God. 
 
 " What I aspired to be 
 And was not, comforts me; 
 A brute I might have been, but would not 
 sink in the scale." 
 
28 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 The old Rabbi looks forward to the time when 
 the body shall have served its purpose in pro- 
 jecting the soul on its lone, upward way, and 
 he summons age 
 
 " To grant youth's heritage, 
 Life's struggle having so far reached its term. 
 Thence shall I pass approved 
 A man for aye removed 
 From the developed brute, 
 A God, though in the germ." 
 
 In thinking of this slow upward movement 
 of life one cannot help recalling that profound 
 utterance of St. Paul in Romans where with 
 a grand sweep of the imagination he sees na- 
 ture in the agony of birth-throes producing 
 the spiritual man, and with his great mind 
 grasps the spiritual meaning of it all. " The 
 whole creation travaileth together in pain until 
 now. . . . For the earnest expectation of the 
 creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons 
 of God." And this point having been reached, 
 the words of the Apostle John take on a new 
 meaning : " Beloved, now are we the children 
 of God and it doth not yet appear what we 
 shall be, but we know that when it shall appear 
 we shall be like Hirriy for we shall see Him as 
 He is." All the way through man's moral 
 progress is nothing more than the spiritual in- 
 carnation of God. 
 
FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 29 
 
 But in those lonely hours of the soul when we 
 are baffled by life's mysteries and dissatisfied 
 with Browning's faith in a God manifested in 
 nature and in the life of man, and we feel the 
 need of some deeper truth to hearten us, and 
 we go to him with Philip's old desire burning 
 in our hearts and trembling on our lips, — 
 " Show us the Father and it sufficeth us," — 
 this great interpreter of life and religion rever- 
 ently unveils for us the face of Jesus Christ. 
 " In Him dwelt the fullness of the God-head 
 bodily." Jesus was God manifested in the 
 flesh. It is remarkable that as a youth he was 
 deeply impressed with the Gospel story and 
 entered into spiritual fellowship with the human 
 God in Jesus: 
 
 " Can I forego the trust that He loves me ? 
 .... Do I not 
 Pant when I read of Thy consummate power. 
 And burn to see Thy calm, pure truths outflash 
 The brightest gleams of earth's philosophy .^^ 
 
 Oft have I stood by Thee, 
 
 Have I been keeping lonely watch with Thee 
 In the damp night by weeping Olivet, 
 Or leaning on Thy bosom, proudly less. 
 Or dying with Thee on the lonely Cross, 
 Or witnessing thine outburst from the tomb." 
 
 He thoroughly believed in the Incarnation, 
 in the infinite sacrifice and suffering of God, in 
 
30 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 the power of the Resurrection Life. Love is 
 the theme that runs through all the music of 
 God's life. In the following quotations we get 
 glimpses of the height and depth and breadth 
 of his faith in God. 
 
 " I never realized God's birth before. 
 How He grew likest God in being born. 
 Such ever was love's way, — to rise, it stoops." 
 
 " Would I suiFer for him that I love ? So wouldst 
 
 thou, — so wilt thou ! 
 So shall crown Thee the topmost, ineiFablest, ut- 
 termost crown. 
 And Thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up 
 
 nor down 
 One spot for the creature to stand in! It is by 
 
 no breath. 
 Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins 
 
 issue with death! 
 As Thy love is discovered almighty, almighty be 
 
 proved 
 Thy power, that exists with it and for it, of being 
 
 beloved ! 
 He who did most shall bear most; the strongest 
 
 shall stand the most weak. 
 'Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for; my 
 
 flesh that I seek 
 In the Godhead ! I seek and I find it. O Saul, 
 
 it shall be 
 A Face like my face that receives thee, — a Man 
 
 like to me 
 
FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 31 
 
 Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever! A 
 
 Hand like this hand 
 Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! 
 
