Chapter 16

RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

In "Bishop Blougram's Apology" and "Christmas-Eve and Easter Day," Browning has covered the main tendencies in religious thought of the nineteenth century in England; and possibly "Caliban" might be included as representative of Calvinistic survivals of the century.

The two most strongly marked of these tendencies have been shown in the Tractarian Movement which took Anglican in the direction of High Churchism and Catholicism, and in the Scientific Movement which led in the direction of Agnosticism.

The battle between the Church of Rome and the Church of England was waged the latter part of the first half of the century, and the greater battle between science and religion came on in its full strength the middle of the century when the influence of Spencer, Darwin, Tyndall, Huxley and other men of science began to make itself felt, as well as that of such critics of historical Christianity as Strauss in Germany and Renan in France. The influence of the dissenting bodies,--the Presbyterians and the Methodists--also became a power during the century. Broadly speaking, it may be said that the development has been in the direction of the utmost freedom of conscience in the matter of religion, though the struggles of humanity to arrive there even during this century are distressing to look back upon; and occasionally one is held up even in America to-day by the ghost of religious persecution.

It is an open secret that in Bishop Blougram, Browning meant to portray Cardinal Wiseman, whose connection with the Tractarian Movement is of great interest in the history of this movement. Browning enjoyed hugely the joke that Cardinal Wiseman himself reviewed the poem. The Cardinal praised it as a poem, though he did not consider the attitude of a priest of Rome to be properly interpreted. A comparison of the poem with opinions expressed by the Cardinal as well as a glimpse into his activities will show how far Browning has done him justice.

It is well to remember at the outset that the poet's own view is neither that of Blougram nor of the literary man Gigadibs, with whom Blougram talks over his wine. Gigadibs is an agnostic and cannot understand how a man of Blougram's fine intellectual and artistic perceptions is able so implicitly to believe in Catholic doctrine. Blougram's apology for himself amounts to this,--that he does not believe with absolute certainty any more than does Gigadibs; but, on the other hand, Gigadibs does not disbelieve with absolute certainty, so Blougram's state is one of belief shaken occasionally by doubt, while Gigadibs is one of unbelief shaken by fits of belief.

BISHOP BLOUGRAM'S APOLOGY

. . . . . . .

Now come, let's backward to the starting place. See my way: we're two college friends, suppose. Prepare together for our voyage, then; Each note and check the other in his work,-- There's mine, a bishop's outfit; criticize! What's wrong? why won't you be a bishop too?

What first, you don't believe, you don't, and can't, (Not statedly, that is, and fixedly And absolutely and exclusively) In any revelation called divine. No dogmas nail your faith; and what remains But say so, like the honest man you are? First, therefore, overhaul theology! Nay, I too, not a fool, you please to think, Must find believing every whit as hard: And if I do not frankly say as much, The ugly consequence is clear enough.

Now wait, my friend: well, I do not believe-- If you'll accept no faith that is not fixed, Absolute and exclusive, as you say. You're wrong--I mean to prove it in due time. Meanwhile, I know where difficulties lie I could not, cannot solve, nor ever shall, So give up hope accordingly to solve-- (To you, and over the wine). Our dogmas then With both of us, though in unlike degree, Missing full credence--overboard with them! I mean to meet you on your own premise: Good, there go mine in company with yours!

And now what are we? unbelievers both, Calm and complete, determinately fixed To-day, to-morrow and forever, pray? You'll guarantee me that? Not so, I think! In no wise! all we've gained is, that belief. As unbelief before, shakes us by fits, Confounds us like its predecessor. Where's The gain? how can we guard our unbelief, Make it bear fruit to us?--the problem here. Just when we are safest, there's a sunset touch, A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death, A chorus-ending from Euripides,-- And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears As old and new at once as nature's self, To rap and knock and enter in our soul, Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring, Round the ancient idol, on his base again,-- The grand Perhaps! We look on helplessly. There the old misgivings, crooked questions are-- This good God,--what he could do, if he would, Would, if he could--then must have done long since: If so, when, where and how? some way must be,-- Once feel about, and soon or late you hit Some sense, in which it might be, after all. Why not, "The Way, the Truth, the Life?"

The advantage of making belief instead of unbelief the starting point is, Blougram contends, that he lives by what he finds the most to his taste; giving him as it does, power, distinction and beauty in life as well as hope in the life to come.

