LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 CIlUS 
 
Guidance from 
 
 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 in Matters of Faith 
 
Gtiidance from 
 
 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 in Matters of Faith 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN A. HUTTON, M. A. 
 
 Cincinnati 
 JENNINGS & GRAHAM 
 
 Edinhirgh and London 
 OLIPHANT, ANDERSON & FERRIER 
 
-' 
 
fa 
 
 ZO 
 MY WIFE 
 
Preface to the Second Edition 
 
 The writer takes opportunity here to acknowledge 
 the fairness, and, in most cases, the eminent 
 favour with which this small book has been 
 received. The purpose of the book, which is, 
 simply to derive from the poet the help he offers 
 for the serious matter of living, has been, in 
 almost every case, understood and accepted. 
 
 Whether it be an added glory, or a limitation of 
 his art, there is always present in Browning's 
 writing a moral substance, the passionate pro- 
 clamation of some particular way as the only way 
 for beings such as we are and placed as we are. 
 And because that strain of "guidance" is of the 
 very essence of Browning, there is room yet for 
 many books which will consider his teaching as 
 such, and, having found reason, will ask people 
 and especially those in whom the elementary 
 instinct of faith has become depressed by experi- 
 ence, to make a faithful trial of it. 
 
 J. A. H. 
 
 J ESMOND, Nh.WCASTLE-UPON-TyNE. 
 
Prefatory Note 
 
 The four lectures which appear here as four 
 chapters, were given by the writer to a con- 
 siderable class which met on Sunday evenings 
 during a winter. Each lecture served as an 
 introduction to a detailed study of Browning's 
 work from the point of view of that particular 
 lecture. This may explain something in the 
 literary manner of the book — a certain intimacy 
 and, in Chapter IV., an undue (as it may be 
 thought) personal note. 
 
 Those who are themselves indebted to 
 Browning for a solid or sufficient footing in 
 the deeper things of life will not consider any 
 book superfluous which, however poorly exe- 
 cuted it may be, has as its one sincere idea 
 and reason, not to estimate the poet or to 
 admire him, but simply to urge his message 
 as offering in these days of ours a basis 
 and motive for faith and hope and love. 
 
 J. A. H. 
 
 1903. 
 
The quotations from Browning's Poems are made by per- 
 mission of Messrs Smith, Elder Iff Co. on behalf of the 
 owner of the copyright. 
 
Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Case for Belief ..... 9 
 
 The Soul's Leap to God .... 45 
 
 The Mystery of Evil ..... 83 
 
 The Incarnation 117 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 Let me say a word or two, at the outset, 
 on the general title — " Guidance from Robert 
 Browning in Matters of Faith." In matters 
 of faith, the utmost that any one can do for 
 us, is to give us guidance. No man can 
 give his faith to another, any more than he 
 can give another his imagination or his private 
 history. Faith — the faith of which alone we 
 wish to think, is in every case a personal 
 thing and rests upon reasons which reach 
 down to the hidden and unfathomable things 
 of a man's own life. The region where 
 belief sits upon the throne or where the 
 throne is empty, lies far from the frontier 
 and circumference of our life ; it is the last 
 recess and solitude of our spirit. Into that 
 region none can intrude. It is a man's own 
 home. There he lives with himself and can 
 II 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 have no companion — unless it be God. In 
 all the deep things we are strangers to each 
 other. I cannot, therefore, thrust my faith 
 upon you. I cannot compel you to believe 
 for reasons which satisfy me. Strictly 
 speaking, I cannot give you my very reasons 
 for believing : for after all had been said 
 that I might say, I could not give you my 
 own point of view. I cannot tell you of all 
 the subtle movements in my interior life, the 
 play of circumstances, the formation of per- 
 sonal events, the kind of assault they make 
 upon me, the lights and the shadows which 
 pass over my soul, and which mean some- 
 thing quite clear to me. I cannot tell you 
 of the very things — the voices and the 
 silences — which make me sure of God. 
 Even if I could make these quite plain to 
 myself and if I were to speak of them to 
 you, they would lose in the telling the very 
 qualities — the hiddenness and the personal- 
 ness — which make them irresistible for me. 
 And then, when all was said, I might not 
 
 12 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 have touched you ; I might not have said 
 anything which had any real meaning for 
 you. For, it is the very essence of belief that 
 it must be your own. It must be born within 
 you, and, like a true child, must spring from 
 the very stuff your life is made of. 
 
 That is all true, and it seems to mean that 
 we can do nothing for each other in this 
 great matter. But it is not so. I only wish 
 to make plain, at the outset, that one cannot 
 compel faith in another, that, even when the 
 argument for belief has pushed its way into 
 the very citadel of the soul, there a man is 
 still impregnable. He is still secure within 
 an inviolable shrine. He must choose to 
 yield, he must consent to believe. The door 
 of that innermost stronghold opens only at 
 his own touch from within. Nevertheless 
 we can do a great deal for each other in 
 these most personal matters. We can speak 
 humbly to others about such difficulties as 
 we ourselves may have passed through. If 
 we are indebted to some great or good man 
 b 13 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 for giving us a new point of view, a way of 
 looking at things which confirmed our faith 
 when it had been disturbed, we can do our 
 best to make others see as we see now. In 
 any case, we can try to feel together the 
 seriousness and mystery of this life of ours, 
 so that if we do not attain to a clear and 
 final faith in God, we may at least lose our 
 flippancy and boldness as we come within 
 sight of the stern facts of life and the fore- 
 bodings which they stir. Anything, of course, 
 that one may say by way of guidance is of 
 no value except to those who are in earnest. 
 We cannot compel the proverbial horse to 
 drink • — W e always knew that ; but if the 
 horse determines to be rebellious, we cannot 
 even lead him to the well. 
 
 I have been saying that belief can never 
 be thrust into a life by force of argument or 
 discussion, that in the last resort belief rests 
 upon certain personal secrets which lead a 
 man to embrace such proofs as are offered. 
 In the same way, the denial of God — for 
 
 14 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 denial and not doubt is the true contrary to 
 belief — (the denial of God) arises in nearly 
 every case — if you inquired carefully, or if 
 you could see below the surface — from a 
 certain stiffness and rebelliousness, and this 
 attitude has been brought about by the 
 events of the man's own personal history. 
 
 We make a serious mistake if we suppose 
 that unbelief comes about in a majority of 
 cases, as the result of intellectual difficulties. 
 The most and worst that such difficulties 
 can produce in an ingenuous mind is doubt or 
 prayer. But denial — the harsh and dogged 
 opposition to the ideal or spiritual view of 
 human existence — arises within a man, I 
 must believe, because of certain experiences, 
 e.g. in the region of his emotions. Perhaps, 
 in his youth, he drtamed a dream ; but the 
 world mocked him, and so he determined to 
 dream no more. Or he aimed at something, 
 and he missed it ; or he trusted a friend, 
 and was betrayed. Or he loved a woman, 
 and she broke her word or he broke his. 
 
 J 5 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 Or death snatched his young wife from his 
 newly-lighted home and the light that was in 
 him became darkness. It is life, it is ex- 
 perience which inclines the heart to faith or 
 to denial, and those are some of the bitter 
 things which — unless we take pains — poison 
 the roots of a life, so that the man needs to 
 be born again, the hard crust of atheism 
 needs to be broken up by some still more 
 acute distress, or by some amazingly good 
 thing before he can believe in God. 
 
 Now, I should say, it is my personal testi- 
 mony, that Robert Browning is never of such 
 value as just in those days when something 
 bitter has befallen us, and we are on the 
 point of angrily blowing out our light. He is a 
 real friend to any one who has been defeated, 
 or who has been left behind in the race. He 
 can in a wonderful way lay his hand upon 
 your shoulder when you have failed. If at 
 such a time you listen to his words, the milk 
 of human kindness within you will not turn 
 sour. When you would like " to curse 
 16 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 God," Browning can break in upon your 
 narrow passion, with a strong, hopeful word ; 
 and behold the narrow walls fall flat as did 
 the walls of Jericho, and you see the things 
 that compensate. He would like to come 
 near you in the dark and dizzy moments of 
 your life, to sit beside you, and wait till you 
 are well. He will discover to you "the 
 light which is in the midst of your cloud," 
 or, at the worst, he will promise you a day 
 when the " wind will come and cleanse your 
 sky." That is one level — I mean the 
 emotional life — on which Robert Browning 
 meets a man and helps him on or helps him 
 back to faith in God. Browning knew that 
 the incidents of our life — the silent defeats, 
 disillusionments, betrayals — give a man his 
 point of view, his way of looking at things ; 
 that these sow the seeds of what may be- 
 come harsh and hopeless unbelief. 
 
 Therefore he tries to get alongside a man 
 in all the various discomfitures of life. He 
 would fain sing him a song to heal his wound. 
 
 17 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 He appeals to us not to give way to rash 
 decisions because of any private shock, to 
 remember that the soul is greater than its 
 mere circumstances, that even in the last 
 push and stress of evil fortune a man may 
 call upon his soul and be supreme. It is 
 perhaps here more than anywhere else that 
 Browning best serves the cause of faith, by 
 going up and down the ranks, putting new 
 heart into men, calling upon the brave still 
 to be brave and braver yet, rebuking the 
 cowardly with a lash of contempt, whispering 
 something to the faint, and pleading with 
 those who have sunk to the rear. This 
 service, however, great as it is, and directly 
 on the side of belief — I mean his bracing 
 treatment of the human soul in all its nine- 
 teenth-century moods -is not what readers 
 of Browning have come to look upon as his 
 peculiar guidance in matters of faith. When 
 one uses the phrase, " Guidance from Robert 
 Browning in matters of faith," he means and 
 is understood to mean, the help which in 
 18 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 his works generally Browning gives to those 
 who feel the difficulty of believing. He 
 means the light which Browning sheds upon 
 the peculiar questions of our time, his inter- 
 pretation of those facts in the human situation 
 which seem inconsistent with the Sovereignty 
 of a just and Loving God. And, above 
 every other distinction, that is Browning's 
 value for us. He is the great Apologist of 
 these last days, the man of God to our 
 peculiar age. He has ranged through the 
 vast world of nature, and the vaster world of 
 the human soul, in his vigorous contention 
 with unbelief. He is splendidly equipped 
 for the long and intricate battle. " When 
 British literature," said Carlyle of Scott and 
 Cobbett, u lay all puking and sprawling in 
 Wertherism, Byronism, and other sentimen- 
 talisms, nature was kind enough to send us 
 two healthy men." Browning is a healthy 
 man, a man of boundless spirits and untiring 
 energy. He takes a ditch at a leap, and the 
 momentum of his rush carries him to the top 
 
 *9 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 of any hill of difficulty. There he takes 
 breath, and gazes on the grand horizon, and 
 in a moment is pressing forward on some 
 further toil. That is one side of Browning's 
 qualification to be the prophet of our time. 
 But a fund of good spirits is not faith. 
 Faith — and certainly, the only kind of faith 
 which will satisfy us now — faith must be 
 aware of all the difficulties. Faith must be 
 able to maintain itself in the face of all the 
 grimness and sordidness of the human situa- 
 tion. Now Browning's faith is of that kind. 
 His is not the faith of a man who shuts his 
 eyes and deceives himself: belief, in his case, 
 is the strenuous search for and discovery of 
 God in all and through all and over all. 
 Browning saw the things that make faith 
 hard to hold. He eyed those things all his 
 days. His very finest words have no mean- 
 ing unless you remember the dark things to 
 which they were given as an answer or a 
 challenge. But he never sat down and 
 lamented the human lot. He took off his 
 20 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 coat and wrestled with the enemy till the 
 breaking of the day. " Does anyone suppose 
 that faith is an easy thing for me ? " he seems 
 to ask. "Nay; it is a long victory, i.e. a 
 long battle." 
 
 " With me, faith means perpetual unbelief 
 Kept quiet, like the snake 'neath Michael's foot 
 Who stands calm just because he feels it <writhe." 
 
 (Bhugram.) 
 
 " All's doubt in me ! (where then is my faith ?) 
 It is the idea, the feeling and the love 
 God means mankind should strive for and show 
 forth." (Blougram.) 
 
 " This is the glory — that in all conceived, 
 Or felt or known, I recognised a mind, 
 Not mine but like mine — for the double joy — 
 Making all things for me, and me for Him." 
 (Prince Hohenstiel Schwangan.) 
 
 And now I wish to work my way through 
 a statement according to Robert Browning, a 
 mature and deliberate statement as I hold, of 
 the case for belief. I wish you to face with 
 me certain difficulties in the way of belief, 
 
 21 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 and to consider what Browning has to say to 
 them. Browning was engaged throughout 
 his whole life on this subject, contending for 
 belief in the face of every perplexing thing. 
 The difficulty, therefore, which presents itself 
 to one in my position is to make a selection 
 from the wealth of materials. 
 
 It would be an easy and pleasant exercise 
 for me to bring together passages from 
 Browning — first and last, which literally 
 stagger with the joy and fulness of faith, 
 passages which, like the soul of Caponsacchi, 
 are "drunk with truth." I wish, however, 
 to avoid that. For one thing, the pith of 
 any quotation from a serious writer lies in 
 the context. This is notably true of Robert 
 Browning. In his case, it is the process that 
 is characteristic and illumines. He says his 
 best things by the way. But further, it 
 brings little help to one who is really in 
 trouble about faith to hear a firm voice from 
 afar. Such an one is not yet ready for vic- 
 torious words or for conclusions. He knows 
 22 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 that, for himself, he has a battle to fight. 
 Caught in a morass it may only dishearten 
 him to hear another celebrate the firm 
 footing on the ridge. What most people 
 need to-day who are wrestling in any funda- 
 mental way with life, is some idea which will 
 make the hardest battle seem worth while, an 
 access of energy which will urge them to be 
 faithful to their own personal problem, a 
 revival and reinforcement of that instinct to 
 live, which for reasons has been bruised. 
 In short, they do not want a conclusion but a 
 task. 
 
 I have decided to devote myself in what 
 follows of this chapter to one work which 
 represents very fairly Browning's chief 
 positions and his general attitude towards 
 unbelief. Students of the poet know 
 that I might, for this purpose, have chosen 
 "Paracelsus" or "Christmas Eve and Easter 
 Day," or "A Death in the Desert," or 
 " Ferishtah's Fancies," and made any one 
 of these a basis of a defence of faith. I 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 have chosen the argument in " Bishop 
 Blougram's Apology." There may be those 
 who know Browning and who think that 
 " Bishop Blougram's Apology " was not meant 
 to be taken seriously, that the Bishop who 
 is speaking is a contemptible character, and 
 that the whole poem is a cynical defence of 
 compromise and hypocrisy. I must simply 
 say that I take an entirely different view. I 
 hold that in "Blougram," Browning is in 
 terrible earnest, despite the humour which 
 never forsook him. In " Blougram," I see 
 Browning refusing to take a man more 
 seriously than the man takes himself. He 
 chaffs Mr Gigadibs, not for his unbelief, but 
 for his shallowness, for his ignorance of 
 what his denial involved. But behind those 
 twinkling eyes of Blougram, I see a convinced 
 and genuine soul. In " Blougram's Apology," 
 Browning utters sentiments which he repeats, 
 almost without change, in what is admitted 
 to be his most sober work, e.g. in the 
 "Pope," and in " Ferishtah." Are there 
 24 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 not, too, sudden solemnities in Blougram's 
 talk, such as are possible only to a man who 
 is in the habit, when he is alone, of facing 
 the ultimate things — God, the soul, the 
 future ? Blougram knew very well what he 
 had to look for from God if he were nothing 
 but a hypocrite. You remember the grim 
 story with which he begins his defence. 
 
 "... how some actor on a stage played Death, 
 With pasteboard crown, sham orb, and tinsell'd 
 
 dart, 
 And called himself the monarch of the world ; 
 Then, going in the tire-room afterward, 
 Because the play was done, to shift himself, 
 Got touched upon the sleeve familiarly 
 The moment he had shut the closet door, 
 By Death Himself. Thus God might touch a 
 
 Pope 
 At unawares, ask what his baubles mean, 
 And whose part he presumed to play just now. 
 Best be yourself, imperial, plain and true." 
 
 {Blougram, 2Ap, I.) 
 