 See the Christ stand ! " 
 
 " This man so cured regards the curer then 
 As, — God forgive me, — who but God Himself, 
 Creator and sustainer of the world. 
 That came and dwelt in flesh on it a while. 
 The very God ! — think, Abid ; dost thou think ? 
 So the All-great were the All-loving too! 
 So through the thunder comes a human voice 
 Saying, * O heart I made, a heart beats here ! 
 Face my hands fashioned, see it in myself! 
 Thou hast no power, nor mayst conceive of mine. 
 But love I gave thee, with myself to love 
 And thou must love me who have died for thee.' " 
 
 Browning was once discussing his own faith 
 with Mrs. Orr, his friend and biographer, and 
 he closed the conversation by reading to her 
 the " Epilogue from Dramatis Personae," in 
 which his own Christian faith is contrasted with 
 the ancient faith of Judaism as set forth by 
 David, and with modern scepticism of which 
 Renan was the chief exponent. " It will be 
 remembered," says Mrs. Orr, " that the beau- 
 tiful and pathetic second part of the poem is 
 a cry of spiritual bereavement, the cry of those 
 victims of nineteenth century scepticism for 
 whom incarnate Love had disappeared from 
 the universe, carrying with it the belief in God. 
 
32 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 The third part attests the continued existence 
 of God in Christ, as mystically present to the 
 individual soul: 
 
 * That Face, far from vanish, rather grows, 
 Or decomposes but to recompose, 
 Becomes my universe that feels and knows.' 
 
 ' That face,' said Mr. Browning, as he closed 
 the book, ' that face is the face of Christ : that 
 is how I feel about Him.' " 
 
 Dr. Augustus Strong, in his " Great Poets 
 and their Theology," from whose chapter on 
 Browning the above incident is quoted, says: 
 " It will not be doubted that the secret of 
 Browning's persistent optimism lay in his 
 recognition of Christ as God and Saviour. If 
 the life that pulsates through all nature is the 
 life of Christ and if the hand that conducts the 
 march of history is the hand that was nailed 
 to the Cross, then we may dismiss our fears and 
 advance to the study of life's problems with 
 cheerful heart, believing with Pippa that, how- 
 ever great the intellectual difficulties may be 
 
 * God's in His heaven. 
 All's right with the world.' 
 
 Or if any one still questions whether this is 
 the real source of the poet's quietude as he 
 faces the mysteries and seeming contradictions 
 
FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 33 
 
 of existence," Dr. Strong would quote for him 
 those well known lines from " A Death in the 
 Desert " : 
 
 " I say the acknowledgment of God in Christ, 
 Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee 
 All questions in the world and out of it, 
 And has so far advanced thee to be wise." 
 
 Browning's unfaltering faith in God carried 
 with it a mighty faith in man's inherent good- 
 ness and immortality. He interpreted man's 
 nature and destiny in the light of what he be- 
 lieved God to be. If it be true, as Helen Keller 
 claims, that " we cannot be optimists until we 
 have an ideal," and we " cannot seek intelli- 
 gently for good until we have known evil," then 
 Browning was well qualified to be a teacher of 
 life. If with DeWitt Hyde we define pessimism 
 as " the art of emphasizing the evil " and op- 
 timism as " the art of emphasizing the good 
 and throwing the evil in the background," then 
 Browning was the most consummate optimist 
 of the nineteenth century. He did not close 
 his eyes to unpleasant facts when he made Abt 
 Vogler say, " Evil is naught, is null, is silence 
 implying sound," nor with eyes wide open did 
 he condescend to be a mere " painter of dirt." 
 He always found " good in evil and a hope in 
 ill success " because his faith was adequate 
 to meet any fact or experience in the moral uni- 
 
34 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 verse. There were undoubtedly many flaws in 
 his system of ethics, but his optimism was by 
 no means an easy-going kind. Emerson was 
 always serene, but he dwelt in the placid upper 
 air of philosophy, " far from the madding 
 crowd." Browning was " the prophet of 
 struggling manhood," — " a man in a world of 
 men." " He weaved his song of hope right 
 amidst the wail and woe of man's sin and 
 wretchedness." He could go with Carlyle to 
 the slums of London at midnight and see the 
 devil in a thousand human forms and still be- 
 lieve, with Emerson, in the goodness and great- 
 ness of men. Dr. Wescott said, " He dared to 
 look on the darkest and meanest forms of ac- 
 tion and passion, from which we commonly and 
 rightly turn our eyes, and he has brought back 
 for us from this universal survey a conviction 
 of hope." 
 