Well, now, there's one great form of Christian faith I happened to be born in--which to teach Was given me as I grew up, on all hands, As best and readiest means of living by; The same on examination being proved The most pronounced moreover, fixed, precise And absolute form of faith in the whole world-- Accordingly, most potent of all forms For working on the world. Observe, my friend! Such as you know me, I am free to say, In these hard latter days which hamper one, Myself--by no immoderate exercise Of intellect and learning, but the tact To let external forces work for me, --Bid the street's stones be bread and they are bread; Bid Peter's creed, or rather, Hildebrand's, Exalt me o'er my fellows in the world And make my life an ease and joy and pride; It does so,--which for me's a great point gained, Who have a soul and body that exact A comfortable care in many ways. There's power in me and will to dominate Which I must exercise, they hurt me else: In many ways I need mankind's respect, Obedience, and the love that's born of fear: While at the same time, there's a taste I have, A toy of soul, a titillating thing, Refuses to digest these dainties crude. The naked life is gross till clothed upon: I must take what men offer, with a grace As though I would not, could I help it, take! An uniform I wear though over-rich-- Something imposed on me, no choice of mine; No fancy-dress worn for pure fancy's sake And despicable therefore! now folk kneel And kiss my hand--of course the Church's hand. Thus I am made, thus life is best for me, And thus that it should be I have procured; And thus it could not be another way, I venture to imagine.

You'll reply, So far my choice, no doubt, is a success; But were I made of better elements, with nobler instincts, purer tastes, like you, I hardly would account the thing success Though it did all for me I say.

But, friend, We speak of what is; not of what might be, And how 'twere better if 'twere otherwise. I am the man you see here plain enough: Grant I'm a beast, why, beasts must lead beasts' lives! Suppose I own at once to tail and claws; The tailless man exceeds me: but being tailed I'll lash out lion fashion, and leave apes To dock their stump and dress their haunches up. My business is not to remake myself, But make the absolute best of what God made.

But, friend, I don't acknowledge quite so fast I fail of all your manhood's lofty tastes Enumerated so complacently, On the mere ground that you forsooth can find In this particular life I choose to lead No fit provision for them. Can you not? Say you, my fault is I address myself To grosser estimators than should judge? And that's no way of holding up the soul, Which, nobler, needs men's praise perhaps, yet knows One wise man's verdict outweighs all the fools'-- Would like the two, but, forced to choose, takes that. I pine among my million imbeciles (You think) aware some dozen men of sense Eye me and know me, whether I believe In the last winking Virgin, as I vow, And am a fool, or disbelieve in her And am a knave,--approve in neither case, Withhold their voices though I look their way: Like Verdi when, at his worst opera's end (The thing they gave at Florence,--what's its name?) While the mad houseful's plaudits near outbang His orchestra of salt-box, tongs and bones, He looks through all the roaring and the wreaths Where sits Rossini patient in his stall.

Nay, friend, I meet you with an answer here-- That even your prime men who appraise their kind Are men still, catch a wheel within a wheel, See more in a truth than the truth's simple self, Confuse themselves. You see lads walk the street Sixty the minute; what's to note in that? You see one lad o'erstride a chimney-stack; Him you must watch--he's sure to fall, yet stands! Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things. The honest thief, the tender murderer, The superstitious atheist, demirep That loves and saves her soul in new French books-- We watch while these in equilibrium keep The giddy line midway: one step aside, They're classed and done with. I, then, keep the line Before your sages,--just the men to shrink From the gross weights, coarse scales and labels broad You offer their refinement. Fool or knave? Why needs a bishop be a fool or knave When there's a thousand diamond weights between? So, I enlist them. Your picked twelve, you'll find, Profess themselves indignant, scandalized At thus being held unable to explain How a superior man who disbelieves May not believe as well: that's Schelling's way! It's through my coming in the tail of time, Nicking the minute with a happy tact. Had I been born three hundred years ago They'd say, "what's strange? Blougram of course believes;" And, seventy years since, "disbelieves of course." But now, "He may believe; and yet, and yet How can he?" All eyes turn with interest. Whereas, step off the line on either side-- You, for example, clever to a fault, The rough and ready man who write apace, Read somewhat seldomer, think perhaps even less-- You disbelieve! Who wonders and who cares? Lord So-and-so--his coat bedropped with wax, All Peter's chains about his waist, his back Brave with the needlework of Noodledom-- Believes! Again, who wonders and who cares? But I, the man of sense and learning too, The able to think yet act, the this, the that, I, to believe at this late time of day! Enough; you see, I need not fear contempt.