 I cannot think that the man who was haunted 
 at the moment by such a terrible thought, 
 
 *5 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 sat down there and then deliberately to play 
 the knave. Therefore, and for many reasons 
 in addition, I believe " Bishop Blougram's 
 Apology " to be — though the pure gold, as 
 was Browning's manner, is here mixed with 
 much alloy — a serious defence of faith, a 
 serious statement of the case for belief; 
 that in " Blougram " we have in germ 
 the deepest thoughts that Browning ever 
 uttered. 
 
 Mr Gigadibs, a literary man and a sceptic, 
 is seated at table with Bishop Blougram in 
 the Bishop's house. The moment supper is 
 over, the Bishop plunges into a discussion 
 on matters of faith. He may have been irri- 
 tated by some magazine article of Gigadibs. 
 Certainly he is very angry, but restrains 
 himself, knowing that he has his man well in 
 hand, and can crush him whenever he cares 
 to. He begins : u So, Mr Gigadibs, you 
 would reconstruct the world ? You are not 
 satisfied with things as they are ? You see 
 flaws and inconveniences which might have 
 26 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 been prevented. Life puts cruel burdens 
 upon a man — and so forth. In short, 
 things might have been otherwise arranged. 
 No doubt that is quite true ; at least let us 
 say so for a moment. One could conceive a 
 world much different from this one, and at 
 first sight, more kind. We might have had 
 less snow about the poles. The Arctic 
 regions are perhaps a little overdone. And 
 then the torrid zone — how hot and intoler- 
 able it is! Then there is the loathsome 
 world of creeping things, all so objectionable 
 and, as it seems, so useless ! Yes ; truly, life 
 might have been laid out upon a different 
 plan. And yet, are you sure it would have 
 been a better world ? You cannot say. The 
 Arctic regions, after all, give us our cool 
 fresh winds, and how welcome they are in 
 June ! It may be the same with all those 
 other circumstances which we think unfortu- 
 nate or evil. We cannot now conceive of 
 life without them. If you change one real 
 fact in this world, you must make the whole 
 27 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 world, and make man, anew. We have 
 grown up amongst things as they are, and 
 now they are the best surroundings we 
 could have. They make the very demands 
 upon us which we need if we are to realise 
 our true life. We need hard facts if we are 
 to have brave souls. No, friend, I see now 
 that you would need to know everything, 
 and know how one thing affected another 
 right on to the limits of creation, before you 
 could say that things as they are, might, 
 with advantage, have been otherwise. But 
 apart from that, the question is not how we 
 should think and feel if we were in another 
 kind of world ; if we lived in Mars or in the 
 Moon. The fact is, we are here. 
 
 " The common problem, yours — mine, every 
 one's 
 Is — not to fancy what were fair in life, 
 Provided it could be — but finding first 
 What may be, then find how to make it fair 
 Up to our means ; a very different thing." 
 
 u An illustration. We mortals must cross 
 28 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 the ocean of this life. We cannot choose 
 but cross. We are already out upon the 
 deep when we are born. To each of us is 
 allotted a certain space in the great ship — no 
 more. How then are we to prepare for the 
 voyage? An India-screen, a piano, some 
 sets of books, a marble bath, some pic- 
 tures and other comforts? But you have 
 only six feet square ! What will you do ? 
 Will you stand sulking on the pier and refuse 
 to go on board with some well-selected and 
 well-packed necessaries, because you cannot 
 have your piano and bath ? It looks distin- 
 guished, no doubt, to protest against what 
 others are trying to make the most of. 
 Nevertheless you must get on board, and if 
 you will not be sensible and take some 
 things you are sure to need, you will have to 
 endure the long voyage in torment. You see 
 what I'm driving at? You and I were not 
 consulted at the making of the world. We 
 awoke and found ourselves here; but we 
 know some plain things which we must do. 
 c 29 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 We begin our existence here under the 
 shadow and influence of instincts which were 
 given to us, as it were, in our sleep." 
 
 " And now " (we may suppose Blougram 
 continuing as he warmed to his case) " we 
 are agreed that we must take the world as 
 we find it. We are not in Mars or in the 
 Moon, we are here. The question is — Shall 
 we believe in God or shall we not believe ? 
 Tgu do not believe. Well, let me also try 
 not to believe. Let us banish belief entirely 
 — not half-heartedly, mind you, or in certain 
 special cases, but absolutely." 
 
 Here, let me say, we are coming to a stroke 
 which Browning practises very frequently. It 
 is a playful stroke, as he performed it, but 
 deadly always at the last. He accepts his 
 opponent's position, and then shows him that 
 it is untenable. Browning, as Father Ogniben 
 in " A Soul's Tragedy " puts it, tries to help 
 a man on to his own conclusions. "I have 
 no objection," said that guileless and nimble 
 father, " to agreeing with any man that two 
 
 3° 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 and two make jive, if he will go a little 
 further and agree with me that four and four 
 make ten." And so, Browning never pursues 
 an opponent so ruthlessly as when he begins 
 by agreeing with him, and then showing him 
 what both have committed themselves to. 
 Another stroke of his, and one very like this, 
 is to answer a man's question by asking him 
 another ; but we have reached an example of 
 both. 
 
 " Let us together," continued Blougram, 
 "banish belief and refuse to see even one 
 solitary hint of God in the world, or in history, 
 or in the spirit of man. Let us agree that 
 the world is so much stone and lime, and 
 that things happen without reason or mean- 
 ing. But can you promise me that you and I 
 shall be able to keep ourselves in this fixed 
 state of unbelief? I, on my part, am quite 
 ready to confess that there are circumstances 
 in life, such as the existence of evil, the 
 apparent drowsiness of justice and absence 
 of retribution, pain, sickness, and the moral 
 
 3 1 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 squalor, which disturb my faith in God, and 
 pull me up suddenly. But, if we decide not 
 to believe, can you promise me that our 
 unbelief will never be disturbed, that we shall 
 never be pulled up suddenly in our atheism 
 by something which suggests — God? Ah! 
 you cannot promise me that I shall be safe in 
 my unbelief. Suppose I stand, some evening, 
 by the sea-shore alone. I watch the rise and 
 fall of the vast waters, until I seem to see 
 the heaving bosom of a tired world asleep. 
 The sun goes down behind the sea, and in 
 the dusky sky the quiet stars begin to be 
 born. Ah, Gigadibs, can you promise me 
 that I shall not feel the pathos of such a 
 scene, that I shall not drift away into thinking 
 of God and of myself? No, you cannot 
 promise me that. For I am so made that I 
 cannot but feel strange meanings amid such 
 solemn scenes, and hear again the siren voice 
 of faith, — that this world which we hold to 
 be crass matter, and without divinity, is none 
 other than the house of God, and the gate 
 
 3* 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 of heaven. Can you promise me that I shall 
 never hear one speaking to me, when I am 
 alone, recalling to me my past foolishness 
 and the things I would fain forget? Con- 
 fess that you cannot, confess that the soul 
 lies open for ever to all manner of disquieting 
 and convulsive thoughts, that 
 
 ' Just when we're 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,- 
 
 33 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 Once feel about and soon or late you hit 
 Some sense in which it might be after all, 
 Why not, " The Way, The Truth, The 
 'Life?" 
 
 Thus, you see, unbelief is not more secure 
 than belief. Admit that in the human situa- 
 tion, there are circumstances which seem to 
 urge you to unbelief, there are also circum- 
 stances which assuredly urge you to belief. 
 When I set out with my belief, I agree with 
 you for the moment that my belief may 
 get many a shake as I pass through life and 
 look about me. But when you set out with 
 your unbelief, you must agree with me that 
 your unbelief also gets many a shake ; so that, 
 in short, you are no more secure in your 
 unbelief than I am in my belief. 
 
 " All that we have gained by our unbelief, 
 Is a life of doubt diversified by faith, 
 For one of faith diversified by doubt. 
 We called the chess-board white ; we call it 
 black." 
 
 Having made good this point, Blougram, 
 34 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 we may suppose, was silent awaiting an 
 answer from the other. Students of phil- 
 osophy will recall — when I mention it — a 
 remarkable corroboration of what Browning, 
 by the mouth of Blougram, has just said, 
 that a man's theory of life may be over- 
 turned and shown to be inadequate by some 
 new experience in the man's own life ; how 
 the human heart may refuse to be treated 
 as a negligible thing, but may start up and 
 claim its share. They will remember how 
 Auguste Comte had completed his " Posi- 
 tive Philosophy" — a system which assumed 
 that man is guided and ought to be guided 
 by the chill voice of reason and exact know- 
 ledge ; and how he fell in love with Madame 
 Clotilde de Vaux, and thereupon revised his 
 system, leaving room for the human heart. 
 Truly, as Blougram says — 
 
 " Just when we are safest there's a sunset touch 
 
 And that's enough. . . ." 
 Gigadibs has his reply, and it is the reply 
 35 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 of many. " You agree with me," he says, 
 " that the facts of human life may lead to 
 unbelief as naturally as to belief. Unbelief, 
 therefore, is at least quite as proper an 
 attitude for a man to take up as belief?" 
 "No!" Blougram breaks in triumphantly, 
 "I have you there. You forget that we 
 must embark on the sea of life. We must 
 work hard and bear burdens. Supposing the 
 reasons for belief and against it were equal 
 (they are not), a man must choose the one 
 which makes the best of him. Now, I hold 
 that belief does this ; unbelief, not at all." 
 Belief means for him who has it, that life, 
 and his particular life, has a purpose which 
 embraces and needs all the peculiar events, 
 trials, lights, shadows which come to him. 
 If a man truly believes, he will march breast- 
 forward as to a land of promise. With 
 belief in his heart, the details of his life 
 lose all their pettiness and acquire dignity; 
 his sorrows and pains are no longer torture, 
 but discipline, and they point onwards to a 
 
 36 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 day and to a state of being when there shall 
 be no more need of them. Whereas un- 
 belief — how does it bear upon life ? Why 
 should a man who denies God go on toiling 
 and moiling here ? If a man is living to no 
 purpose, why should he go on living at all? 
 Why has he not the courage to make plain 
 to himself what thorough unbelief means? 
 It means that he is living, as Emerson put 
 it, — simply to wear out his boots. No ! 
 unbelief should always be accompanied by 
 inaction, and should welcome and indeed 
 hasten towards death. If a man thoroughly 
 denies that there is any purpose, or use, or 
 final meaning in this human scene, if he 
 sincerely holds that there is no reason for 
 his doing anything, then, says Blougram 
 with a slash, " to be consistent he should 
 keep in bed." 
 
 A man's belief is the thing the man is 
 living by. Beneath every life, there is con- 
 sciously or unconsciously, a personal belief. 
 u And now, if we are agreed that life needs 
 
 37 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 belief, we must hold to that as a fixed 
 dogma in all weathers. We must apply it 
 to the minutest as well as to the vastest 
 issues. We must not only believe when 
 we are inclined to ; we must determine to 
 believe. We must rebuke ourselves as often 
 as we find ourselves cynical or unbelieving. 
 We must say, this is my infirmity, my weak- 
 ness, the result of moral indolence, anything ; 
 but it is not the truth. It may be that 
 there is a mist in my eyes, or that there 
 are clouds overhead ; but it can never be 
 that there is no eternal blue and eternal 
 sun. Once have I felt the awful need of 
 God, and in that moment I seemed to find 
 Him. I must believe forever that He is. 
 
 Further, if we must believe at all, we 
 must believe the best. If there is a purpose 
 running through all things, it can only be 
 the holiest purpose. If God is, He must 
 be good beyond all our measures of good- 
 ness. If man is indeed going home, then 
 eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither 
 
 38 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 hath it entered the mind of man, the glorious 
 things that wait to welcome him." 
 
 If I am right in what I read between the 
 lines, Blougram by this time had made a 
 real impression on behalf of belief in the 
 mind of the sceptic. Gigadibs seems to 
 have said, "Yes, I see now that belief is 
 necessary if a man is ever to do his part 
 in life. But why is faith not easier ? Why 
 cannot we see the signs of God more un- 
 mistakably ? If one could only see some 
 amazing and undeniable proof, how much 
 more easy faith would be ? " " Not so ! " 
 says Blougram, " in that case it would not 
 be faith ; it would be sight. Besides, you 
 know not what you ask. As surely as a 
 man's body would shrivel up in agony if his 
 eyes were without lids and his brain were 
 without a pan and the vertical sun were 
 beating upon him, so surely would the 
 mind faint and lose its own identity if 
 suddenly a man were brought face to face 
 with God. 'That were the seeing God, 
 
 39 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 no flesh shall dare.' You think you would 
 like to have lived in the Middle Ages, when 
 everybody believed— when a traveller coming 
 home from the East would tell you how 
 he had seen the ark lying on the shoulder 
 of Mt. Ararat, though he did not go to 
 the top of the mountain as it was getting 
 dark and there were robbers about. You 
 think faith would have been easier then. 
 Once more, not so; at least not so, the 
 faith I mean. For faith with me is not the 
 easy acceptance of hearsays. Faith is the 
 vivid control by God of my whole life, body, 
 soul and spirit, and such a state is hard to 
 attain and to keep alike in every age. 
 
 " ' Friend, such view 
 Is but man's wonderful and wide mistake. 
 Man lumps his kind i' the wars : God singles 
 
 thence 
 Unit by unit. Thou and God exist — 
 So think — for certain : think the mass — mankind — 
 Disparts, disperses, leaves thyself alone ! 
 Ask thy lone soul what laws are plain to thee, 
 Thee and no other — stand or fall by them ! 
 
 40 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 That is the part for thee : regard all else 
 For what it may be — Time's illusion. . . .'" 
 
 (Ferishtah, A Camel Driver.) 
 
 <: ' What think ye of Christ, friend, when all's 
 done and said ? 
 Like you this Christianity or not ? 
 It may be false, but would you have it true ? 
 Has it your vote to be so if it can ? 
 
 Once own the use of faith, I'll find your faith : 
 We're back on Christian ground.' " 
 
 (B/ougram.) 
 
 Such, in very bare outline, and stripped 
 of innumerable gems of truth that thrust 
 and shine and burn, is Bishop Blougram's 
 Apology, his statement of " the Case for 
 Belief." We read that the sceptic, to whom 
 he addressed all this and more, was, if not 
 convinced, at least made sober ; that he 
 wrote no more articles against faith ; that 
 he began to be less sure of his own ground, 
 like a man who is standing on thin ice. 
 He went abroad, where, Browning hopes, 
 
 4i 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 amongst the quiet and solemn things of 
 nature he may study the last chapter of S. 
 John, and learn how even one who, like 
 Peter, had blasphemed, may come to himself 
 and live and die for the Lord whom once he 
 denied. 
 
 I do not know whether I have helped any 
 of you in anything I have written. I wanted 
 to leave certain things on your minds. I 
 wanted, for one thing, to show that the 
 thorough-going denial of God has its own 
 serious difficulties, and that these are more 
 obstinate than the difficulties of believing. 
 I wanted also to help anyone who had taken 
 up a definite position of denial (to help him) 
 to carry his unbelief to some of its con- 
 clusions ; in short, to point out that if two 
 and two are to count five, four and four 
 must be allowed to count ten ; which is more 
 serious. 
 
 But I have been wishing in all that I have 
 said to remove an impression which seems to 
 42 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 be common. There are many who think 
 that belief is an easy thing to attain to, and 
 to hold. I think, on the contrary, that un- 
 belief is the easy thing, the thing that 
 requires no thought at all, or only surface 
 thought. S. Paul has a deep saying to 
 this efFect. " No man," he affirms, " can say 
 that Jesus is the Lord except by the Holy 
 Ghost." S. Paul's Master said, "The pure 
 in heart shall see God." These two sayings 
 express one and the same thought. It is 
 this ; the vision of God falls only upon those 
 who believe in the soul, only upon those who 
 treat life seriously, and who obey at every 
 step the highest that they know. 
 
 If an artist fifty years ago had wished to 
 paint a figure which expressed the ideas 
 underlying the word "belief," he would have 
 drawn the figure of a man, armed most likely 
 to the teeth, his enemies struggling about 
 his feet, and in the distance, but not too far 
 ahead, the sure gates of the Heavenly City. 
 
 But how does an artist of our day, who 
 
 43 
 
The Case for Belief 
 
 has heard the voices of our time, symbolise 
 the great ideas which we name when we say 
 "I believe in God." 
 