 " Is not His love at issue still with sin? '* 
 
 Browning's power to depict evil in its worst 
 forms is seen to no better advantage than in 
 "The Ring and the Book." "He creates 
 Guido, the subtlest and most powerful com- 
 pound of vice in our literature, — except lago, 
 perhaps, — merely in order that we may see 
 evil at its worst; and places him in an environ- 
 ment suited to his nature." 
 
FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 85 
 
 " Midmost blotch of black 
 Discernible in the group of clustered crimes 
 Huddling together in the cave they call 
 Their palace." 
 
 He describes the mother of Guido and his 
 brothers as 
 
 " The gaunt grey nightmare in the furthest smoke, 
 The hag that gave these three abortions birth, 
 Unmotherly mother and unwomanly 
 Woman, that near turns motherhood to shame. 
 Womanliness to loathing." 
 
 Against this dark background of human life 
 the beauty, peace and strength of a pure soul 
 like Pompilia's shine out all the more clearly. 
 She 
 
 ** Sent prayer like incense up 
 To God the strong, God the beneficent, 
 God ever mindful in all strife and strait. 
 Who, for our own good, makes the need extreme. 
 Till at the last He puts forth might and saves." 
 
 In commenting on these lines Professor Jones 
 says : " We feel the poet's purpose, constant 
 throughout the whole poem. We know all the 
 while that with him at our side we can travel 
 safely through the depths of the Inferno, for 
 the flames bend back for him ; and it is only 
 what we expect as the result of it all, that 
 there should come 
 
36 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 ' A bolt from heaven to cleave roof and clear 
 place, 
 
 . . . then flood 
 And purify the scene with outside day — 
 Which yet, in the absolute drench of dark, 
 Ne'er wants its witness, some stray beauty- 
 beam 
 To the despair of hell.' " 
 
 While Browning teaches the oneness of man's 
 nature with the nature of God, he emphasizes 
 man's individuality, and makes each character 
 work out his own salvation. He leaves room 
 for man's freedom, — 
 
 " Life's business being just the terrible choice." 
 
 "God's all; man's nought; 
 But also, God, whose pleasure brought 
 Man into being, stands away 
 As it were a hand-breadth off, to give 
 Room for the newly-made to live. 
 And look at Him from a place apart. 
 And use his gifts of brain and heart." 
 
 God's purpose was 
 
 " To create man and then leave him 
 Able, His own word saith, to grieve Him, 
 But able to glorify Him too. 
 As a mere machine could never do. 
 That prayed or praised, all unaware 
 Of its fitness for aught but praise or prayer, 
 Made perfect as a thing of course." 
 
FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 37 
 
 Browning was willing to trust man to the 
 utmost in realizing the purpose of his being. 
 Through sin, sorrow, sickness, mistake, failure, 
 the soul must ever travel on until it finds itself 
 in God. This faith in the ultimate triumph 
 of good over evil is summed up in " Apparent 
 Failure " : 
 
 " It's wiser being good than bad; 
 
 It's safer being meek than fierce; 
 It's fitter being sane than mad. 
 
 My own hope is, a sun will pierce 
 The thickest cloud earth ever stretched; 
 
 That after Last returns the First, 
 Though a wide compass round be fetched; 
 
 That what began best can't end worst. 
 And what God blessed once prove accursed." 
 
 Browning's faith in the immortality of the 
 soul may rest partly on the scientific fact of 
 the indestructibility of life as a whole, but his 
 grand hope also grows out of his conception 
 of the nature of God, out of his own spiritual 
 instincts and his sense of the incompleteness 
 of life here. 
 
 " There shall never be one lost good ! What was 
 shall live as before." 
 
 What was good shall be good.' 
 
38 TAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 " On the earth the broken arcs ; in the heaven a 
 perfect round." 
 
 " All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good 
 
 shall exist; 
 Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor 
 
 good, nor power 
 Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives 
 
 for the melodist 
 When eternity affirms the conception of an hour. 
 The high that proved too high, the heroic for 
 
 earth too hard. 
 The passion that left the ground to lose itself 
 
 in the sky. 
 Are music sent up to God by the lover and the 
 
 bard; 
 Enough that he heard it once; we shall hear it 
 
 by and by." 
 