. . . . . . .

"Ay, but since really you lack faith," you cry, "You run the same risk really on all sides, In cool indifference as bold unbelief. As well be Strauss as swing 'twixt Paul and him. It's not worth having, such imperfect faith, No more available to do faith's work Than unbelief like mine. Whole faith, or none!"

Softly, my friend! I must dispute that point. Once own the use of faith, I'll find you faith. We're back on Christian ground. You call for faith: I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists. The more of doubt, the stronger faith, I say, If faith o'ercomes doubt. How I know it does? By life and man's free will, God gave for that! To mould life as we choose it, shows our choice: That's our one act, the previous work's his own. You criticize the soul? it reared this tree-- This broad life and whatever fruit it bears! What matter though I doubt at every pore, Head-doubts, heart-doubts, doubts at my finger's ends, Doubts in the trivial work of every day, Doubts at the very bases of my soul In the grand moments when she probes herself-- If finally I have a life to show, The thing I did, brought out in evidence Against the thing done to me underground By hell and all its brood, for aught I know? I say, whence sprang this? shows it faith or doubt? All's doubt in me; where's break of faith in this? It is the idea, the feeling and the love, God means mankind should strive for and show forth Whatever be the process to that end,-- And not historic knowledge, logic sound, And metaphysical acumen, sure! "What think ye of Christ," friend? when all's done and said, Like you this Christianity or not? It may be false, but will you wish it true? Has it your vote to be so if it can? Trust you an instinct silenced long ago That will break silence and enjoin you love What mortified philosophy is hoarse, And all in vain, with bidding you despise? If you desire faith--then you've faith enough: What else seeks God--nay, what else seek ourselves? You form a notion of me, we'll suppose, On hearsay; it's a favourable one: "But still" (you add), "there was no such good man, Because of contradiction in the facts. One proves, for instance, he was born in Rome, This Blougram; yet throughout the tales of him I see he figures as an Englishman." Well, the two things are reconcilable. But would I rather you discovered that, Subjoining--"Still, what matter though they be? Blougram concerns me nought, born here or there."

Pure faith indeed--you know not what you ask! Naked belief in God the Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent, sears too much The sense of conscious creatures to be borne. It were the seeing him, no flesh shall dare. Some think, Creation's meant to show him forth: I say it's meant to hide him all it can, And that's what all the blessed evil's for. Its use in Time is to environ us, Our breath, our drop of dew, with shield enough Against that sight till we can bear its stress. Under a vertical sun, the exposed brain And lidless eye and disemprisoned heart Less certainly would wither up at once Than mind, confronted with the truth of him. But time and earth case-harden us to live; The feeblest sense is trusted most; the child Feels God a moment, ichors o'er the place, Plays on and grows to be a man like us. With me, faith means perpetual unbelief Kept quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's foot Who stands calm just because he feels it writhe.

. . . . . . .

The sum of all is--yes, my doubt is great, My faith's still greater, then my faith's enough. I have read much, thought much, experienced much, Yet would die rather than avow my fear The Naples' liquefaction may be false, When set to happen by the palace-clock According to the clouds or dinner-time. I hear you recommend, I might at least Eliminate, decrassify my faith Since I adopt it; keeping what I must And leaving what I can--such points as this. I won't--that is, I can't throw one away. Supposing there's no truth in what I hold About the need of trial to man's faith, Still, when you bid me purify the same, To such a process I discern no end. Clearing off one excrescence to see two, There's ever a next in size, now grown as big, That meets the knife: I cut and cut again! First cut the Liquefaction, what comes last But Fichte's clever cut at God himself? Experimentalize on sacred things! I trust nor hand nor eye nor heart nor brain To stop betimes: they all get drunk alike. The first step, I am master not to take.

You'd find the cutting-process to your taste As much as leaving growths of lies unpruned, Nor see more danger in it,--you retort. Your taste's worth mine; but my taste proves more wise When we consider that the steadfast hold On the extreme end of the chain of faith Gives all the advantage, makes the difference With the rough purblind mass we seek to rule: We are their lords, or they are free of us, Just as we tighten or relax our hold. So, other matters equal, we'll revert To the first problem--which, if solved my way And thrown into the balance, turns the scale-- How we may lead a comfortable life, How suit our luggage to the cabin's size.