 Take Watts' fine picture, called "Hope." 
 It is the figure of a wo/mm, sitting on the 
 circle of the earth. She is blindfolded. She 
 holds a stringed instrument to her ear. She 
 has struck one chord and it has broken at 
 her touch ; she has struck another, and it 
 too has given way. And now there is but 
 one string remaining. From it must the 
 music come — else there is no music in the 
 world. But she does not shrink before 
 the awful possibility. She prepares to 
 strike once more, never doubting that the 
 last string will be true, and from it will 
 come forth the clear, full note. That is 
 faith: " to be very sure of God." 
 
 44 
 
The Soul's Leap to God 
 
 D 
 
n 
 
 The Soul's Leap to God 
 
 I read in the newspaper the other day of a 
 wonderful invention to be used in war. It 
 was a bomb, with such materials inside the 
 shell, and so contrived as to explode at the 
 touch of a ray of light ! The bomb might 
 be placed anywhere and do no harm ; but let 
 a ray of light fall upon it in particular, and 
 on the instant, at the summons of the light, 
 the thing would awake and burst. Well, 
 that is a very exact summary of Robert 
 Browning's teaching on the conversion of the 
 soul, or the soul's discovery of God. His 
 books teem with lines which tell of the 
 tremendous forces that lie coiled up within 
 the soul, ready to burst out and tear open a 
 way of escape for that divine thing which, 
 according to Browning, is the last analysis of 
 
 47 
 
The Soul's Leap to God 
 
 a man. He loves to watch these explosions ; 
 to show you a light coming towards a man 
 until it shines upon his face. Suddenly there 
 is blaze and crash and dust and smoke ; but 
 when these have passed, you see the man 
 sitting at the feet of God, " Clothed and in 
 his right mind," while Browning chants a 
 psalm. Browning makes these bombs of 
 every degree of intensity. He is always 
 indeed practising with this principle of his, 
 that light can burst every bondage of the 
 soul. He loads one man's soul with some 
 small secret, some light sin, but still a secret 
 and a sin ; something that gnaws within him 
 and brings clouds into his sky. Then he 
 will turn a gentle light upon that man's face, 
 which shakes the man but sets him free. 
 Again, he will put more of the explosive 
 material into a soul, deeper and more 
 obstinate sinning, and within a harder shell. 
 Once more, he will turn the ray of light, the 
 mild eye of God, upon the man, and then 
 you have a crash and a cry ; but this man 
 
 4 8 
 
The Soul's Leap to God 
 
 too comes out of the fire free and clean. At 
 last he will construct a hideous soul as a final 
 test for his theory and faith. He will load 
 this soul to the neck with the stuff of hell ; 
 he will bind it round and round with bands 
 of steel. As you look at the impenetrable 
 case in which this foulness is sealed, with no 
 chink or weakness in its brazenness, you 
 wonder whether the quiet light will ever 
 reach and stir that blackness into flame. 
 The Great Chemist — the poet himself — 
 seems to doubt. But once more he turns a 
 light upon the black ball, until it glows. 
 For one moment there is silence. And for 
 another! The light seems to call in vain. 
 But it still beats upon the encased iniquity, 
 growing whiter with impatience, until the iron 
 wrappings grow hot and the mass bursts like 
 all the others, and Guido, the infernal, rushes 
 out of life with a cry which the good God 
 may hear. 
 
 I regard Browning's teaching on Conver- 
 sion as his supreme message to our time. It 
 
 49 
 
The Soul's Leap to God 
 
 is that teaching, as it seems to me, which ranks 
 him with the prophets. Valuable as is the 
 light which he sheds upon those problems of 
 life and experience which are as old as man, 
 or at least, as old as the days of reflection ; 
 splendid as is the courage with which he 
 girds his loins, and faces the darkness and 
 the doubt ; yet more solitary and dis- 
 tinguished is his teaching on the soul of 
 man, his impassioned confidence that the 
 soul may, in one grand moment, leap sheer 
 out of any depth of shame or subtle bondage, 
 and leap to the breast of God. 
 
 We do not go far wrong if we define a 
 prophet as a man who, in the name of God, 
 boldly contradicts the spirit of his time. A man 
 who knows very well what people are saying, 
 and how they have reached their conclusions, 
 but who himself has a hold of the great fact 
 of God, which, for him, makes all things 
 different — that is, often, how we become 
 aware that there is a prophet in our midst. 
 Well ; in these days of ours, we have become 
 
 5° 
 
The Soul's Leap to God 
 
 conscious of certain words which, unless we 
 take care to keep them in subjection, will 
 shut out God and hope. There is the word 
 " heredity," for we always had the thing 
 itself. We have learned now that we all 
 begin life with a bias, that we are not free, 
 but bound. We are the children of our 
 parents ; we inherit their form and features, 
 their voice and manner. Aye, but more 
 than that, we inherit their history and, in a 
 very real sense, we in our life merely continue 
 theirs. There is no reason to suppose that 
 the likeness is confined to externals merely. 
 If thought, and feeling and desire, and the 
 will itself are bound up inextricably with our 
 physical frame, then — so materialistic science 
 must go on to affirm — even in the region of 
 our most personal life, we must be content 
 to dwell under the shadow and bondage of 
 the past, under the tyranny and threatening 
 of old deeds and passions and weaknesses 
 which were never properly our own. And 
 further, we have become vividly aware in 
 
 5 1 
 
The Soul's Leap to God 
 
 these days of the law that " whatsoever a man 
 soweth, that shall he also reap," we see now 
 very clearly that this is a law-abiding world, 
 and that consequences are inevitable. That 
 having once admitted a sin into our life, 
 thereafter " the worm dieth not, and the fire 
 is not quenched." That therefore there is 
 nothing left for us except to " dree our 
 weird," to fulfil our destiny, which in fact is 
 our doom. And so on and on ! Now, it is 
 the distinction of Robert Browning that he 
 breaks in upon this gloomy teaching and 
 cries out a thousand times, that it is false 
 and worse — a blasphemy. It is quite true, 
 but it is not the whole truth — for it omits 
 God. It is true that the moral life is con- 
 tinuous and inevitable, and that as a man 
 has begun, so he must go on. But it is also 
 true — and this overcomes the other, as a tide 
 will overcome the wind and compel the waters 
 its way, (it is also true), that there is a living 
 God who is ever pressing in upon us with 
 His hidden resources to interrupt and turn 
 
 52 
 
The Souls Leap to God 
 
 the fatal drift. It was Robert Browning's 
 great opportunity and genius to declare this 
 Gospel, which is just the Gospel, to our 
 time ; to tell out by word and parable, that, 
 in spite of the increment of generations 
 bearing down upon one's soul, in spite 
 of inherited weakness and liabilities, in 
 spite of the burdens which the soul may 
 have taken upon itself, and the entangle- 
 ments in the midst of which it may 
 now be writhing — it was his to declare 
 that it is possible for the soul to meet 
 the light, to see, as it were, the face of 
 God, and then would the hoariest mountains 
 be removed and cast into the depths of 
 the sea. 
 
 " Oh, we're sunk enough here God knows ! 
 But not quite so sunk that moments 
 Sure tho' seldom are denied us, 
 When the spirit's true endowments 
 Stand out plainly from its false ones, 
 And apprise it, if pursuing 
 Or the right way, or the wrong way 
 To its triumph or undoing. 
 
 53 
 
The Soul's Leap to God 
 
 There are flashes struck from midnights, 
 There are fire-flames noon-days kindle, 
 Whereby piled-up honours perish, 
 Whereby swollen ambitions dwindle. 
 While just this or that poor impulse, 
 Which for once had play unstifled, 
 Seems the whole work of a life-time, 
 That away the rest have trifled." 
 
 There, in those lines from " Cristina," you 
 have one expression among a thousand of 
 Browning's exultant belief in what the 
 Church calls Conversion. In those lines, at 
 the same time, you have the manner in 
 which, according to the poet, the great 
 change invariably happens. Suddenly a light 
 falls upon a man, some message from the 
 pure world of spirit strays into his soul, and 
 in that moment the world shakes beneath 
 him. He sees himself, his sin, his shame, 
 his awful peril in one amazing flash, and by 
 the compulsion of a power which he cannot 
 resist, he breaks away from it all. The past 
 falls from him so thoroughly that the man 
 can look at it now as if it were some horrid 
 
 54 
 
The SouPs Leap to God 
 
 snake which had twined itself about him, and 
 which now lies dead at his feet. The ray of 
 light has burst the fetters of brass, and 
 scattered the iron in pieces. The man 
 stands breathless as if from a struggle, but 
 stands for the moment free and clean, a 
 soul new-born and made alive unto God. 
 Browning never wearies telling us of the 
 power of splendid moments to lift a man 
 sheer out of his sin or weakness or unbelief. 
 
 " I crossed a moor with a name of its own, 
 And a certain use in the world no doubt ; 
 Yet a hand's-breadth of it shines alone 
 'Mid the blank miles round about ; 
 
 " For there I picked up on the heather, 
 And there I put inside my breast 
 A moulted feather, an eagle-feather! 
 Well, I forget the rest." 
 
 A moulted, eagle feather! Something, i.e. 
 falls out of the blue sky at a man's feet, as 
 he goes on through life. Well, let him put 
 it inside his breast. For moments like these 
 decide our destiny. These, the 
 
 55 
 
The Soul's Leap to God 
 
 " Shifting fancies and celestial lights 
 With all the grand orchestral silences 
 To keep the pauses of the rhythmic sounds," 
 
 — these are the only moments worth treasur- 
 ing. They make us forget all that is best 
 forgotten. They lift us far above the 
 common ways, and {give us glimpses of a 
 vast, fair world which ever abides, though 
 for long days we often see it not.^ 
 
 "In man's self arise, 
 August anticipations, symbols, types, 
 Of a dim splendour, ever on before, 
 In that eternal circle run by life." 
 
 Those moments of illumination, when a light 
 from another place, like the finger of God, 
 touches the soul, may spring from every 
 kind of circumstance. They are possible at 
 all, indeed, because there is an ultimate 
 sympathy between God and every man. But 
 any kind of incident, if it only happen at the 
 right moment, may become the medium of a 
 whisper from God which stirs and unmakes 
 
 56 
 
The Soul's Leap to God 
 
 and remakes the soul. " The wind bloweth 
 where it listeth," said Jesus, "and thou 
 hearest the sound thereof; but canst not 
 tell whence it cometh, or whither it goeth, 
 so is every one that is born of the Spirit." 
 It may be the discovery that you love some- 
 one, or that someone loves you — it may be 
 this that lifts you out of yourself and intro- 
 duces you in the moment, and for ever to the 
 spiritual life. It may be the passing of a 
 sweet, sad face. It may be a white flower. 
 It may be a chord of music or an old song 
 heard by you after long sore years. It may 
 be that someone has forgiven you a cruel 
 wrong. Or it may come to you — the quiet 
 ray of light, the glance of God's calm eye — 
 it may come in the pause of sickness, or in 
 the keen solitude before death. Anything 
 may serve to let in the holy, purging fire of 
 God and truth, and thus make all things 
 new. 
 
 " I was a friend in darkness chained for ever 
 Within some ocean-cave; and ages rolled 
 
 57 
 
The Soul's Leap to God 
 
 Till through the cleft rock, like a moonbeam, 
 
 came 
 A white swan to remain with me : and ages 
 Rolled, yet I tired not of my first free joy 
 In gazing on the peace of its pure wings." 
 
 Even a dream may convey a true message to 
 the soul, and the man may, when he awakes, 
 thank God for the vision, and live by the 
 light of it for ever. 
 
 " One dream came to a pale poet's sleep, 
 And he said, ' I am singled out by God ; 
 No sin must touch me.' " 
 
 But whatever the occasion through which 
 this breath of God finds its way into the 
 soul, the thing itself has always one quality. 
 It is always u a moulted feather, an eagle 
 feather," always something from an unworldly 
 place, something that falls out of the sky, 
 something that comes out of a pure world, 
 which seems to bend over and embrace this 
 world of ours. In fact, it is always the 
 whisper of God Himself. " For God is in all, 
 and through all, and over all/' The human 
 
 58 
 
The Soul's Leap to God 
 
 love, the sweet, sad face, the chord of music, 
 the snatch of the old song, were only, so to 
 speak, the messengers who knocked at the 
 heart of the man ; when the door opened, 
 it was always God Himself who entered. 
 There is a line passage 1 in "Paracelsus," 
 where Browning tries to account for this 
 fact which he saw on every side, that the 
 soul, at the touch of a certain light, can shake 
 itself free and break away from its bondage 
 as an imprisoned eagle might escape and 
 sweep the heavens in sheer defiance. 
 
 " Truth is within ourselves : it takes no rise 
 From outward things, whate'er you may be- 
 lieve ; 
 There is an inmost centre in us all, 
 Where truth abides in fulness ; and around, 
 Wall upon wall the gross flesh hems it in, 
 This perfect, clear perception — which is truth, 
 A baffling and perverting carnal mesh 
 Binds it, and makes all error : and to Know 
 Rather consists in opening out a way 
 Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape. 
 
 1 Vol. ii., p. 34. 
 
 59 
 
^The Soul's Leap to God 
 
 Hence may not truth be lodged alike in all 
 The lowest as the highest ? Some slight film 
 The interposing bar which binds a soul 
 And makes the idiot ; just as makes the sage 
 Some film removed, the happy outlet whence 
 Truth issues proudly ? 
 Oh, not alone when life flows still do truth 
 And power emerge, but also when strange 
 
 chance 
 Ruffles its current; in unused conjuncture 
 When sickness breaks the body — hunger, watch- 
 ing, 
 Excess or languor, oftenest death's approach, 
 Peril, deep joy, or woe. 
 Therefore set free the soul alike in all." 
 
 The substance of such teaching is just this : 
 man is made in the image of God, and is 
 made for God. Any other kind of life does 
 violence to a man, and is unnatural to him. 
 If a man wanders from his way, if he forgets 
 what he is, then it is as if he was compressing 
 the divine spirit within him. That is why 
 sin brings pain, and why the ways of trans- 
 gressors are hard. It is because the spirit 
 of God is resisting the pressure, the true 
 60 
 
The Soul's Leap to God 
 
 man is struggling to dethrone the false man. 
 When through some chink or momentary 
 pause, the spirit within sees the face of God, 
 when the hand of God reaches and grasps 
 the hand of the man within, then there comes 
 such a reinforcement to the soul that it can 
 throw off the incubus of years and the misery 
 of countless deeds, and can stand erect above 
 all the ruins. " When he came to himself, 
 he said I will arise and go to my Father. 
 And he arose and came to his Father." Man 
 is for ever the prodigal son, with his history 
 and his hope. 
 
 And now, let me give you some illustra- 
 tions of Browning's teaching on Conversion, 
 which up to this point I have been trying to 
 isolate and to define. The locus classicus for 
 this side of his message is, as students of 
 Browning are aware, the drama entitled 
 " Pippa Passes " — a work which for delicacy 
 and charm, and, at the same time for strength 
 and insight, Browning surely never surpassed. 
 There you have the story of how a little 
 e 61 
 
The SouPs Leap to God 
 
 orphan girl, Pippa, spent her one holiday. 
 She set out in the early morning of the New 
 Year's Day, with no aim except to walk in 
 the sunshine and sing out the joy she felt. 
 But all the while, she was to be God's own 
 sunshine that day, looking in upon certain 
 lives, interrupting them, rebuking them, in- 
 spiring them, but bringing them one and all 
 face to face with God. 
 
 First she passed the unholy house of 
 Ottima and her lover Sebald. Already 
 Sebald's conscience had been aroused, as he 
 saw the sun rising grandly that morning over 
 the fresh good world. But his temptation was 
 too near him. The good spirit which for a 
 moment had been stirred, was just about to 
 fall into a deeper sleep, and Sebald to fling 
 himself into the abyss of sin, when Pippa 
 passed, singing, singing about God. 
 
 " The year's at the spring, and day's at the morn ; 
 Morning's at seven 5 the hillside's dew-pearled ; 
 The lark's on the wing, the snail's on the thorn ; 
 God's in His heaven ; all's right with the world." 
 
 62 
 
"The Soul's Leap to God 
 
 And Pippa passed. Aye : but not before 
 a shaft of light had pierced as with an arrow 
 the inmost soul of Sebald. " God's in His 
 heaven ! " he muttered, like one awaken- 
 ing from a horrid dream. " God's in His 
 heaven ! Do you hear that, Ottima ? " And 
 in the moment the world of sin appeared 
 in all its ghastliness. Suddenly, sin lost 
 all its glamour for him, and in that pure 
 moment of recoil, he killed himself. But 
 before he died a wonderful peace seemed 
 to be coming towards him. He thanked. 
 God that he had been saved so as by fire. 
 