 " And what is our failure here but a triumph's 
 evidence 
 For the fullness of the days ? " 
 
 In a sublime passage in " Saul," after David 
 has comforted the low-spirited king, he feels 
 that he has come upon the truth at last, and 
 argues the reasonableness of immortality on the 
 basis of love: 
 
 " Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ulti- 
 mate gift. 
 That I doubt His own love can compete with it? 
 Here, the parts shift .^ 
 
FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 39 
 
 Here, the creature surpass the Creator, — the 
 
 end, what began? 
 Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for 
 
 this man, 
 And dare doubt He alone shall not help him, 
 
 who yet alone can? " 
 
 He thinks it strange that we should 
 
 " In the least things have faith, yet distrust in the 
 greatest of all." 
 
 Again he recalls the wonderful life with which 
 Saul was gifted and of the love that had en- 
 riched it. Such a life cannot fail utterly. 
 The work of redemption may not be completed 
 here. The soul needs an eternity to develop its 
 latent possibilities. 
 
 " To make such a soul. 
 Such a body, and then such an earth for insphering 
 
 the whole? 
 And doth it not enter my mind (as my warm tears 
 
 attest) 
 These good things being given, to go on, and give 
 
 one more, the best? 
 Ay, to save and redeem and restore him, maintain 
 
 at the height 
 This perfection, — succeed with life's dayspring, 
 
 death's minute of night? 
 Interpose at the difficult minute, snatch Saul the 
 
 mistake, 
 Saul the failure, the ruin he seems now, — and bid 
 
 him awake 
 
40 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find 
 himself set 
 
 Clear and safe in new light and new life, — a new 
 harmony yet 
 
 To be run, and continued, and ended — who 
 knows ? — or endure ! 
 
 The man taught enough by life's dream, of the rest 
 to make sure; 
 
 By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensi- 
 fied bliss. 
 
 And the next world's reward and repose, by the 
 struggles in this." 
 
 But what if the soul's finest spiritual in- 
 stincts have been perverted and as a result the 
 moral character has been twisted into some 
 fiendish shape that belies the dignity of divine 
 sonship? Every spark of goodness seems to 
 have gone out of the life of Guido. If there is 
 another chance for Saul, can there be another 
 chance for Guido? We shall not go into the 
 metaphysical difficulty involved here. Suffice it 
 to say that according to the mind of Browning, 
 God never made a soul in vain. If that were 
 true, then he would still hope that somewhere, 
 here or beyond, a point would be reached where 
 " God unmakes but to remake the soul." There 
 is not a spot in all the great universe where 
 God's love is not present and " beyond the dim 
 unknown " He is " standing in the shadow keep- 
 ing watch above His own." There is a vast 
 
FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 41 
 
 difference between Browning's idea of life and 
 the mere fact of existence. Eternal life is pri- 
 marily not a life of quantity but one of quality. 
 The moral degenerate has not entered into the 
 fullness of life. 
 
 There stands Guido at " creation's verge," a 
 lonely and loveless figure, indeed. He seems to 
 have been cast out into " outer darkness where 
 there is weeping and gnashing of teeth." His 
 soul is shrivelling into nothingness. The real 
 life is at a very low ebb. We see him 
 
 " Not to die so much as slide out of life, 
 Pushed by the general horror and common hate 
 Low, lower, — left on the very edge of things, 
 I seem to see him catch convulsively. 
 One by one at all honest forms of life. 
 At reason, order, decency and use. 
 To cramp him and get foothold by at least; 
 And still they disengage them from his clutch. 
 
 And thus I see him slowly and surely edged 
 Off all the table-land whence life upsprings 
 Aspiring to be immortality." 
 
 This is existence, not life. But Guido is not 
 lost forever. Browning believes in a hell but it 
 is a spiritual experience, — the slow or sudden 
 awakening of the sinful soul to a realizing sense 
 of the sinfulness of its sin. Punishment is 
 remedial, not retributive, and it must fulfil its 
 divine purpose here or hereafter. While God 
 
42 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 is Love, He is also Righteousness, and He often 
 seems severe in the execution of His laws. But 
 His justice may be only mercy in disguise. 
 The poor restless soul, ever dissatisfied with its 
 lower choices, is driven on relentlessly through 
 the fires of pain that it may be purified and at 
 last find its refuge and its rest in God. 
 