Of course you are remarking all this time How narrowly and grossly I view life, Respect the creature-comforts, care to rule The masses, and regard complacently "The cabin," in our old phrase. Well, I do. I act for, talk for, live for this world now, As this world prizes action, life and talk: No prejudice to what next world may prove, Whose new laws and requirements, my best pledge To observe then, is that I observe these now, Shall do hereafter what I do meanwhile. Let us concede (gratuitously though) Next life relieves the soul of body, yields Pure spiritual enjoyment: well, my friend, Why lose this life i' the meantime, since its use May be to make the next life more intense?

Do you know, I have often had a dream (Work it up in your next month's article) Of man's poor spirit in its progress, still Losing true life for ever and a day Through ever trying to be and ever being-- In the evolution of successive spheres-- _Before_ its actual sphere and place of life, Halfway into the next, which having reached, It shoots with corresponding foolery Halfway into the next still, on and off! As when a traveller, bound from North to South, Scouts fur in Russia: what's its use in France? In France spurns flannel: where's its need in Spain? In Spain drops cloth, too cumbrous for Algiers! Linen goes next, and last the skin itself, A superfluity at Timbuctoo. When, through his journey, was the fool at ease? I'm at ease now, friend; worldly in this world, I take and like its way of life; I think My brothers, who administer the means, Live better for my comfort--that's good too; And God, if he pronounce upon such life, Approves my service, which is better still. If he keep silence,--why, for you or me Or that brute beast pulled-up in to-day's "Times," What odds is't, save to ourselves, what life we lead?

Turning to the life of Cardinal Wiseman, it is of especial interest in connection with Browning's portrayal of him to observe his earlier years. He was born in Spain, having a Spanish father of English descent and an English mother, all Catholics, as Blougram says, "There's one great form of Christian faith I happened to be born in." His mother took him as an infant, and laid him upon the altar of the Cathedral of Seville, and consecrated him to the service of the Church.

His father having died when he was a tiny boy, his mother took him and his brother to England where he was trained at the Catholic college of Ushaw. From there he went to Rome to study at the English Catholic College there. Later he became Rector of this College. The sketch of Wiseman at this period given by his biographer, Wilfred Ward, is most attractive. "Scattered through his 'Recollections' are interesting impressions left by his student life. While mastering the regular course of scholastic philosophy and theology sufficiently to take his degree with credit, his tastes were not primarily in this direction. The study of Roman antiquities, Christian and Pagan, was congenial to him, as was also the study of Italian art--in which he ultimately became proficient--and of music: and he early devoted himself to the Syriac and Arabic languages. In all these pursuits the enthusiasm and eminence of men living in Rome itself at this era of renaissance was a potent stimulus to work. The hours he set aside for reading were many more than the rule demanded. But the daily walk and the occasional expedition to places of historic interest outside of Rome helped also to store his mind and to fire his imagination." Wiseman writes, himself, of this period, "The life of the student in Rome should be one of unblended enjoyment. His very relaxations become at once subsidiary to his work and yet most delightfully recreative. His daily walks may be through the field of art ... his wanderings along the stream of time ... a thousand memories, a thousand associations accompany him." From this letter and from accounts of him he would seem to have been possessed of a highly imaginative temperament, possibly more artistic than religious. Scholars, linguists, or historians, artists or antiquarians interested him far more than thinkers or theologians. In noting the effects on Wiseman's character of the thoughts and sights of Rome, "it must be observed," writes Ward, "that even the action of directly religious influences brought out his excessive impressionableness. His own inner life was as vivid a pageant to him as the history of the Church. He was liable at this time to the periods of spiritual exaltation--matched, as we shall see later on, by fits of intense despondency--which marked him through life."