 " That little peasant's voice 
 Has righted all again ; though I be lost, 
 I know which is the better, never fear, 
 Of vice or virtue, purity or lust, 
 Nature or trick ! I see what I have done, 
 Entirely now. Oh, I am proud to feel, 
 Such torments — let the world take credit 
 
 thence — 
 I, having done my deed, pay now its price, 
 . . . God's in His heaven ! " 
 
 His last words were that he felt all the sin 
 
 63 
 
The SouPs Leap to God 
 
 and blackness of his life hurrying down, 
 like waters, into some ghastly pit, leaving 
 him clean and calm. 
 
 I will not stay to tell you now of the 
 other ministries which little Pippa — God's 
 ray of light — rendered on that New Year's 
 Day. How she passed by Jules, the artist's 
 window, when his soul was in another kind 
 of toil, when he was nearly giving way to the 
 spirit of the world ; and how her song came 
 to his rescue and was for him the voice ot 
 God bidding him " to his own self be true." 
 And then, how she passed by the old tower 
 where Luigi the patriot had almost consented 
 to give up the enterprise which was to set 
 Italy free. But Pippa's song made him 
 dash to the earth the cup that would have 
 sent his soul to sleep, and he hurried down 
 the hill to his high task. "Tis God's 
 voice calls: how could I stay? Farewell!" 
 And last, and late at night, how Pippa 
 passed beneath the bishop's window just as 
 the bishop was being lured into a diabolical 
 
 64 
 
The Soul's Leap to God 
 
 plot. But the bishop heard the innocent song, 
 and in a moment shrank shuddering from the 
 abyss where last moment he stood trifling with 
 his soul. "Gag this villain who tempts me. 
 Remove him ! O Lord, have mercy upon me! " 
 Thus in one day, the little child, Pippa, 
 became in God's hand, a ray of light which 
 burst the bondage of four souls at least. 
 
 Take another story, in which you find 
 the same account of the burdened soul 
 when a stream of light pours into it. Take 
 the story in the poem " Ned Bratts." On 
 a hot midsummer's day, their lordships were 
 conducting the Special Assizes in Bedford 
 Courthouse. Business was proceeding, v/hen 
 old Ned Bratts and his wife, hand-in-hand, 
 tumbled up the passage until they reached 
 the platform. Then they turned round 
 and faced the assembled people. They 
 pleaded with the judges — in God's name — 
 to let them speak out. And this was what 
 they said. They had just come from Bed- 
 ford Jail, where they had met John Bunyan. 
 
 65 
 
The Soufs JLeap to God 
 
 They had been such sinners all their lives 
 that their souls were black and hot. But 
 John Bunyan had spoken to them of God. 
 He had taken down "the blessed book" 
 and had read out of it about God, and 
 Christ, and heaven ; about Love and Pity 
 and Forgiveness ; about another world than 
 this, and another way of looking at things 
 from what is common. And God's eye had 
 settled upon them — man and wife. And 
 now they felt that they must empty their 
 souls of all their sins, and drag out to the 
 light all their hidden iniquities so that God 
 and the daylight might burn them up. In 
 that open court, in the full light of day, 
 they poured out their souls, those two, the 
 one helping the other not to forget even 
 one foul spot. Murders they confessed and 
 all manner of evil, and felt, they said, as 
 they confessed, that they were being eased 
 and were becoming pure. At last they 
 were done ; and now they besought the 
 judges to condemn them quick to death. 
 66 
 
The Soul's Leap to God 
 
 And Ned Bratts and his wife passed swiftly 
 out of life singing and making melody in 
 their hearts unto God. 
 
 But the illustration of how God and all 
 holy things rush in upon the soul, which 
 I love best in Browning, is the story from 
 the "Ring and the Book" which the priest 
 Caponsacchi tells of himself. In that story, 
 you may learn how a passionate and sinful 
 man became suddenly quiet and gentle and 
 vividly aware of God — all through that 
 angel child, Pompilia — our poet's most deli- 
 cate and holy work, " the rose he has 
 gathered for the breast of God." You 
 will read there how a careless and wild- 
 hearted man met the pure gaze of an 
 innocent child who had been cruelly 
 wronged, and how from that moment God 
 possessed him utterly. He tells how — 
 
 " That night and next day did the gaze endure, 
 Burnt to my brain, as sunbeam thro' shut eyes, 
 And not once changed the beautiful, sad, strange 
 
 6 7 
 
The Soufs Leap to God 
 
 He tells how he wrestled with the new 
 vision of God, and with the new meaning 
 which life had taken on, 
 
 " The fact is (he says) I am troubled in my mind, 
 Beset and pressed hard by some novel thoughts. 
 
 I will live alone, one does so in a crowd, 
 And look into my heart a little." 
 
 He tells how he used to struggle with him- 
 self before he gave himself entirely to the 
 new leading ; 
 
 " One evening I was sitting in a muse, 
 Over the opened ' Summa ' ; darkened round 
 By the mid-March twilight, thinking how my 
 
 life 
 Had shaken under me — broke short indeed, 
 And showed me the gap 'twixt what is, what 
 
 should be, 
 And into what abysm the soul may slip," 
 
 — when one day she of the angel-face spoke 
 to him and laid a duty on his soul. Then 
 Caponsacchi awoke : the Caponsacchi God 
 was striving to bring forth. He awoke and 
 burst his bands asunder, as all this poet's 
 68 
 
T'/je Soul's Leap to God 
 
 heroes do, as we all do, when the ray of 
 light from God really reaches to our soul. 
 In page after page of the most stirring 
 emotion, emotion which infects you as you 
 read, and makes you long for some great 
 sacrifice which will put you also to the test, 
 and burn up all the dross and lurking mean- 
 ness of your life ; in page after page of 
 burning words he tells his judges — for he is 
 telling his story in a court of law — of the 
 earthquake and avalanche and the fires which 
 unmade and remade his soul : — 
 
 "Pompilia spoke and I at once received, 
 Accepted my own fact, my miracle, 
 Self-authorised and self-explained— she chose 
 To summon me and dignify her choice. 
 Afterward . . ." 
 
 Listen to the description which follows of 
 a sinful man's past life, as it appears to him 
 after God has lifted him out of it. 
 
 " Afterward — Oh ! I gave a passing glance 
 To a certain ugly cloud-shape, gobiin-shred 
 Of hell-smoke hurrying past the splendid moon, 
 
 6 9 
 
The Soul's Leap to God 
 
 Out now to tolerate no darkness more ; 
 
 And saw right thro' the thing that tried to pass 
 
 For truth and solid, not an empty lie. 
 
 " By the invasion I lay passive to 
 In rushed new things, the old were swept away ; 
 Alike abolished — the imprisonment 
 Of the outside air, the inside weight o' the world 
 That pulled me down. Death meant, to spurn 
 
 the ground, 
 Soar to the sky — die well and you do that. 
 The very immolation made the bliss ; 
 Death was the heart of life, and all the harm 
 My folly had crouched to avoid, now proved a 
 
 veil, 
 Hiding all gain my wisdom strove to grasp. 
 
 " Into another state, under new rule 
 I knew myself was passing swift and sure ; 
 "Whereof the initiatory pang approached, 
 Felicitous annoy, as bitter-sweet 
 As when the virgin-band, the victors chaste 
 Feel at the end the earthly garments drop, 
 And rise with something of a rosy shame 
 Into immortal nakedness : so I 
 Lay, and let come the proper throe would thrill 
 Into the ecstasy and outthrob pain." 
 
 Caponsacchi stops here in the rush of his 
 70 
 
The SouFs Leap to God 
 
 words as if to excuse himself for his vehe- 
 mence. You must know, said he, that a 
 man gets drunk with truth, stagnant within 
 him. (Which, by the way, may explain the 
 accusation brought against the disciples after 
 Pentecost, when the long silence and deso- 
 lation that followed upon Calvary were 
 suddenly broken up by yon mighty rushing 
 wind which shook the house.) Caponsacchi's 
 judges knew, as I hope you who read these 
 words know, that he was not under the 
 inspiration of human love in all this vehe- 
 mence. No ! the revelation of Pompilia's 
 holiness was indeed the key which opened 
 the door of Caponsacchi's heart ; but it was 
 God, not Pompilia, who entered. 
 
 " You know (he cries) this is not love, Sirs ! It 
 
 is faith, 
 The feeling that there's God, He reigns and 
 
 rules, 
 Out of this low world." , 
 
 And now, perhaps, you know something 
 7i 
 
T'he Soul's Leap to God 
 
 of what Browning has to say on the subject 
 of Conversion, or how the Fire and Energy 
 of God rush in upon the soul. I must, in 
 any case, pass on to notice some things 
 which follow from this teaching, some prin- 
 ciples which Browning strenuously preaches, 
 and which we shall do well to pay heed to. 
 Conversion, he says, begins with the vision 
 of God. This, as we saw, may come in 
 countless ways. A light falls upon a man, 
 and if it really reaches to his soul, and 
 touches the quick, it will break up the most 
 obstinate crust of sin and free the man of 
 every entanglement. Yes ; but it is always 
 within the power of a man to be disobedient 
 to the heavenly vision. Browning knew this. 
 Perhaps the most solemn words he writes are 
 on this very matter — when he warns us 
 not to trifle with the high impulses which 
 visit us; not to turn away from any private 
 call from God. That to him is the great 
 Tragedy, when the soul will not be faithful 
 to what it sees. He has a drama entitled 
 72 
 
The Soufs Leap to God 
 
 "A Soul's Tragedy," and this is the subject 
 of it all : how the poetry sank into prose in 
 one particular case ; how the light that was 
 in a man became darkness. It is not 
 Browning's fault if men slip away from their 
 own high moments, for he has warned them. 
 In such a poem as u The Statue and the 
 Bust," he appeals to men to be immediate 
 and thorough in obedience to their solitary 
 sense of duty. And again and again, in 
 tingling words, he bids us count all things 
 but loss for the excellency of the knowledge 
 of God. 
 
 " Are there not, Festus, are there not, dear Michal, 
 Two points in the adventure of the diver — 
 One when — a beggar — he prepares to plunge ? 
 One when — a prince — he rises with his pearl ? " 
 
 In such a poem as " The Lost Leader " he 
 pours out his pity and contempt for those 
 who "just for a handful of silver," or "just 
 for a riband to stick in their coat," forsake 
 their high calling, and " sink to the rear 
 and the slaves." It is like S. Paul's short, 
 
 73 
 
The Soufs Leap to God 
 
 sad saying : a Demas hath forsaken me, hav- 
 ing loved this present world." The Pope, 
 in "The Ring and the Book," says this fills 
 him with despair — when men come down to 
 the sea-shore, and you say, "Come and I 
 will show you where you may find pearls," 
 but they go their own way, muttering 
 "Pearls! We are not wanting pearls; we 
 are dredging for whelks." 
 
 Browning is very well aware, too, what are 
 the considerations which usually hinder men 
 from rising at the blast of the trumpet 
 and going on in strict obedience to God. 
 He knows the snare of the world, the fear 
 of its reproach or laughter, the shrinking 
 on the part of men from clear and decisive 
 acts of individuality. He knows, too, how a 
 man who has once tasted the good gift of 
 God in the form of a call or illumination, a 
 man who has felt the power of the world to 
 come, may fall away. He knows, e.g. how 
 a man may persuade himself that he need 
 not enter into life by the strait gate, but 
 
 74 
 
"The Soul's Leap to God 
 
 may get to the same end by going on as he 
 is. Browning knows all the tricks that a 
 man will play upon himself rather than strike 
 his tent and go out like Abraham, not 
 knowing whither, but only that God has 
 bidden him. You must read for yourselves 
 that delightful bantering with which Father 
 Ogniben, in "A Soul's Tragedy," pours 
 contempt upon Chiappino, who had become 
 too comfortable to remain the reformer he 
 once was. 
 
 Chiappino, since he had got on in the 
 world (to use the phrase), had changed his 
 views wofully, and, in spite of himself, was 
 somewhat uneasy. " Naturally," says he, 
 trying to reassure himself, " time wears off 
 asperities. We come to see points of sym- 
 pathy between ourselves and those whom 
 we have been accustomed to look upon as 
 enemies." " Aye," says Ogniben, "had the 
 young David but sat first to dine on his 
 cheeses with the Philistine, he had soon 
 discovered abundance of such common sym- 
 
 75 
 
The Soul's Leap to God 
 
 pathies. He of Gath, it is recorded, was 
 born of a father and mother, had brothers 
 and sisters like another man — they, no more 
 than the sons of Jesse, were used to eat 
 each other. But for the sake of one broad 
 antipathy that had existed from the be- 
 ginning, David slung the stone, cut off the 
 giant's head, made a spoil of it, and after, 
 ate his cheeses alone, with the better appe- 
 tite, for all I can learn." 
 
 On the whole, however, Browning has 
 more pity than anger for those who let pass 
 the fine moments in which God is calling 
 them, and everything is possible. He is full 
 of sorrow for those bright mornings which 
 sink into commonplace and grey-skied after- 
 noons. Such is the spirit of the poem (to 
 name but one) called "A Toccata of 
 Galuppi's." We feel the poet's great 
 sorrow, mixed with the feeling that it was 
 their fate, that while Galuppi should be 
 playing his fine music, which seemed to move 
 amongst the great mysteries and responsi- 
 7 6 
 
The SotiFs Leap to God 
 
 bilities, the gay company were fooling away 
 their souls, dancing on the edge of the 
 abyss. 
 
 Browning is forced to face the question 
 as to what becomes of those who, in the 
 language of " Hebrews," u were once en- 
 lightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift, 
 and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, 
 and have tasted the good word of God, and 
 have felt the powers of the world to come," 
 and who have meanwhile fallen away. Here 
 and there, in the long course of his teach- 
 ing, Browning faces this question with the 
 gravity and sense of the issues which it 
 deserves. His general answer is that " there 
 shall never be one lost good." Those visions, 
 and lights, those tastings of the Holy Ghost, 
 which have visited a life, cannot surely alto- 
 gether die. They may be stirred into life 
 and power again. Sometimes it is only when 
 a man lies in a fever or has gone mad, and 
 only from his ravings, that you learn what a 
 man he was. The inmost deposit of his 
 f 77 
 
The Soul's Leap to God 
 
 mind and heart becomes exposed. So life 
 may reduce a man to an extremity in which 
 the world may lose its hold upon him, and the 
 pure vision which once blessed him for a day 
 may resume its sway for ever. 
 
 Towards the close of the Pope's musings 
 in "The Ring and the Book," we find 
 Browning's most deliberate judgment upon 
 this solemn matter. Guido, surely the most 
 abandoned character ever drawn, is just about 
 to be condemned, and the Pope, who is to 
 pass sentence upon him, falls into some specu- 
 lations as to what is likely to become of 
 Guido hereafter. He knows that in this 
 region nothing is absolutely certain, but he 
 has a hope. It is this. Once upon a time, 
 he says, he was in Naples. It was the 
 darkest of nights. He seemed to be stand- 
 ing in the midst of black and empty space. 
 Suddenly a flash of lightning lit up the 
 sky, and the city stood out plainly — the 
 cathedra], and "white, like a shroud," the 
 sea. Next moment all was black again. In 
 
 78 
 
The Soufs Leap to God 
 
 the same way (he closes) it is possible, it is 
 his faint hope, that sudden death may flash 
 the truth for one instant into Guido's soul, 
 and Guido may see God for one moment and 
 be saved. 
 
 " Else I avert my face, nor follow him 
 Into that sad, obscure, sequestered state 
 Where God unmakes but to remake the soul, 
 He else made first in vain ; which must not 
 be." 
 