 But the good man rejoices in the conscious- 
 ness of his origin and destiny. In " A Death in 
 the Desert," the atmosphere is charged with the 
 power and the presence of the living, eternal 
 Christ. In His companionship there is no 
 doubt about the reality of the soul's resurrec- 
 tion. The aged John hears of rumors that 
 have spread through the world that would dis- 
 credit the life and teachings of his Master. 
 But he can testify out of personal experience 
 that those rumors are false. In the quiet of 
 his soul he still hears those reassuring words 
 that had brought so much hope and comfort to 
 the heartbroken in days gone by, — " I am the 
 Resurrection and the Life." He can bravely 
 face the last sunset and in its golden glow enter 
 the gates of the " city which hath foundations, 
 whose builder and maker is God." 
 
 The changes of this life are the stepping- 
 stones to something higher: 
 
 " Man is hurled 
 From change to change unceasingly, 
 His soul's wings never furled." 
 
FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 43 
 
 " The Future I may face now I have proved the 
 Past." 
 
 Neither the changes of this life, nor the last 
 great change, death, can separate us from the 
 love of God, nor prevent the ongoing of the 
 soul: 
 
 " Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure; 
 What entered into thee. 
 
 That was, is, and shall be: Potter and clay 
 endure." 
 
 Physical death is only an incident in the 
 continuity of the spirit, — a shadow that has 
 temporarily fallen across the river that forever 
 flows toward the ocean of eternity. 
 
 " O lover of my life, O soldier-saint ! 
 No work begun shall ever pause for death! 
 Love will be helpful to me more and more 
 In the coming course, the new path I must 
 tread." 
 
 In " A Grammarian's Funeral " the old scholar 
 is buried on the mountain-top 
 
 " Where meteors shoot, clouds form, 
 Lightnings are loosened, 
 Stars come and go ! " 
 
 He had spent a long life-time in the quest of 
 
44 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 truth and at the close of day laid down his tools 
 with his work all around him, undone. But he 
 had thrown himself on God and he knew that in 
 another room of the universe he would keep on 
 with his tasks. He said: 
 
 "What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes. 
 Man has forever." 
 
 Death is the great Emancipator. There 
 will come a time when we shall need the body 
 no longer, having served the purpose of its cre- 
 ation in projecting the soul on its way. We 
 shall be glad some day to throw away the phys- 
 ical body as something outworn and useless and 
 thus be able to rise into the consciousness of a 
 higher freedom, just as the bird breaks away 
 from the shell, and soars upward, and fills the 
 air with sweet music. 
 
 Death seems like an everlasting sleep. But 
 that is only apparent. The figure implies a 
 renewal and an awakening. After the black 
 night of sorrow comes the bright dawn of eter- 
 nal day. 
 
 Death with the might of his sunbeam 
 Touches the flesh and the soul awakes." 
 
 Browninff had within him the witness of immor- 
 
 o 
 
 tality : 
 
FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 45 
 
 " Have you found your life distasteful? 
 
 My life did and does smack sweet. 
 Was your youth of pleasure wasteful? 
 
 Mine I saved and hold complete. 
 Do your joys with age diminish? 
 
 When mine fail me I'll complain. 
 Must in death your daylight vanish? 
 
 My sun sets to rise again." 
 
 There are two short poems which the reader 
 will forgive me for quoting in concluding this 
 interpretation of Browning's faith, for they 
 seem to me to express more clearly than any- 
 thing that he ever wrote his own personal hope. 
 " Prospice " was written a short time after the 
 death of Mrs. Browning. The closing lines, 
 which undoubtedly refer to her, express his 
 conviction that he will meet her again in the 
 life beyond and find love still unbroken: 
 
 " Fear death ? — to feel the fog in my throat, 
 
 The mist in my face, 
 When the snows begin and the blasts denote 
 
 I am nearing the place. 
 The power of the night, the press of the storm. 
 
 The post of the foe; 
 Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form ? 
 