This remarkable intellectual activity brought with it doubts of religious truth. "The imaginative delight in Rome as a living witness to the faith entirely left him, and at the same time he was attacked by mental disturbances and doubts of the truth of Christianity. There are contemporary indications, and still plainer accounts in the letters of his later life, of acute suffering from these trials. The study of Biblical criticism, even in the early stages it had then reached, seems immediately to have occasioned them; and the suffering they caused him was aggravated into intense and almost alarming depression by the feebleness of his bodily health." He says, speaking of this phase in his life, "Many and many an hour have I passed, alone, in bitter tears, on the _loggia_ of the English College, when every one was reposing in the afternoon, and I was fighting with subtle thoughts and venomous suggestions of a fiendlike infidelity which I durst not confide to any one, for there was no one that could have sympathized with me. This lasted for years; but it made me study and think, to conquer the plague--for I can hardly call it danger--both for myself and for others. But during the actual struggle the simple submission of faith is the only remedy. Thoughts against faith must be treated at the time like temptations against any other virtue--put away; though in cooler moments they may be safely analyzed and unraveled." Again he wrote of these years as, "Years of solitude, of desolation, years of shattered nerves, dread often of instant insanity, consumptive weakness, of sleepless nights and weary days, and hours of tears which no one witnessed."

"Of the effect of these years of desolation on his character he speaks as being simply invaluable. It completed what Ushaw had begun, the training in patience, self-reliance, and concentration in spite of mental depression. It was amid these trials, he adds, 'that I wrote my "HorÊ SyriacÊ" and collected my notes for the lectures on the "Connection between Science and Revealed Religion" and the "Eucharist." Without this training I should not have thrown myself into the Puseyite controversy at a later period.' Any usefulness which discovered itself in later years he considers the 'result of self-discipline' during his inner conflict. The struggle so absorbed his energies that his early life was passed almost wholly free from the special trials to which that period is liable. He speaks of his youth as in that respect 'almost temptationless.'" This state of mind seemed to last about five years and then he writes in a letter:

"I have felt myself for some months gradually passing into a new state of mind and heart which I can hardly describe, but which I trust is the last stage of mental progress, in which I hope I may much improve, but out of which I trust I may never pass. I could hardly express the calm mild frame of mind in which I have lived; company and society I have almost entirely shunned, or have moved through it as a stranger; hardly a disturbing thought, hardly a grating sensation has crossed my being, of which a great feeling of love seems to have been the principle. Whither, I am inclined to ask myself, does all this tend? Whence does it proceed? I think I could make an interesting history of my mind's religious progress, if I may use a word shockingly perverted by modern fanatics, from the hard dry struggles I used to have when first I commenced to study on my own account, to the settling down into a state of stern conviction, and so after some years to the nobler and more soothing evidences furnished by the grand harmonies and beautiful features of religion, whether considered in contact with lower objects or viewed in her own crystal mirror. I find it curious, too, and interesting to trace the workings of those varied feelings upon my relations to the outward world. I remember how for years I lost all relish for the glorious ceremonies of the Church. I heeded not its venerable monuments and sacred records scattered over the city; or I studied them all with the dry eye of an antiquarian, looking in them for proofs, not for sensations, being ever actively alive to the collection of evidences and demonstrations of religious truth. But now that the time of my probation as I hope it was, is past, I feel as though the freshness of childhood's thoughts had once more returned to me, my heart expands with renewed delight and delicious feelings every time I see the holy objects and practices around me, and I might almost say that I am leading a life of spiritual epicureanism, opening all my senses to a rich draught of religious sensations."

From these glimpses it would appear that Wiseman was a much more sincere man in his religious feeling than he is given credit for by Browning. His belief is with him not a matter of cold, hard calculation as to the attitude which will be, so to speak, the most politic from both a worldly and a spiritual point of view. The beautiful passage beginning "Just when we are safest, there's a sunset touch" etc., comes nearer to the genuine enthusiasm of a Wiseman than any other in the poem. There is an essential difference between the minds of the poet and the man he portrays, which perhaps made it impossible for Browning fully to interpret Wiseman's attitude. Both have religious fervor, but Browning's is born of a consciousness of God revealed directly to himself, while Wiseman's consciousness of God comes to him primarily through the authority of the Church, that is through generations of authoritative believers the first of whom experienced the actuality of Revelation. Hundreds and thousands of people have minds of this caliber. They cannot see a truth direct for themselves, they must be told by some person clothed in authority that this or that is true or false. To Wiseman the beauty of his own form of religion with its special dogmas made so strong an appeal, that, since he could only believe through authority, under any circumstances, it was natural to him to adopt the particular form that gave him the most satisfaction. Proofs detrimental to belief do not worry long with doubts such a mind, because the authority they depend on is not the authority of knowledge, but the authority of belief. This comes out clearly enough in one of Wiseman's letters in which after enumerating a number of proofs brought forward by various scholars tending to cast discredit on the dogmas of the Church, he triumphantly exclaims, "And yet, who that has an understanding to judge, is driven for a moment from the holdings of faith by such comparisons as these!"