 In the well-known poem " Saul," Browning 
 tells in his own way the story from i Samuel. 
 How David played the harp before Saul who 
 was mad — played and played until u Saul 
 was refreshed, and was well, and the evil 
 spirit departed from him." He tells how 
 David's music kept calling to Saul the man, 
 away beneath and behind Saul, the mistake 
 and the failure. How David sang and 
 played of other days, of better days, of 
 the days when there was no goodlier man in 
 Israel than Saul, for, from his shoulders and 
 
 79 
 
The Soul's Leap to God 
 
 upwards he was higher than any man in 
 Israel. And how, under all the playing, 
 God was speaking to the soul of Saul, 
 " alluring him into a quiet place, and speak- 
 ing comfortably to him, and giving him the 
 valley of Achor, for a door of hope, that he 
 might rejoice there as in the days of his 
 youth." Just so, the poet goes on to say, 
 God is ever playing to the spirit of man 
 through all the ages, ever speaking to his 
 child beneath all the wildness and the mad- 
 ness and disgrace which have gathered about 
 him in his long absence from Home. God 
 is ever speaking, singing, playing, satisfying, 
 troubling, piercing, healing his soul, if by 
 any means the evil spirit may at length 
 depart. And here lies Browning's hope for 
 the world, right on until the end of the 
 days. Jesus Christ, God's one harmonious 
 Son, is now in this world of ours for ever. 
 He is one of the great facts of History. He 
 can never, never be unseated now. And all 
 through the ages, as it hath been it shall be 
 80 
 
The Soul's Leap to God 
 
 — wearied men and women, all who are 
 perplexed, beaten, overborne by the stress 
 of evil fortune, or by the tumult and bitter- 
 ness of their own hearts, or by the mystery 
 and insecurity of our present state of being, 
 all these, i.e. all living souls, will one by one 
 in some day or hour of their anguish or 
 solitude, remember Jesus and think of Him, 
 and as they think, that pure ray of light, 
 that mild eye of God, will fall steadily upon 
 them, and will overturn and overturn until 
 He comes, whose right it is to occupy the 
 whole mind of man. 
 
 Note : — " I don't see any way out of the up-and- 
 down existence which you describe. I feel more and 
 more the horrible contrast between rare moments 
 and my average level of achievement. I know 
 that it is only a man's self that realises this ; to 
 the outsider you look much of a piece. I do 
 believe that the moments are the things that give 
 one what is best, and that they don't really pass, 
 however much one may fall away from them. In 
 the greater part of life it seems as if one must 
 consent ; but the naked touch of reality, when it 
 
 81 
 
^The Soul's Leap to God 
 
 does come, is like flame through the veins, and 
 each time it comes it leaves the blood running a 
 little quicker." — From Nettleship's " Philosophical 
 Lectures and Remains." 
 
 82 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
Ill 
 
 "The Mystery of Evil" 
 
 There is one pregnant line of Browning's — 
 it is in " Old Pictures in Florence " — which, 
 when we think steadily over it, seems to 
 gather into itself all that he ever had to 
 say concerning the problems which we find 
 in human existence the moment we begin to 
 reflect. I mean the line — " Tis looking 
 downward that makes one dizzy." It is, he 
 would say, when we keep our eyes upon the 
 bare facts of life without the light and 
 reinforcement of faith; it is when we for- 
 get the high end towards which all things 
 may be moving, towards which therefore 
 they must be moving — since, according to 
 Browning, what may be will be, and the best 
 is just that which shall happen; it is when 
 we forget all this, when we turn our eyes 
 away from the sky and the sun, when we 
 
 85 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
 suspect (instead of trusting) the song and the 
 dream, that the circumstances of the human 
 lot seem harsh and dreary and desperate. 
 But, what if God be! If all life is a journey 
 and a process! If life, with all its " shade 
 and shine," means something grand and sure ! 
 If there remaineth a Rest to the people of 
 God, a crown to each strenuous soul, 
 
 " Then welcome each rebuff 
 
 That turns earth's smoothness rough, 
 Each sting that bids nor sit, nor stand, but go ! 
 Be our joys three-parts pain ! 
 Strive and hold cheap the strain ! 
 Learn, nor account the pang ; dare, never grudge 
 the throe." 
 
 'Tis looking downward only that makes one 
 dizzy. Only to those who omit God and 
 refuse the instinct of hope, can life appear 
 ghastly or contemptuous of man. But, 
 
 " How soon a smile of God can change the world ! 
 How we are made for happiness — how work 
 Grows play, adversity a winning fight." 
 
 In our time, we have become very conscious 
 
 of the dark things that are to be found in 
 
 86 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
 life — "the things hard to understand. " It 
 need not be that we of to-day are more 
 sensitive than were our fathers to the vast 
 amount of sufFering that there is in the 
 world, or more ready to be at pains and 
 inconveniences for its removal. But certainly 
 we speak more easily than they did of such 
 things — of the hardness of life, of the pain, 
 the poverty and the seeming injustice. It is 
 not too much to say that we are more 
 constantly aware of the problem of human 
 existence than of its solution. We find 
 ourselves speaking of "the grimness of the 
 general human situation," and we fasten on 
 a phrase like " the pathos of life," and make 
 much of it — it sounds so true and real. 
 Reasons might be given why this mood has 
 overtaken us who belong to this particular 
 time. For one thing, we have just come 
 into an enormous wealth of knowledge. 
 Astronomy, geology, palaeontology — to name 
 but a few of the ways in which we have 
 become conscious of the vast spaces that 
 
 87 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
 surround us — these have awakened man to 
 such a sense of the infinite that he is still 
 somewhat overwhelmed. He has not yet 
 found courage to feel and to say that all this 
 vastness and infinitude are only the fitting 
 circumstances for his vast and infinite spirit. 
 Meanwhile, he feels weak and almost con- 
 temptible in presence of the stupendous 
 world which he himself has discovered. He 
 lies open to gloom. The universe, which, as 
 he will understand when he recovers strength, 
 is really calling on him to rise to his true 
 stature, he thinks, is mocking him for his past 
 presumptuousness. It is arguable, at least, 
 that this mood of misgiving and despondency 
 before the vastness of the universe, has come 
 down from the highest rank of thinkers, 
 through minds less distinguished, until now 
 it is present with us all like a shadow, 
 whenever we think seriously about ourselves. 
 For, when our strength is low, we refuse to 
 be comforted ; we look about for those facts 
 in life which seem to corroborate our fears. 
 88 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
 And then, every mood is absolute so long 
 as it lasts. When we are suffering from 
 such a mood, when we are too conscious of 
 the difficulty and stress of living, when we 
 have an unhealthy fondness for words like 
 " pathos " applied to the ordinary incidents 
 of a life, when we are beginning to carry 
 our heart on our sleeve, and to sigh over 
 the universe in public, then we are in great 
 need of a new and stirring word of faith 
 from the soul of some healthy man. God 
 has given to each of us the instinct to live 
 and to cling to life. God has given to 
 each the instinct that somehow he is fit 
 to meet life, fit to bear up and to find 
 a way in spite of all kinds of stress; 
 the instinct that life itself — to breathe and 
 to feel — is, above all question, good. This 
 is the unconscious faith of children. But 
 this instinct or unconscious faith has soon to 
 meet the challenge of the world. These are 
 the days of questioning when some grim fact 
 — the sins of men, or our own sins, or the 
 
 8 9 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
 seeming triumph of evil here, or the heed- 
 lessness of God, or death and the grave — 
 when some such fact assails our native gaiety 
 so that we can never be the same. Then for* 
 the first time, we see tired faces in this 
 world, and life has lost for ever its simplicity. 
 At such a point " the native hue of resolu- 
 tion is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of 
 thought." Our most abiding instinct, viz., 
 the instinct to live and to hope, is threatened. 
 It is then that we need and must have faith. 
 We must find such a way of looking at 
 things as shall restore those energies which 
 doubt has numbed and frozen. We must find 
 some belief which shall transform the world 
 for us, and reinforce the instinct of our 
 childhood — to live with our whole strength. 
 
 Throughout his entire life Robert Browning 
 was facing those questions which human 
 observation and experience put to faith, 
 those questions which have arisen in every 
 age that has been led to reflect. Those 
 facts and circumstances in life which seem 
 90 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
 hard to reconcile with faith in God, we are 
 accustomed to gather into the phrase " the 
 mystery of evil." Wordsworth called it " the 
 burden of unintelligible things." You know 
 what facts and circumstances are meant. 
 For example, " we believe in God as the 
 source and fountain of all things. How 
 excellent is this world ! How very good and 
 fair is the face of nature ! How pleasant it 
 is to walk into the green country and to 
 ' meditate in the fields at the eventide ! ' As 
 we look round, we cannot but be persuaded 
 that God is most good, and loves His 
 creatures ; yet amid all the splendour we see 
 around us, the question comes to us, ' But 
 why is there pain in the world ? ' We see 
 that the brutes prey on each other, inflicting 
 violent and unnatural deaths. And then 
 think of the pain and misery which show 
 themselves in the history of man — the 
 miserable diseases and casualties of human 
 life, and our sorrows of mind. Then the 
 evils we inflict on each other, our sins and 
 
 9i 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
 their awful consequences. Now, why does 
 God permit such evil in His own world? 
 This is the difficulty which we feel whenever 
 we reflect upon life, and it is a difficulty 
 which we are quite unable to solve. We see 
 light here and there upon the mystery, but 
 that only by faith, only by resolutely and 
 repeatedly trusting it all, and trusting our- 
 selves to God. We open the Bible ; the 
 great mystery is acknowledged there, but 
 after the Scriptures have said all they have 
 to say, it is left mysterious. It confesses 
 that ' now we see through a glass, darkly,' 
 that 'now we see not all things put under 
 God.'" 1 Now does not all this seem to 
 contradict the name of God as good and as 
 supreme? That is the problem which, 
 through all his life, Browning faced for his 
 own soul's sake, and for all our sakes. That 
 was the life-long battle which he waged, to 
 secure and retain for man the right to be- 
 lieve and to hope still and for ever in God. 
 1 J. H. Newman. 
 92 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
 Profoundly conscious as Browning is of 
 the dark cloud of human experience, con- 
 fessing, as he does, again and again that, if 
 he had not faith in God, this life, with all it 
 holds of pain and woe, u with its dread 
 machinery of sin and sorrow," would con- 
 found him; nevertheless he sees very dis- 
 tinctly certain steady lights within the cloud, 
 certain stars that peep through the blackness, 
 and stay. He bids us look at these lights, 
 and believe in those stars against all the 
 blackness. For is it not true that if we can 
 find any meaning in the mystery and problem 
 of our life, then the blackness is past, we 
 lose from that moment the feeling that there 
 is no intelligence in the world, no sense, no 
 purpose ? When we see the meaning or any 
 meaning we can at least bid our souls be 
 patient. 
 
 In the first place, Browning has no 
 difficulty in showing us that " the evil " in 
 life is just the necessary opposition to " the 
 good." We could not have good as we 
 
 G 93 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
 know it if evil as we know it did not exist. 
 For example : virtue is possible only in a 
 world where there is temptation. 
 
 "Why comes temptation, but for man to meet 
 And master and make crouch beneath his foot, 
 And so be pedestall'd in triumph ? " 
 
 If there were no hardness and pressure in 
 life, there could not be such qualities of the 
 soul as patience and heroism. If there were 
 no sickness, poverty, death, there could be no 
 sympathy or pity or kindness — " For how 
 can man love but what he yearns to help ? " 
 If there were no sin in this world, if there 
 were no sad failures amongst us, then there 
 could be no forgiveness, and the purest tears 
 would never have been shed — the tears of 
 erring children coming home, and the tears 
 of those at home who go out to meet them 
 coming. If life were not a place of much 
 darkness and mystery we had never learned 
 to kneel and to pray; we had never dis- 
 covered our need of God. In short, we do 
 
 94 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
 not see how the soul of man, as we know it, 
 could have emerged at all, or could even now 
 remain alive and eager, were it not that we 
 have been placed in a world which is ever 
 forcing us in upon ourselves, ever provoking 
 the things of the Spirit — joy and grief, 
 patience, faith and prayer. All our peculiar 
 qualities as men, all the signs we have that 
 we are something more than mortal, have 
 appeared within us simply because life is 
 what it is. 
 
 " All to the very end is trial in life ; 
 At this stage is the trial of my soul, 
 Danger to face or danger to refuse." 
 
 This leads to another standpoint from which 
 Browning sees and interprets " the evil " in 
 life. 
 
 Apart from the question, which really it is 
 idle to raise, viz., whether human existence 
 could have been otherwise ordained, e.g. 
 without the possibility of pain or the in- 
 trusion of sin, it is certain that life as we 
 have it is wonderfully contrived for the 
 
 95 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
 stirring up of the soul, and for the per- 
 fecting of human character. " This life is 
 training and a passage." "The moral sense 
 grows but by exercise." In "Rabbi ben 
 Ezra," Browning raises an objection to his 
 own teaching and answers it. A man might 
 say as he reflected upon the vicissitudes of a 
 life, thinking how we are hurled from change 
 to change unceasingly, how we are evidently 
 in the hands of One who lifts us up and 
 casts us down — such an observer of the 
 human lot might say, " who are we ; what is 
 a man that he should have hopes for himself? 
 He seems to be the victim, not the master of 
 his fate. He is the plaything of circum- 
 stances ; he is like clay in the Potter's hand." 
 Just so, says Browning, we are like clay in 
 the Potter's hand. Life, like the Potter's 
 wheel, bruises us, sets out as if to make 
 something of us, then when we have almost 
 reached the form of that particular thing, 
 the wheel rolls over us ; life beats us down 
 and unmakes us. All this seems to urge us 
 96 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
 to personal despair; it seems to mean that 
 we are the playthings of our Creator, mere 
 clay in the Potter's hand. But suppose we 
 take that rank — clay in the Potter's hand. 
 Why, it is just there we base our confidence 
 and build our song. For we cannot believe 
 that the Creator has playthings and least of 
 all that He plays with souls. A Potter is an 
 intelligent being. He does not work with 
 the clay for the mere sake of working. He 
 works, on the one hand, for the sake of the 
 clay, and on the other to show his skill and 
 complete his design. Thus, the great Potter 
 is making something of us. Look not at the 
 beginning but at the end. Think not of the 
 clay which you are, but of the cup which you 
 will be when the Potter is done with you. 
 Once more " 'tis looking downward that 
 makes one dizzy " and desperate. Think of 
 the dignity that may await a cup. Think 
 how one day the table may be spread in 
 heaven, and how the Master of the Feast 
 may lift the cup — you, that is to say, made 
 
 97 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
 perfect by the wheel of life ! Thus you may 
 give Him pleasure ! Wherefore 
 
 " Look not thou down but up 
 To uses of a cup, 
 The festal board, lamps flash and trumpet peal, 
 The new wine's foaming flow, 
 The Master's lips aglow ! 
 Thou heaven's consummate cup what needst thou 
 with earth's wheel? 
 
 " So, take and use Thy work, 
 Amend what flaws may lurk, 
 What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the 
 aim ! 
 
 My times be in Thy hand! 
 Perfect the cup as planned ! 
 Let age approve of youth, and death complete the 
 same ! " (Rabbi ben Ezra.) 
 
 That is a line of thought to which Browning 
 comes back and back. Life is a training, an 
 education of the soul. All the circumstances 
 which beset man in his mortal passage have 
 some high reason which the man himself may 
 
 9 8 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
 even now be aware of, and of which he will 
 one day be aware. 
 
 " Man is not God, but hath God's end to serve, 
 A Master to obey, a course to take, 
 Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become. 
 Grant this ; then man must move from old to 
 
 new, 
 From vain to real, from mistake to fact, 
 From what once seemed good, to what now 
 
 proves best. 
 How could man have progression otherwise ? " 
 
 The very burdensomeness of life, its tear and 
 wear and pressure, is the surest proof to him 
 that life means something vast and good, 
 "Is it for nothing?" he asks, "we grow old 
 and weak, we whom God loves ? " And 
 answers, No ! but because, " when pain ends, 
 gain ends too." 
 
 For Browning, then, the whole of human 
 travail is penetrated with a purpose, and 
 justified by its blessed consequence. Life is 
 the pressure which brings the wine from the 
 grape, the soul from the flesh. Life is the 
 
 99 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
 burden and mystery which discovers to a man 
 his strange forlornness of spirit, but in that 
 same moment discovers to him his kinship 
 with the hidden God. 
 
 " Beyond the tale, I reach into the dark, 
 Feel v/hat I cannot see, and still faith stands. 
 I can believe this dread machinery 
 Of sin and sorrow, would confound me else 
 Devised — all pain at most expenditure 
 Of pain by Who devised pain — to evolve 
 By new machinery in counterpart, 
 The moral qualities of man — how else ? 
 To make him love in turn and be beloved, 
 Creative and self-sacrificing too, 
 And thus eventually God-like. 
 
 Enable man to wring out of all pain 
 All pleasure for a common heritage 
 To all eternity." 
 