 Yet the strong man must go: 
 For the journey is done and the summit attained. 
 
 And the barriers fall. 
 Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be 
 gained. 
 
46 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 The reward of it all. 
 I was ever a fighter, so, — one fight more, 
 
 The best and the last! 
 I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and 
 forebore. 
 And bade me creep past. 
 No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my 
 peers, 
 The heroes of old. 
 Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's ar- 
 rears 
 Of pain, darkness and cold. 
 For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave. 
 
 The black minute's at end. 
 And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave, 
 
 Shall dwindle, shall blend. 
 Shall change, shall become first a peace out of 
 pain. 
 Then a light, then thy breast, 
 O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee 
 again. 
 And with God be the rest ! " 
 
 The " Epilogue to Asolando " was the last 
 poem that Browning wrote. It has all of the 
 characteristics of his virile faith. It is not a 
 sad dirge to whose mournful strains the brave 
 soldier must finally march to his doom. It is 
 " a kind of re-enlistment in the service of the 
 good; the joyous venturing forth on a new 
 war under new conditions and in lands un- 
 known, by a heroic man who is sure of himself 
 and sure of his cause." 
 
FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 47 
 
 " At the midnight in the silence of the sleep- time, 
 When you set your fancies free, 
 Will they pass to where, — by death, fools think, 
 
 imprisoned, — 
 Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you 
 loved so, 
 
 — Pity me ? 
 
 " Oh, to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken! 
 What had I on earth to do 
 With the slothful, with the mawkish, the un- 
 manly ? 
 Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel 
 
 — Being — who ? 
 
 " One who never turned his back but marched 
 breast forward, 
 Never doubted clouds would break, 
 Never dreamed, though right were worsted, 
 
 wrong would triumph. 
 Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better. 
 Sleep to wake. 
 
 " No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time 
 Greet the unseen with a cheer! 
 Bid him forward, breast and back as either 
 should be, 
 ' Strive and thrive ! ' cry * speed, fight on-; fare 
 ever, 
 There as here ! ' " 
 
 In its ministry to the manifold needs of the 
 higher life the strong, robust faith of Robert 
 Browning has been justified as over against the 
 
48 FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 deadening influence of the scientific materialism 
 of the nineteenth century, and as knowledge of 
 the truth has increased, the insolent dictum of 
 Haeckel, with its implied prophecy of the 
 gradual and ultimate destruction of the Chris- 
 tian faith by science, has been proven false. 
 With all the acknowledged defects in some of 
 his last metaphysical experiments he has shown, 
 in his work as a whole, the sweet reasonable- 
 ness, the absolute necessity and the deep joy of 
 religion, and he has with him today, in the 
 spirit of his teachings, such representative 
 thinkers as Sir Oliver Lodge, the eminent Eng- 
 lish scientist, who insists upon a belief in a 
 personal God who reigns at the center of 
 things ; Henri Bergson, of France, with his 
 " Creative Evolution " ; and Rudolf Eucken, of 
 Germany, with his spiritual philosophy. If a 
 generation ago unappreciative critics scoffed 
 at the sound of this new voice that was making 
 itself heard in literature, today they place 
 upon the brow of this poet a crown of love. 
 Prominent theologians from the ranks of or- 
 thodoxy now find beneath the uneven and un- 
 conventional forms of his verse a faith throb- 
 bing with the life of God. His teaching as a 
 working force in human life is recognized by 
 no less a practical idealist and statesman than 
 Mr. Roosevelt, who in a recent review of a 
 book on Browning's work said : " There are 
 
FAITH OF ROBERT BROWNING 49 
 
 poets whom we habitually read far more often 
 than Browning, and who minister better to our 
 more primitive needs and emotions. There are 
 few whose lines come to us so naturally in cer- 
 tain crises of the soul, which are also crises of 
 the intellect." 
 
*' I go to prove my soul ! 
 I see my way as birds their trackless way. 
 I shall arrive ! what time, what circuit firsts 
 I ask not: but unless God send His hail 
 Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow, 
 In some time, His good time, I shall arrive: 
 He guides me and the bird. In His good time ! '* 
 
 — Paracelsus, 
 
 H 489 85 
 

 
 
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