Upon looking through his writings there will always be found in his expression of belief, I think, that ring of true sincerity as well as what I should call an intense artistic delight in the essential beauty of his religion.

As to Blougram's argument that he believed in living in the world while he was in it, Wiseman's life was certainly not that of a worldling alone, though he is described by one person as being "a genuine priest, very good looking and able bodied, and with much apparent practice in the world." He was far too much of a student and worker to be altogether so worldly-minded as Browning represents him.

His chief interest for Englishmen is his connection with the Tractarian Movement. The wish of his soul was to aid the Catholic Revival in England, and with that end in view he visited England in 1835. Two years before, the movement at Oxford, known as the Tractarian Movement had begun. The opinions of the men in this movement were, as every one knows, printed in a series of ninety tracts of which Newman wrote twenty-four. It was an outgrowth of the conditions of the time. To sum up in the words of Withrow,[3] "The Church of England had distinctly lost ground as a directing and controlling force in the nation. The most thoughtful and earnest minds in the Church felt the need of a great religious awakening and an aggressive movement to regain its lost influence." As Dean Church describes them, the two characteristic forms of Christianity in the Church of England were the High Church, and the Evangelicals, or Low Church." Of the former he says: "Its better members were highly cultivated, benevolent men, intolerant of irregularities both of doctrine and life, whose lives were governed by an unostentatious but solid and unfaltering piety, ready to burst forth on occasion into fervid devotion. Its worse members were jobbers and hunters after preferment, pluralists who built fortunes and endowed families out of the Church, or country gentlemen in orders, who rode to hounds and shot and danced and farmed, and often did worse things."

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Religious Progress of the Century.

But at Oxford was a group of men of intense moral earnestness including Newman, Pusey, Keble, Arnold, Maurice, Kingsley, and others, who began an active propaganda of the new or revised doctrines of the Oxford Movement.

"The success of the Tracts," says Molesworth, "was much greater, and the outcry against them far louder and fiercer, than their authors had expected. The Tracts were at first small and simple, but became large and learned theological treatises. Changes, too, came over the views of some of the writers. Doctrines which probably would have shocked them at first were put forward with a recklessness which success had increased. Alarm was excited, remonstrances stronger and stronger were addressed to them. They were attacked as Romanizing in their tendency."

"The effect of such writing was two-fold[4]--the public were dismayed and certain members of the Tractarian party avowed their intention of becoming Romanists. So decided was the setting of the tide towards Rome that Newman made a vigorous effort to turn it by his famous Tract No. 90. In this he endeavored to show that it was possible to interpret the Thirty-nine Articles in the interest of Roman Catholicism. This tract aroused a storm of indignation. The violent controversy which it occasioned led to the discontinuance of the series."

FOOTNOTES:

[4] See Withrow.

Such in little was this remarkable movement. When Tract No. 90 appeared Wiseman had been in England for some time, and had been a strong influence in taking many thinking men in the direction of Rome. His lectures and discourses upon his first visit to England had attracted remarkable attention. The account runs by one who attended his lectures to Catholics and Protestants: "Society in this country was impressed, and listened almost against its will, and listened not displeased. Here was a young Roman priest, fresh from the center of Catholicism, who showed himself master, not only of the intricacies of polemical discussion but of the amenities of civilized life. The spacious church of Moorfields was thronged on every evening of Dr. Wiseman's appearance. Many persons of position and education were converted, and all departed with abated prejudice, and with very different notions about Catholicism from those with which they had been prepossessed by their education." Wiseman, himself, wrote, "I had the consolation of witnessing the patient and edifying attention of a crowded audience, many of whom stood for two hours without any symptom of impatience."

The great triumph for Wiseman, however, was when, shortly after Tract 90, Newman, "a man," described "in many ways, the most remarkable that England has seen during the century, perhaps the most remarkable whom the English Church has produced in any century," went over to the Church of Rome and was confirmed by Wiseman. Others followed his example and by 1853 as many as four hundred clergymen and laity had become Roman Catholics.