 {The Pope, 1 3 72.) 
 
 And so the soul that is sure of God sees 
 through and accepts the whole scheme of 
 pain and trial. Such an one — one, that is to 
 say, who is willing to count all things but 
 loss for the excellency of the knowledge of 
 100 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
 God — will not be borne away from his 
 centre and fund by any assault of the world. 
 The more his faith is tried, the deeper will it 
 hide itself in God. When the soul cannot 
 see clearly, by reason of the darkness in 
 things, it will cherish itself and sing and 
 pray. 
 
 There is an old German tale which might 
 be a parable of the purpose in our life of the 
 unintelligible things. The story is told of a 
 baron who, having grown tired of the gay 
 and idle life of the Court, asked leave of his 
 King to withdraw from it. He built for 
 himself a fort on a rugged rock, beneath 
 which rolled the Rhine. There he dwelt 
 alone. He hung wires from one wing of the 
 fort to the other, making an iEolian harp, on 
 which the winds might play to solace him. 
 But many days and nights had passed, and 
 winds had come and gone, yet never had 
 there been music from that harp. And the 
 baron interpreted the silence as the sign of 
 God's unremoved displeasure. One evening 
 
 IOI 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
 the sky was torn with wild, hurrying clouds, 
 the sun was borne away with a struggle, and 
 as night fell a storm broke out which shook 
 the very earth. The baron walked restlessly 
 through his rooms in loneliness and dis- 
 quiet. At length he went out into the night, 
 but stopped short upon the threshold. He 
 listened and behold the air was full of music. 
 His iEolian harp was singing with joy and 
 passion high above the wildness and the 
 storm. Then the baron knew. Those wires, 
 which were too thick to give out music at the 
 call of common days, had found their voice in 
 a night of stress and storm. It needed the 
 uttermost assault of nature to awake the 
 slumbering song. So may it be with souls 
 beset by life. All things are for our sakes — 
 and we need them all. All things come — 
 difficulty, defeat, disease, pain, old age, death 
 in order that a man may discover the depths 
 and secrets of his own nature, and from those 
 depths cry out. u Strain " is a word which 
 means stress ; but it is likewise a word which 
 
 I02 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
 means song ; and it is only on a strained wire 
 that the music sleeps. Thus 
 
 " In the eye of God 
 Pain may have purpose and be justified." 
 
 At this point we must observe that Brown- 
 ing always treats " the mystery of evil " as a 
 personal problem. That is to say, he refuses 
 to speak for others. He will speak only as 
 he knows. He will only say how the human 
 lot appears to him, and what he feels to be 
 its intention. He will speak only for himself. 
 But it is very evident that in Browning's 
 opinion, if men were thorough and honest 
 with themselves, they would speak as he 
 speaks. They would confess that the experi- 
 ence which each man meets in life fits that 
 man, body and soul ; and that if he would only 
 yield to its warning and appeal, his particular 
 lot would make the best possible man of him. 
 That is all that Browning will claim as certain. 
 He believes more than that. He has his own 
 firm hope concerning the things which lie 
 103 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
 beyond his knowledge. But he always comes 
 back from any venture of imagination, back to 
 the things he knows, because they are within 
 himself. In u Ferishtah' s Fancies," which 
 is the poet's most mature and deliberate read- 
 ing of life — and in the poem entitled " A 
 Bean Stripe," someone asks — 
 
 "Sir, be frank! 
 A good thing or a bad thing, life is which ? 
 Shine and shade, happiness and misery 
 Battle it out thenj which force beats, I ask?" 
 
 To which Ferishtah (who is assuredly 
 Browning himself) makes reply, "I will 
 not answer such a question." No man 
 can answer these ultimate questions for 
 another. The answer to such a question is 
 valid only for him who makes it. A soul's 
 experience is not transferable. Each man is 
 the centre of his own circumstances. The 
 same things are not the same to different 
 men. "For example," says Ferishtah, "it is 
 reported that there are people who live in 
 104 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
 lands far North, where there is snow, and 
 where the rivers congeal in their beds. To 
 me, living in Persia, such a thing seems quite 
 impossible ; and yet people do live in such 
 regions, and find life bearable. It is the same 
 regarding the general mysteriousness and 
 difficulty of human existence. I can speak 
 only as I know. That is sufficient for me. 
 I have not, for example, explored the sun ; 
 enough for me to feel its warmth. Let me 
 thank Him who set the sun in the heavens, 
 and Who made me so that I can feel the 
 warmth and be content. Behind all those 
 conveniences and accommodations which I 
 find in life, I like to feel the kindness of God 
 to me personally. Therefore I praise and 
 worship Him. 
 
 " The sense within me that I owe a debt 
 Assures me — somewhere must be somebody 
 Ready to take his due." 
 
 But perhaps you may say, " I have no right 
 to leap to the conclusion that there is a per- 
 
 *°5 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
 sonal God. Why not worship the sun or 
 honour the laws of nature?" To which 
 Ferishtah replies with a stroke which Brown- 
 ing loved. "My friend," he says, — 
 
 " Suppose thou visit my lord Shalim Shah, 
 Bringing thy tribute as appointed. Here 
 Come I to pay my due. Whereat one slave 
 Obsequious spreads a carpet for thy foot. 
 His fellow offers sweetmeats, while a third 
 Prepares a pipe : what thanks or praise have 
 
 they ? 
 Such as befit prompt service. Gratitude 
 Goes past them to the Shah whose gracious 
 
 nod 
 Set all the sweet civility at work ! " 
 
 Or,- 
 
 "I eat my apple, relish what is ripe. 
 But, thank an apple ! He who made my mouth 
 To masticate, my palate to approve, 
 My maw to further the concoction — Him 
 I thank, but for whose work the orchard's 
 
 wealth 
 Might prove so many gall-nuts — stocks or 
 
 stones, 
 For aught that I should think or know or 
 
 care." 
 
 1 06 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
 In another of Ferishtah's Fancies — the 
 one entitled " Cherries " — the poet makes the 
 same defence of faith, and approaches the 
 problem of existence from the personal stand- 
 point. "Suppose," he says, "a stranger 
 visiting the great palace at Ispahan. He 
 moves through the spacious halls and corri- 
 dors, observes the comfort of the place, and 
 the wonder and the beauty. At last he sees 
 his name, his very name, on the door of a 
 room — inviting him to enter. He looks in 
 and sees a nook fitted exactly for him, soul 
 and body — the very colour of slippers that 
 he likes, lamp, books, and every thing he 
 would have had. What does the stranger 
 do ? What should he do ? Go in, sit down, 
 put on the slippers ? Yes, but that only, or 
 that first ? No ! 
 
 " Who lives there 
 That let me wonder at." 
 
 Just so, the soul which has become aware of 
 
 its private blessings, aware of a touch here 
 
 107 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
 and there of the hand of God, cannot be 
 hindered from calling upon itself to praise 
 the Great Good God who contrived life as it 
 is. The great and supreme gift of life to 
 us who toil and suffer — and the harder our 
 toil is the greater a blessing is the gift — the 
 great and supreme gift of life, I say, is just 
 the thought of God caring for the souls He 
 made. And none can hinder me who have 
 felt the goodness of God, from believing 
 that all the magnificence of nature, the 
 spacious heavens, the infinite sea, the whole 
 region of the vast and the beautiful is, 
 by God's appointment, the fitting pomp 
 and pageantry of even the least of His 
 children. 
 
 In the poem, "A Pillar at Sebzevar," 
 Browning goes over the same line of proof 
 once more — as if it were the teaching on 
 the burden of unintelligible things in which 
 he himself came to have most confidence. 
 Tf you are sure of any blessing in your life, 
 any real ground of gratitude, hold to it. 
 1 08 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
 Believe in it. That is for you a star in the 
 steadfast heavens, although the sky may be 
 black next moment and no star be seen for 
 many days. Trust in the star which came 
 and went. It will shine again. Cherish 
 your personal blessings, and by their inspira- 
 tion meet all that life may bring. 
 
 " So let us say — not ' since we know we love/ 
 But rather, since we love, we know enough." 
 
 Suppose you are travelling through the desert 
 and are athirst. You come upon a hollow in 
 the sand which holds pure water. There is 
 only one scoopful. What will you do? 
 Will you say, " No ! I will not take a drop 
 of that water until I have dug to, and have 
 discovered, the source and fountainhead ? " 
 Not so you act. You kneel and take the 
 scoopful. Next moment the hollow fills 
 again, and again you empty it until your 
 thirst is slaked. Just so must we do in this 
 world — 
 
 H 
 
 IO9 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
 11 Drain the sufficient drop and praise what checks 
 The drouth that glues thy tongue — what more 
 
 would help 
 A brimful cistern ? Ask the cistern's boon 
 When thou wouldst solace camels : in thy case 
 Relish the drop and love the loveable." 
 
 To Browning, as he looks into " the mystery 
 of evil," there is no question or doubt as to 
 how all things shall end. The evil will pass 
 whenever its use is done. " The child grown 
 man, you burn the rod." So there is coming 
 a time "when the uses of labour will be 
 surely done." The very fact that life gives 
 us the impression that it is incomplete, is 
 proof that man carries about with him the 
 hope of a better than this, and of a best of 
 all. Somewhere in the course of his journey 
 man has seen the land of Promise, or he has 
 dreamed of it. If it was a dream, it was too 
 good not to be true. Man lives by hopes 
 u too fair to turn out false." For Browning 
 cannot believe in a final contradiction between 
 man and the world as it exists for God. 
 1 10 
 
The Mystery ofJlvil 
 
 The best is bound to be. Sometimes he 
 tries to think the dread alternative, to realise 
 what it would be " if all were error." But 
 his mind sickens before the awful prospect, 
 and the poet rightly takes that sickness, that 
 first approach of madness, as corroboration of 
 his instinctive faith in the triumph of God in 
 the fulness of time. 
 
 Students of Browning must have in mind 
 many glowing passages in which, after pages 
 and pages of hard thinking maybe, the poet 
 utters the everlasting hope of man. For 
 never is Browning's voice so steady and 
 melodious, never do the words come so 
 simply and surely as when he is looking away 
 to the end of the days. 
 
 "Therefore to whom turn I but to Thee, the 
 
 ineffable Name ? 
 Builder and maker Thou, of houses not made 
 
 with hands ! 
 What, have fear of change from Thee who art 
 
 ever the same ? 
 Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart that 
 
 Thy power expands ? 
 
 ill 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
 There shall never be one lost good ! What 
 
 was shall live as before ; 
 The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying 
 
 sound, 
 What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so 
 
 much good more : 
 On the earth the broken arcs ; in the heaven 
 
 the perfect round." 
 
 Or take the lines from the short piece 
 a Apparent Failures " — 
 
 " 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, 
 Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst." 
 
 Though, for my own part, best of all I like 
 the old Pope's stately hope : — 
 
 " While I see day succeed the deepest night 
 How can I speak but as I know ? — my speech 
 Must be, throughout the darkness, ' it will end : 
 The light that did burn will burn.' 
 
 "So, never I miss footing in the maze, 
 No ! I have light nor fear the dark at all." 
 
 112 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
 You may have gone out on some still clear 
 night and looked up into the sky. There, 
 in the west, was the crescent moon. You 
 know at a glance that that moon will grow. 
 The broken arc suggests the perfect round. 
 Nay, more ; look again if the night be fine. 
 Do you not see with your unaided eye the 
 rest of the circle traced dimly on the azure 
 sky? Well, that crescent moon is like this 
 human life of ours. The shadow which 
 hides the moon's full face is the mystery 
 which broods over and solemnises our 
 passage through this earthly scene. But 
 just as when we look at the crescent moon 
 we feel instinctively that one day it will be 
 complete, so the very shortcoming and in- 
 completeness of our present life — the pain, 
 the sin, the reign of death — all these do but 
 promise a future time of triumphant and 
 unhindered light. And just as on a clear 
 still night, our eyes can already see the very 
 outline of the perfect moon, so when our 
 own soul is quiet and still, when there is no 
 
 1J 3 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
 cloud, no bitterness between our own heart 
 and God, then even here and now we can see 
 by faith the tracing of that perfected order, 
 the walls of the Holy Jerusalem, the fair 
 fields where " there shall be no more death, 
 neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there 
 be any more pain, for the former things are 
 passed away." 
 
 But the poet utters a warning. As we 
 have seen, he is very sure of the ultimate 
 triumph of good. This, however, only on 
 one condition — the condition, namely, that 
 every soul which knows the good shall 
 strive to the uttermost for the eventual 
 victory. 
 
 " God's in His heaven, 
 
 All's right with the world ! " 
 
 may be a craven cry. It may mean nothing 
 more than that things are bound to end 
 rightly, that good is bound to prevail, no 
 matter how we acquit ourselves. But, 
 according to Browning, and according to 
 114 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
 the fact, good which is not meanwhile in 
 arms against evil is a mere name. 
 
 " A thing is existent only while it acts, 
 Does as designed, else a nonentity ; 
 For what is an idea unrealised." 
 
 Good will triumph if every soul which knows 
 the good will hate and strive against the 
 evil. The only proof that good will prevail 
 at the last is that it prevails now. Knowing 
 this, Browning is ever bidding men be faith- 
 ful to themselves, and to God wherever they 
 are. To obey on the instant the holy 
 impulse. 
 
 " Enough, for I may die this very night, 
 
 And how should I dare die, this man let live! 
 
 Quis pro Domino, 
 Who is on the Lord's side ? " 
 
 " I ! " cries the old Pope. 
 
 Granted this strenuous behaviour on the 
 part of men, each setting himself against 
 the enemy at his own door, each defending 
 the portion of the Kingdom of God which 
 passes by his feet, each one addressing 
 
 "5 
 
The Mystery of Evil 
 
 himself to the evil and the cruel and the 
 contradictory which he sees and knows, then 
 the final triumph of the good is assured. 
 And besides, it is only such faithful fighters 
 who are sure of the end. Only to them, to 
 the earnest toilers, sufferers, doers, does life 
 feel real and full of promise, for their faith is 
 helping to create the very state of things 
 for which thev look and labour. 
 
 116 
 
The Incarnation 
 
IV 
 
 The Incarnation 
 
 Robert Browning himself would have been 
 the first to admit that it mattered very little 
 what he, a solitary man, happened to think 
 of those questions which human existence 
 raises, or what he happened to believe 
 concerning that ultimate Reality which is in 
 and through and over all things, and in and 
 through and over man. He would have 
 been the first to say — " things are what 
 they are, and the end will be what it will 
 be — no matter what you or I may think." 
 For we do not alter the nature of things 
 when we happen to look at them. They 
 are what they are, and we are being borne 
 on the breast of them — whether we struggle 
 or consent — towards the untraversed land. 
 Browning himself would have been the first 
 to protest against the weakness of paying 
 119 
 
The Incarnation 
 
 undue respect to any man's particular scheme 
 of things, or of supposing that what any 
 man may say concerning such mysteries as 
 God and the soul, makes these vast names 
 less mysterious. 
 
 For example, the truth about the Incarna- 
 tion is what it is, regardless of those ventures 
 of the mind whereby men have tried, through 
 all ages, to realise the mystery of it. Brown- 
 ing did not invent the Incarnation as an 
 escape from the difficulties of faith. He 
 found the Incarnation and Belief in the 
 Incarnation already in the world, and all 
 that he has to say can only illuminate or 
 darken — it cannot threaten or change — the 
 Fact itself. 
 