The controversies and discussions of that time, it must be remembered, were more upon the dogmas of the church than upon what we should call to-day the essential truths of religion. Yet, to a certain order of mind dogmas seem important truths. There are those whose religious attitude cannot be preserved without belief in dogmas, and the advantage of the Catholic Church is that it holds firmly to its dogmas, come what may. It was expected, however, that this Romeward Movement would arouse intense antipathy. "The arguments by which it was justified were considered, in many cases, disingenuous, if not Jesuitical."

In opposition of this sort we come nearer to Browning's attitude of mind. Because such arguments as Wiseman and the Tractarians used could not convince him, he takes the ordinary ground of the opposition, that in using such arguments they must be insincere, and they must be perfectly conscious of their insincerity. Still, in spite of the fact that Browning's mind could not get inside of Blougram's, he shows that he has some sympathy for the Bishop in the close of the poem where he says, "He said true things but called them by wrong names." Raise Blougram's philosophy to the plane of the mysticism of a Browning, and the arguments for belief would be much the same but the _counters_ in the arguments would become symbols instead of dogmas.

In "Christmas-Eve and Easter Day," Browning becomes the true critic of the nineteenth-century religious movements. He passes in review in a series of dramatic pictures the three most diverse modes of religious thought of the century. The dissenter's view is symbolized by a scene in a very humble chapel in England, the Catholic view by a vision of high mass at St. Peter's and the Agnostic view by a vision of a lecture by a learned German professor,--while the view of the modern mystic who remains religious in the face of all destructive criticism is shown in the speaker of the poem. The intuitional, aspiring side of his nature is symbolized by the vision of Christ that appears to him, while the intensity of its power fluctuates as he either holds fast or lets go the garment of Christ. Opposed to his intuitional side is his reasoning side.

Possibly the picture of the dissenting chapel is exaggeratedly humble, though if we suppose it to be a Methodist Chapel, it may be true to life, as Methodism was the form of religion which made its appeal to the lowest classes. Indeed, at the time of its first successes, it was the saving grace of England. "But for the moral antiseptic," writes Withrow, "furnished by Methodism, and the revival of religion in all the churches which it produced, the history of England would have been far other than it was. It would probably have been swept into the maelstrom of revolution and shared the political and religious convulsions of the neighboring nation," that is the French Revolution.

"But Methodism had greatly changed the condition of the people. It had rescued vast multitudes from ignorance and barbarism, and raised them from almost the degradation of beasts to the condition of men and the fellowship of saints. The habits of thrift and industry which it fostered led to the accumulation, if not of wealth, at least to that of a substantial competence; and built up that safeguard of the Commonwealth, a great, intelligent, industrious, religious Middle-Class in the community."

After the death of Wesley came various divisions in the Methodist Church; it has so flexible a system that it may be adapted to very varied needs of humanity, and in that has consisted its great power. The mission of the church was originally to the poor and lowly, but "It has won for itself in spite of scorn and persecution," says Dr. Schˆll, "a place of power in the State and church of Great Britain."

A scornful attitude is vividly brought before us in the opening of this poem, to be succeeded later by a more charitable point of view.

CHRISTMAS-EVE

I

Out of the little chapel I burst Into the fresh night-air again. Five minutes full, I waited first In the doorway, to escape the rain That drove in gusts down the common's centre At the edge of which the chapel stands, Before I plucked up heart to enter. Heaven knows how many sorts of hands Reached past me, groping for the latch Of the inner door that hung on catch More obstinate the more they fumbled, Till, giving way at last with a scold Of the crazy hinge, in squeezed or tumbled One sheep more to the rest in fold, And left me irresolute, standing sentry In the sheepfold's lath-and-plaster entry, Six feet long by three feet wide, Partitioned off from the vast inside-- I blocked up half of it at least. No remedy; the rain kept driving. They eyed me much as some wild beast, That congregation, still arriving, Some of them by the main road, white A long way past me into the night, Skirting the common, then diverging; Not a few suddenly emerging From the common's self thro' the paling-gaps, --They house in the gravel-pits perhaps, Where the road stops short with its safeguard border Of lamps, as tired of such disorder;-- But the most turned in yet more abruptly From a certain squalid knot of alleys, Where the town's bad blood once slept corruptly, Which now the little chapel rallies And leads into day again,--its priestliness Lending itself to hide their beastliness So cleverly (thanks in part to the mason), And putting so cheery a whitewashed face on Those neophytes too much in lack of it, That, where you cross the common as I did, And meet the party thus presided, "Mount Zion" with Love-lane at the back of it, They front you as little disconcerted As, bound for the hills, her fate averted, And her wicked people made to mind him, Lot might have marched with Gomorrah behind him.