 Speaking for myself I shall never cease to 
 be thankful for the guidance which I have 
 received from Robert Browning in this great 
 matter of faith. It was a great blessing — 
 in which I wish to see the hand of God — 
 that just as I reached the age when a man 
 should begin to think for himself, the age 
 1 20 
 
The Incarnation 
 
 when he becomes aware, perhaps, of the 
 apparent contradiction between faith and the 
 world, when the instinctive confidence of 
 childhood needs to be reinforced by some 
 belief which satisfies both mind and heart — 
 it was a great blessing that just then I 
 opened "Browning." He knew my diffi- 
 culties, and he showed no weakness toward 
 " my sins and faults of youth." He taught 
 me that the pure in heart alone see God. 
 That God is silent to those who will not 
 bring heart as well as mind, their whole 
 emotional and moral life, as well as their 
 powers of thought to the contemplation of 
 the Unseen. He made me aware of the 
 meaning of those words — "by faith we 
 understand that the worlds were made by 
 God." That we understand — by faith. It 
 was a good thing to be compelled to pay the 
 penalty of thought and intense imagination 
 before accepting peacefully and for ever 
 those supernatural facts which rise to our 
 minds when we think of God — The Father, 
 
 121 
 
The Incarnation 
 
 Son and Holy Ghost. It was a good thing 
 that one was not allowed to receive the 
 things of faith on mere hearsay, but only 
 after the pains of thought and feeling. It 
 was a good thing that those supernatural 
 truths — those truths concerning God which 
 lie at the heart of the Catholic Creed — 
 should have come home to a man only when 
 his heart and mind had become alive to the 
 awful need of God. Otherwise, one might 
 have received those great truths as mysteries 
 altogether remote from our actual life and 
 not to be embraced by the living heart and 
 flesh. All that we believe concerning God 
 must indeed be full of mystery, but Browning 
 — I speak for myself — has done much to 
 make the mystery no more a mystery of 
 darkness but of light. He helps one not 
 only to believe the ultimate matters of faith ; 
 but to imagine them. Take the doctrine of 
 the Incarnation. Christians confess that 
 Jesus Christ, the Son of God, took on flesh 
 and became man, that he might bring us to 
 
 122 
 
The Incarnation 
 
 God. They confess that Jesus Christ came 
 out from God, and was and is eternally in 
 the bosom of God. That is what the Church 
 asserts in the doctrine of the Incarnation. 
 And now, conceive how hopelessly mysterious 
 it all is. How our poor minds, however willing, 
 break down as they try to comprehend all that 
 such a faith implies ! That the Almighty God 
 has had with Him from all eternity, Another, 
 His Like and Equal; that in the fulness of 
 time, He came out from God and walked for 
 a space upon our earth — how hard and 
 impossible to realise it ! Yet such is the 
 Stupendous Fact which the doctrine of the 
 Incarnation asserts. Now, I rise from another 
 long study of Browning, thoroughly convinced 
 that he for one held that faith in its essence, 
 with his whole strength. He may have 
 taken hold of this belief with the clutch of 
 despair or of death. He may have flung 
 himself into the arms of it only when he 
 became aware of the abyss which waits for 
 him and for us all if such a faith be not 
 123 
 
The Incarnation 
 
 true. He may have rushed into belief in sheer 
 horror of the blank alternative. But even 
 were we to admit that, it would not weaken 
 his testimony. The things of God are never 
 learned easily ; they come to us for the first 
 time in hours of darkness and necessity. 
 They come at our cries and prayers, however 
 mildly they may remain with us in after 
 years. They come at first through pain 
 and a certain solitude of the soul. It may 
 well be that Browning was led seriously to 
 believe in the Incarnation, in the first instance, 
 because he felt that some such overwhelming 
 proof of God and of His love was needed to 
 out-weigh the appalling misery which he 
 found in the world as it is. He himself con- 
 fesses more than once that it is only his faith 
 in God, as God has revealed Himself in Christ, 
 which stands between him and despair. 
 
 " I can believe this dread machinery 
 Of sin and sorrow would confound me else 
 Devised — all pain at most expenditure 
 Of pain by Who devised pain." 
 
 124 
 
The Incarnation 
 
 That is to say, the burden which falls upon 
 his spirit as he beholds the suffering and the 
 incompleteness here, is relieved and can at 
 least be borne when he remembers that God 
 Himself has entered into the region of pain, 
 u bearing our sins and carrying our sorrows." 
 In " A Death in the Desert " we have the 
 same confession, that all is well if in Jesus 
 Christ man saw for once the Face of God. 
 
 "I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ 
 Accepted by thy reason, solved for thee 
 All questions in the earth and out of it." 
 
 In " Paracelsus " he makes Festus cry out, in 
 an hour of sore darkness — 
 
 " God, Thou art Love ! I build my faith on 
 that." 
 
 But, to say that Browning clung to the Incar- 
 nation of God in Christ only as a drowning 
 man clings to a life-belt, "lest the proud 
 waters should overwhelm him," is only to 
 place Browning in this matter by the side of 
 S. Paul. How are those lines of Browning's 
 i 125 
 
The Incarnation 
 
 different in their tone or in their philosophy 
 from those strong cries of the Apostle with 
 which he swept the midnight from his soul ? 
 How do they differ from S. Paul's — a He 
 that spared not His own Son, but freely 
 gave Him up for us all, how shall He not 
 with Him also freely give us all things ? " or 
 from that "Quis Separabit " in the eighth 
 chapter of u Romans," which ended doubtless 
 some unrecorded battle of the soul ? 
 
 Leaving the question as to how, in the 
 first instance, Browning was led to give his 
 thorough assent to the doctrine of the Incar- 
 nation, certain it is that faith in that doctrine 
 lies at the root of all his thoughts. I know 
 of no poet who speaks with such consistent 
 reverence and such ready rapture of Christ 
 as he. All the light that lies across his 
 fields of thought comes from that Sun alone. 
 Now, just as there are hours in each day, 
 when, although we do not see the very sun, 
 we have its light and warmth and by the 
 help of these, do our work ; so there are, 
 126 
 
The Incarnation 
 
 of course, pages upon pages of Browning 
 in which all that we have of the Incar- 
 nation is the daylight which it gives. But 
 just as there are fine days and exquisite 
 hours, in which we have not only the daylight 
 but the sun itself throbbing in the naked 
 heavens ; so there are poems of Browning's 
 in which he rises from the common daylight, 
 pursues it to its source, pierces mist and 
 cloud until he pauses on the threshold of the 
 Eternal order and looks with adoration towards 
 the sun, across the blue. 
 
 Perhaps I shall best represent Browning's 
 teaching on the Incarnation and his method 
 of realising the mystery of it, if I describe 
 somewhat in detail the two poems in which 
 he deliberately announces his belief in that 
 doctrine. I mean the poems, " Christmas 
 Eve " and " Saul." There are others, such 
 as U A Death in the Desert," passages 
 from ct The Ring and the Book " and from 
 " Ferishtah's Fancies," and one notable 
 passage in "Blougram's Apology," the 
 127 
 
The Incarnation 
 
 short poem, "An Epistle," also the u Epi- 
 logue to Dramatis Personae," in which his 
 belief in the Incarnation, supported by certain 
 reasons, emerges. But in the two poems I 
 have named, "Christmas Eve" and "Saul," 
 Browning is engaged entirely and solely with 
 that doctrine. 
 
 In "Christmas Eve " the poet found himself 
 on a wild winter's night -it was Christmas 
 Eve, hence the title — at the door of a mean 
 chapel. He slipped into the porch for 
 shelter, and stood there while the worshippers 
 passed in. After a time, he likewise entered 
 and sat down. The preaching was crude and 
 noisy and familiar without any suggestiveness 
 — at least to the poet — of the deep things of 
 God. Hurt by the man's narrowness and 
 sourness, the poet rose and left the place, 
 and stood under the night-sky. There was a 
 scene more suggestive to him of God. At 
 the invitation of the night and the stars, his 
 tongue is loosed, and high thoughts, imagina- 
 tions, praise and prayer hurry from his soul — 
 128 
 
The Incarnation 
 
 { In youth I looked to those very skies 
 And, probing their immensities, 
 I found God there, His Visible Power:, 
 Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense 
 Of the Power, an equal evidence 
 That His Love, there too, was the nobler 
 
 dower : 
 For the loving worm within its clod 
 Were diviner than a loveless God 
 Amid His worlds, I will dare to say." 
 
 " So, gazing up, in my youth, at love 
 As seen through power, ever above 
 All modes which make it manifest, 
 My soul brought all to a single test — 
 That He, the Eternal First and Last 
 "Who, in His Power, had so surpassed 
 All man conceives of what is Might — 
 Whose wisdom, too, showed infinite, 
 Would prove as infinitely good; 
 Would never (my soul understood), 
 With power to work all love desires, 
 Bestow e'en less than man requires ; 
 That He who endlessly was teaching, 
 Above my spirit's utmost reaching, 
 What love can do in the leaf or stone, 
 (So that, to master this alone, 
 This done in the stone or leaf or me, 
 I must go on learning endlessly), 
 
 129 
 
The Incarnation 
 
 Would never need that I, in turn, 
 
 Should point Him out defect unheeded, 
 
 And show that God had yet to learn 
 
 What the meanest human creature needed, 
 
 — Not life, to wit, for a few short years 
 
 Tracking his way through doubts and fears, 
 
 While the stupid earth on which I stay 
 
 Suffers no change, but passive adds 
 
 Its myriad years to myriads, 
 
 Though I, He gave it to, decay, 
 
 See death come and choose about me, 
 
 And my dearest ones depart without me. 
 
 No : love which on earth, amid all the shows 
 
 of it 
 Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it, 
 The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife 
 
 in it, 
 Shall arise, made perfect, from death's repose 
 
 of it, 
 And I shall behold Thee, face to face, 
 
 God, and in Thy love retrace 
 
 How in all I loved here, still wast Thou ! 
 Whom, pressing to, then, as I fain would now, 
 
 1 shall find as able to satiate 
 
 The love, Thy gift, as my spirit's wonder 
 Thou art able to quicken and sublimate 
 With this sky of Thine, that I now walk under 
 And glory in Thee for, as I gaze 
 Thus, thus ! . . ." 
 
 130 
 
The Incarnation 
 
 As he gazed in silence upon that huge sky, 
 this is what he saw. The moon, at the full, 
 lay resting on a fleecy cloud, " in a triumph 
 of whitest white." Above it, the high dome 
 of the night ; while yet higher and deeper, 
 the circle of a rainbow spanning the heaven 
 of heavens. As his eye climbed those 
 terraces of light and paused at the zenith of 
 the darkness, he felt as if the heavens were 
 about to open and Some One about to step 
 out from the place of God upon that highest 
 ring. 
 
 "Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge, 
 Whose from the straining topmost dark 
 On to the keystone of that arc? " 
 
 Next moment the tempest had returned, 
 blinding him, and when it cleared he saw the 
 figure of Christ — 
 
 " He was there, 
 He Himself with the human air 
 On the rainbow pathway, just before." 
 
 T 3* 
 
The Incarnation 
 
 But Christ's back was towards him, and 
 suddenly the poet understood. Christ was 
 on His way from that mean meeting-house. 
 He had been there and doubtless was now 
 angry because the poet had gone away. 
 Therefore the poet hastened after Him and 
 begged forgiveness. He pleaded that he 
 had left the chapel because he thought the 
 preacher spoke and felt too meanly of God, 
 too meanly and poorly of His love in Christ ; 
 that it was because he — the poet — placed 
 Christ higher than those grudging wor- 
 shippers that he had left them, wishing to be 
 alone to adore. Whereupon Christ turned 
 His face full upon Him so that he became 
 unconscious through the excess of glory. 
 From this experience the poet learns that 
 Christ Himself holds it to be His chief glory 
 that He is the Love of God ; and learns also 
 that those who — in spite of the bareness and 
 narrowness of their creed — believe somehow 
 that God in Christ has given Himself in Love to 
 men, have a hold of the hem of His Garment. 
 
 i3 2 
 
The Incarnation 
 
 Suddenly the poet finds himself in Rome, 
 witnessing the great festival of Christmas- 
 Eve. He is aware that there is much foolery 
 and grotesqueness in what he sees ; but he 
 has learned that there too the worshippers 
 have at least a hold of the hem of Christ's 
 garment. They are seeking to reassure 
 themselves of the Incarnation, and are bear- 
 ing witness to their faith before the world. 
 He will not quarrel with their methods, 
 though for himself he despises them. He 
 will rather rejoice that they are doing what 
 they are doing to the glory of Him, 
 
 " Who trod, 
 
 Very man and very God, 
 
 This earth in weakness, shame and pain." 
 
 Once more the scene is changed. The poet 
 is looking into a class-room in the University 
 of Gottingen. The professor mounts his 
 place and proceeds to discuss what he calls 
 the myth of Christ. He explains away all 
 that might be thought miraculous or mys- 
 
 !33 
 
The Incarnation 
 
 terious in the person of Christ, until he 
 reaches what he says is the naked truth. 
 And what is the truth about Christ according 
 to this professor. This only : that Christ 
 was a good and high-souled man, who 
 suffered for righteousness 1 sake, leaving us 
 an example. A chill creeps over the poet's 
 body and seems to settle down on his heart 
 as he listens. He feels passionately and in- 
 stinctively that this man has not even the 
 hem of Christ's garment, that the truth is 
 not here. The chill at his heart persuades 
 him. He listens again. The Professor, as 
 he concludes, bids his students — even though 
 they can no longer worship Christ or place 
 their hopes on Him — reverence the myth, 
 cherish the pure and pathetic story of his life 
 and death. And here Browning warms to 
 the controversy, in a bantering way no doubt, 
 but we know from our past studies that 
 Browning is never in such dead earnest as 
 when he banters. He only banters when he 
 knows that he has the game in his hand. 
 
 x 34 
 
The Incarnation 
 
 And so he plies the Gottingen professor with 
 rapid thrusts ; showing him what his advice 
 — " to reverence the myth " — amounts to. 
 It is no longer Christ who is to support us ; 
 according to the new style it is we who are 
 to support Christ, support Him and keep Him 
 alive by our application and study. " Well, 
 well," he says, 
 
 "Deduce from this lecture all that eases you ; 
 Nay, call yourselves, if the calling pleases you, 
 * Christians ' — abhor the deist's pravity — 
 Go on, you shall no more move my gravity 
 Than, when I see boys ride a-cockhorse, 
 I find it in my heart to embarrass them 
 By hinting that their stick's a mockhorse 
 And they really carry what they say carries 
 them." 
 
 Next moment he is back in the mean little 
 chapel, in which indeed he had all the while 
 been dreaming; and the poem ends with a 
 warning to those who might suppose from its 
 jaunty movement that Browning was not 
 profoundly concerned in the great Matter of 
 Faith, which has been the subject of it all. 
 
 l 35 
 
The Incarnation 
 
 Up to this point we have been engaged 
 rather in proving that Browning believed in 
 the Incarnation, than in recommending that 
 doctrine to others. It remains to us to dis- 
 cover the method by which Browning realised 
 the doctrine so that it did not remain as a 
 merely mysterious truth at an exalted distance 
 from his mind, but came near to him and 
 became the basis and power of his daily life 
 as a man and as a thinker. Although our 
 first quotation from " Christmas Eve "• — 
 the long one — contains the substance of 
 Browning's teaching on the Incarnation, 
 we must look more deliberately at those 
 ideas if we are to feel their full force, and 
 are to be convinced. I think we shall come 
 at them most easily if we look at the poem 
 "Saul," where we find those ideas living and 
 acting. The poem is based upon the incident 
 in i Samuel xvi., where we read how when 
 the evil spirit afflicted King Saul, he sent for 
 David to play before him, and how when 
 " David took the harp and played with his 
 136 
 
The Incarnation 
 
 hand, Saul was refreshed and was well, and 
 the evil spirit departed from him." 
 
 Abner meets young David at the door of 
 the tent, where for three days King Saul had 
 been sitting in darkness, and with his soul in 
 darkness. As the old soldier sees the fresh lad, 
 "with God's dew on his gracious gold hair," 
 and the lilies twined round his harp-strings 
 as if the world held nothing but beauty, he 
 felt — though he could have given no reason 
 — that the soul of Saul would be set free, 
 when all this freshness and innocence had 
 looked up into his face. David having knelt 
 and prayed, entered the darkness. u Here 
 is David, thy servant." But no voice replied. 
 Slowly, as his eyes became used to the dark- 
 ness, he saw the grand figure of the King 
 standing erect in the centre. David said not 
 a word, but tuned his harp and played. 
 First he played the tune that the sheep 
 know, which calls them home in the evening. 
 Then the tune which makes the quails follow 
 the player. Then the wine-song, which the 
 
 l 2>7 
 
The Incarnation 
 
 reapers sing when standing amid the fulness 
 of the harvest they feel the joy of life. 
 Then he played the funeral-dirge when the 
 dead man is praised on his journey. " Bear, 
 bear him along," the harp seemed to say, 
 "with his few faults shut up like dead 
 flowerets. The land has none left such as 
 he on the bier. Oh, would we might keep 
 thee, my brother." And then he played the 
 marriage hymn. Then he played a battle- 
 song, when strong men forget to fear. Then 
 the chorus of the priests as they draw near to 
 the altar. Then David stopped, for there in 
 the darkness Saul groaned. His head moved, 
 causing the jewels in his turban to flash. It 
 was as if life was coming back to him. Then 
 David bent over his harp and sang. He sang 
 of the beauty of God's world, and the good 
 gift of life. He sang of cool rivers and 
 shady trees, of the hunt and the welcome 
 sleep among the bulrushes. Then he began 
 to sing the story of King Saul — the story as 
 it might have been, as it still was, beyond 
 
 13s 
 
The Incarnation 
 
 the walls of the poor king's dismal mind. He 
 sang of Saul's father, and of the early days, 
 of Saul's boyhood, that boyhood of wonder 
 and hope ; of the marvellous ways of God, 
 by which Saul was now become king. He 
 sang of Saul's brave deeds, of his beauty and 
 his strength, how nature and the people's 
 choice and God's anointing, all crowned King 
 Saul. As his song had been coming to its close, 
 the minstrel's heart had grown warm. He 
 had felt the stir of the old stories, so that 
 when the last word had to be sounded, and 
 David cried — " Saul ! " — 'twas the trump of 
 the Lord and of a nation. Then " Saul was 
 struck by his name." And suddenly, as the 
 piled-up avalanche cracks and rushes down 
 the mountain-side, leaving the mountain 
 black and bare, yet capable of verdure by- 
 and-by, so the blackness rolled away from 
 the soul of Saul. Death was past, but life 
 had not yet come. His hand held his brow, 
 then fell ; then arm folded arm across his 
 chest. Thus he stood. But what should 
 
 *39 
 
The Incarnation 
 
 the minstrel sing now ? How keep Saul 
 free ? How hinder him from falling back, 
 how lift him sheer out of the toils and the 
 shame of the past ? Again the minstrel 
 bent over his harp and sang, " But 'twas 
 Thou, O God, who didst give him the song." 
 He sang of the progress of life, of those 
 stages and levels that speak of a triumph in 
 the fulness of the days. He sang the blessed 
 Gospel, that by God's mercy the past may 
 be past for ever. How the best may yet be 
 coming. Is Saul dead ? So be it : " In the 
 depth of the vale make his tomb." Let 
 a new Saul arise from the grave of the 
 old. 
 
 As he sang, making the offer of a new 
 beginning to the man, the look of care 
 passed from Saul. A great gentleness came 
 over him ; some hard thing had melted away. 
 He drew the young lad towards him, and sat 
 down. Thus he sat for long, stroking 
 David's yellow hair. And oh, how David 
 loved him then ! He yearned to fill Saul's 
 140 
 
The Incarnation 
 
 life with love and with the power to be great 
 for ever. 
 
 " Could I help thee, my father, inventing a bliss 
 I would add, to that life of the past, both the 
 
 future and this, 
 I would give thee new life altogether, as good, 
 
 ages hence, 
 As this moment — had love but the warrant, love's 
 
 heart to dispense." 
 
 "Then the truth came upon me," says 
 David, who has up to this point been speak- 
 ing. But now Browning himself pours out 
 his soul, though still speaking in David's 
 name. And this is his message. " I see the 
 truth now and thus. As a man, I have a 
 certain faculty for knowledge. But how 
 poor and weak compared with the Divine 
 Wisdom which appears in this orderly uni- 
 verse ! I have forethought ; but how weak 
 it is beside the Infinite Care of God ! Every 
 faculty which I have, I find already displayed 
 to an infinite degree by God. Now, this day 
 as I played before Saul to deliver him from 
 
 K MI 
 
The Incarnation 
 
 his frenzy, as I looked upon his weakness 
 and his loneliness, I loved him. I, a poor 
 erring child myself, I loved him. Ah, will 
 not God love him more ! How God must 
 love him ! Is it to be thought that God, who 
 has given me my faculties, Himself has them 
 not in infinite fulness ? If ninety-nine doors 
 open, why should the hundredth appal? If 
 God exceeds me in the least things, will He 
 fall behind me in the greatest? Here, in 
 this great matter of loving, loving the weak, 
 the broken-hearted, the rebellious, shall the 
 creature surpass the Creator ? Would I do 
 all for that man ; and will God do nothing ? 
 Would I sacrifice myself in order to rescue 
 the true Saul from his fetters ; and will God 
 be less loving than I ? Never ! Tis Thou, 
 God, that givest, 'tis I who receive. The 
 love I feel is already in Thee before it could 
 be in me. What is it that stops my despair 
 as I think of my own helplessness to remove 
 Saul's misery or the world's misery ? This : 
 that what I would do, God has done or will 
 142 
 
The Incarnation 
 
 do. Or to quote from Browning else- 
 where : — 
 
 "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, 
 Why not, The Way, The Truth, The Life." 
 
 He surely — 
 
 " Would never need that I, in turn, 
 Should point Him out defect unheeded, 
 And show that God had yet to learn 
 What the meanest human creature needed." 
 
 No! 
 
 " Would I suffer for one that I love ? So 
 wouldst Thou, so wilt Thou. 
 So shall crown Thee the topmost ineffablest 
 
 uttermost crown — 
 And Thy Love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave 
 up nor down 
 
 143 
 
The Incarnation 
 
 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 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 
 Thou shalt love and be loved by, for ever; a 
 
 Hand like this hand 
 Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee ! 
 
 see the Christ stand ! " 
 
 When he reached this thought, and had made 
 it ring like a proclamation through his own 
 sou l — the thought of God out of the stress 
 of love, giving Himself to man — David, i.e. 
 Browning himself tells us — all nature took 
 on a different look. The hills, grey with 
 144 
 
The Incarnation 
 
 early morn, the beasts of the field, the birds, 
 the purling brooks, all murmured to his 
 spirit, " Even so, it is so." 
 
 There are two criticisms which might be 
 made upon Browning's teaching on the In- 
 carnation. We shall do little more than 
 mention them ; for after feeling the thrill of 
 faith which never fails to come to me as I 
 read " Saul," I confess I have little interest 
 in difficulties. It might be objected that it 
 was unwarrantable to build a doctrine of 
 God's nature upon anything in human 
 nature. That Browning's teaching is the 
 merest anthropomorphism. But Browning 
 himself was well aware of that. He, how- 
 ever, looked at the relation between God and 
 man from the opposite standpoint. To your 
 objection that he was making a God in his 
 own image, he would have replied, "What 
 you mean is that God has made man in His 
 image " ; which is the old story. As he 
 says : — 
 
 145 
 
The Incarnation 
 
 " 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." 
 
 Are our religious instincts to be trusted, or 
 is the light that is in us darkness ? These 
 are the alternatives. In other regions what 
 we call truth is truth absolute and eternal. 
 Two and two make four here and in every 
 conceivable world. We have the instinct 
 that this is an orderly world — all our sciences 
 are based upon that assumption. Is it to be 
 supposed that in the region of our peculiar 
 endowment as human, in our sense of what 
 is ethically right and the very highest, we 
 should be deceiving ourselves ? Can u a 
 Cosmos have a Chaos for its crown?" Love 
 — the giving away of oneself, the spending, 
 the toiling, the bearing, the pardoning, the 
 helping for the sake of others, for their 
 good, to make them pure, gentle, holy — love 
 is the highest and the best we know. But 
 the effect can never be greater than its cause ; 
 146 
 
The Incarnation 
 
 the Creature cannot surpass his Creator. The 
 highest we know must at least be within 
 God. At least — for He must ever transcend 
 our most penetrating reach in what is good. 
 He must have within Himself our best and 
 more. Every good gift and every perfect 
 gift cometh down from above ; from the 
 Father and Home of these lights. 
 
 Once more, it might be objected to 
 Browning's teaching on the Incarnation, and, 
 indeed, to any belief in the Incarnation that 
 there are many things in this present scene 
 which make it hard to hold. But with 
 Browning a faith must always be hard to 
 hold ; faith is the contradiction of many 
 signs. 
 
 " You must mix some uncertainty 
 With faith if you would have faith be." 
 
 He would ask you to trust those moments 
 when the grand hope seemed true to you. 
 He would appeal to you to believe in the 
 stars which you see for a fine moment now 
 
 147 
 
The Incarnation 
 
 and then, though next moment they are 
 blurred and blotted out with cloud and 
 tempest. For himself, he sings — 
 
 " So long as there be just enough 
 To pin my faith to, though it hap 
 Only at points ; from gap to gap, 
 One hangs up a huge curtain so 
 Grandly, nor seeks to have it go 
 Foldless and flat along the wall. 
 What care I if some interval 
 Of life less plainly may depend 
 On God ? I'd hang there to the end." 
 
 For, however we may fall away from those 
 high moments of the soul, it was truth, it 
 was reality, it was the Face of God, which 
 they disclosed : — 
 
 " There, where I once saw points, I now see stars." 
 
 THE END 
 
Starting Points 
 
 For Speakers, P readier s y and other Thinkers. 
 Sentences sifted from Authors of To-day and Yesterday. 
 
 By JOHN HOOKE. 
 
 " What a boon the book should prove." — Liverpool Mercury. 
 
 "An excellent selection of thought. . . . The quotations were gleaned in 
 the course of everyday reading, and are therefore likely to be of service to 
 average needs. Each reflects a distinct idea or suggestion."— Belfast Neivs 
 Letter. 
 
 "The quotations are chiefly from modern authors, and all in prose. The 
 reader in search of mental stimulus need have no difficulty in finding the key 
 to unlock his brain and set his own imprisoned thoughts free." — Cheltenham 
 Chronicle. 
 
 "This book is one of the best of its kind. It is a collection of original 
 sentences from our best writers. The thoughts quoted are seminal, and, 
 apart from the usefulness of the book to speakers and writers, it is one that 
 will richly repay perusal for its own sake. The design is novel, and has been 
 admirably carried out." — St. Andrew. 
 
 "The kind of book we often long for in certain moods when we are indis- 
 posed to read anything long, and want something short and interesting, to 
 rest and occupy or inspire rather than task the mind— just the book for a 
 railway journey." — Northern Ensign. 
 
 " Will prove most valuable to speakers and preachers, and will frequently 
 suggest a fruitful train of thought which would never otherwise have got on 
 the rails. The book is beautifully printed and handsomely got up. The 
 subject of each quotation is noted in the margin, and the reference is 
 facilitated by a full index."— Aberdeen Journal. 
 
 "Such a book as this has its uses ; a busy man can turn to it for hints, and, 
 having got his text, can go ahead. It is like grace before meat." — Sheffield 
 Telegraph. 
 
 "The title of this useful handbook is a fair indication of the object intended 
 to be served by its publication."— Northern Whig. 
 
 "A suggestive and well indexed compilation of sententious observations, 
 most of which have a direct and immediate interest for men immersed in the 
 intellectual life. " — Scotsman. 
 
 "The extracts are well indexed, which is a great advantage. Will form a 
 useful book of reference." — Midland Free Press. 
 
 "The result of intelligent reading and marginal notes."— Yorkshire Post. 
 
 "Each and all suggestive." — Irish Presbyterian. 
 
 "Arranged in a way that renders it easy of reference. Conveys Bible 
 knowledge in a picturesque and attractive way, and we commend it to the 
 attention of parents and teachers."— Aberdeen Free Press. 
 
The Dream of Dante: 
 
 An Interpretation of the Inferno. 
 By HENRY F. HENDERSON, M.A., 
 
 "Author of " Erskine of Linlathen." 
 
 "He knows the poem well, and his comments are pertinent." — 
 Athenaeum. 
 
 " Last month Messrs. Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier gave us a fresh 
 book on Browning, and gave it in the best style of printing and 
 publishing. This month it is Dante, equally fresh, and equally 
 charming as a book." — Expository Times. 
 
 " He gives in clear and interesting outline the main scheme of the 
 poet, and shows how, in spite of materialistic conceptions which few 
 could in Dante's time escape, the great poet has taught the awful 
 nature of sin by the sight of its awful punishment." — Examiner. 
 
 "This is a very attractive book. It is also well written and inter- 
 esting throughout. In the end the reader gets a good general idea of 
 the contents and the purpose of the Inferno." — Critical Revieio. 
 
 "In his 'Erskine of Linlathen,' Mr. Henderson proved himself 
 possessed of the qualities that are needed to make writing simple, 
 sympathetic, and discriminating. His little book on Dante's dream 
 will be read with pleasure by all who are looking for a simple intro- 
 duction to one of the four greatest poets of history." — Messenger 
 (Queensland). 
 
 " A critical and sympathetic interpretation of the great poet's 
 work." — Christian Commonwealth. 
 
 "The book is a suggestive one, and one that seems well calculated 
 to arouse interest in the Divine Comedy, and to serve as an intro- 
 duction to a fuller study of it." — Glasgow Herald. 
 
 "The book bears you easily and swiftly to the heart of one of the 
 world's greatest poems." — Teachers' Aid. 
 
 "A simple, strong book, with a clear purpose which the author 
 keeps steadily in view. We can commend it cordially to young 
 people as an introduction to the study of Dante's Inferno." — Dominion 
 Presbyterian (Ottawa). 
 
 "Besides telling the story of the Inferno in a graphic and forceful 
 way, with many historical and other explanations, Mr. Henderson is 
 especially good in his religious and ethical interpretation. His book 
 will serve as an excellent introduction to a direct acquaintance with 
 the work of the master himself." — Christian Guardian. 
 
Guidance from Robert Browning 
 in Matters of Faith. 
 
 By JOHN A. HUTTON, M.A., 
 
 Newcastle-on-Tyne. 
 
 "Mr. Hutton undoubtedly writes with knowledge as well as 
 earnestness, and he puts his case for Browning as a guide in matters of 
 faith very skilfully. . . . The book taken as a whole must be accounted 
 one of the best expositions that have ever appeared of Browning's 
 position as a defender of the leading ' fundamentals ' of Christianity." 
 — Spectator. 
 
 "The kind of book to take up with confidence in Bible-class work." 
 
 — Critical Review. 
 
 " One of the best expositions of the religious teaching of Browning." 
 —Great Thoughts. 
 
 "Every chapter is a strong, sure word of help." — TeacJiers' Aid. 
 
 "We cordially recommend this noble book."- -St. Andrew. 
 
 "We are grateful for so masterly a study." — Baptist Magazine. 
 
 "There is always room for a book so fresh and individual as Mr. 
 
 Hutton's. " — Christian World. 
 
 "Very good indeed." — Sunday School Chronicle. 
 
 " He has rendered a real service to all lovers of religion and 
 literature." — Schoolmaster. 
 
 " The book is one for which careful students of Browning will be 
 grateful, while at the same time anyone may read it with profit and 
 delight. It is crowded with suggestiveness for the preacher and 
 teacher. " — Christian Guardian. 
 
 " By a Christian minister who knows well the intellectual difficulties 
 that have to be faced by thoughtful young men, and who has found in 
 the careful study of Browning's works inspiration and strength in 
 facing these difficulties."— Dominion Presbyterian. 
 
 "Sincere and thoughtful, and some who find a poet's treatment of 
 the fundamental problems of life and death more helpful than the 
 discourses of professed theologians may be grateful for being intro- 
 duced to Browning's characteristic methods of thought." — Morning 
 Leader. 
 
Erskine of Linlathen : 
 
 Selections and Biography. 
 
 By HENRY F. HENDERSON, M.A., 
 
 Author of "The Dream of Dante." 
 
 "The book is a great boon, and will be a great success. Thomas 
 Erskine has waited all this time for a capable and sympathetic 
 historian. His life has really never been written till now." — Expository 
 Times. 
 
 "An admirable and much -needed biography. ... In a chapter 
 exhibiting much critical power, Mr. Henderson sets forth the 
 peculiarities of Erskine's teaching." — Dundee Advertiser. 
 
 "The book affords in brief compass an excellent epitome of the man 
 and his work." — Scotsman. 
 
 " Mr. Henderson is to be congratulated on the picture he gives us of 
 Erskine. ... If the book turns men's thoughts back to this rare and 
 attractive teacher, it will not have been written in vain."— Critical 
 Review. 
 
 " Mr. Henderson's book points to a revived interest in the person- 
 ality of one who was certainly one of the most important theological 
 factors of the nineteenth century." — Guardian. 
 
 "How welcome is a book like this in such a time of stress and 
 turmoil. . . . There will be many to whom this volume will bring back 
 the fragrance of long remembered days." — British Weekly, 
 
 "A notable book, and one for which there was a distinct call." — 
 Kilmarnock Standard. 
 
 "We thank Mr. Henderson for this book." — Spectator. 
 
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