II

Well, from the road, the lanes or the common In came the flock: the fat weary woman, Panting and bewildered, down-clapping Her umbrella with a mighty report, Grounded it by me, wry and flapping, A wreck of whalebones; then, with a snort, Like a startled horse, at the interloper (Who humbly knew himself improper, But could not shrink up small enough) --Round to the door, and in,--the gruff Hinge's invariable scold Making my very blood run cold. Prompt in the wake of her, up-pattered On broken clogs, the many-tattered Little old-faced peaking sister-turned-mother Of the sickly babe she tried to smother Somehow up, with its spotted face, From the cold, on her breast, the one warm place; She too must stop, wring the poor ends dry Of a draggled shawl, and add thereby Her tribute to the door-mat, sopping Already from my own clothes' dropping, Which yet she seemed to grudge I should stand on: Then, stooping down to take off her pattens, She bore them defiantly, in each hand one, Planted together before her breast And its babe, as good as a lance in rest. Close on her heels, the dingy satins Of a female something, past me flitted, With lips as much too white, as a streak Lay far too red on each hollow cheek; And it seemed the very door-hinge pitied All that was left of a woman once, Holding at least its tongue for the nonce. Then a tall yellow man, like the _Penitent Thief_, With his jaw bound up in a handkerchief, And eyelids screwed together tight, Led himself in by some inner light. And, except from him, from each that entered, I got the same interrogation-- "What, you the alien, you have ventured To take with us, the elect, your station? A carer for none of it, a _Gallio_!"-- Thus, plain as print, I read the glance At a common prey, in each countenance As of huntsman giving his hounds the tallyho. And, when the door's cry drowned their wonder, The draught, it always sent in shutting, Made the flame of the single tallow candle In the cracked square lantern I stood under, Shoot its blue lip at me, rebutting As it were, the luckless cause of scandal: I verily fancied the zealous light (In the chapel's secret, too!) for spite Would shudder itself clean off the wick, With the airs of a Saint John's Candlestick. There was no standing it much longer. "Good folks," thought I, as resolve grew stronger, "This way you perform the Grand-Inquisitor When the weather sends you a chance visitor? You are the men, and wisdom shall die with you, And none of the old Seven Churches vie with you! But still, despite the pretty perfection To which you carry your trick of exclusiveness, And, taking God's word under wise protection, Correct its tendency to diffusiveness, And bid one reach it over hot plough-shares,-- Still, as I say, though you've found salvation, If should choose to cry, as now, 'Shares!'-- See if the best of you bars me my ration! I prefer, if you please, for my expounder Of the laws of the feast, the feast's own Founder; Mine's the same right with your poorest and sickliest Supposing I don the marriage vestiment: So, shut your mouth and open your Testament, And carve me my portion at your quickliest!" Accordingly, as a shoemaker's lad With wizened face in want of soap, And wet apron wound round his waist like a rope, (After stopping outside, for his cough was bad, To get the fit over, poor gentle creature, And so avoid disturbing the preacher) --Passed in, I sent my elbow spikewise At the shutting door, and entered likewise, Received the hinge's accustomed greeting, And crossed the threshold's magic pentacle, And found myself in full conventicle, --To wit, in Zion Chapel Meeting, On the Christmas-Eve of 'Forty-nine, Which, calling its flock to their special clover, Found all assembled and one sheep over, Whose lot, as the weather pleased, was mine.

III

I very soon had enough of it. The hot smell and the human noises, And my neighbor's coat, the greasy cuff of it, Were a pebble-stone that a child's hand poises, Compared with the pig-of-lead-like pressure Of the preaching man's immense stupidity, As he poured his doctrine forth, full measure, To meet his audience's avidity. You needed not the wit of the Sibyl To guess the cause of it all, in a twinkling: No sooner our friend had got an inkling Of treasure hid in the Holy Bible, (Whene'er 'twas the thought first struck him, How death, at unawares, might duck him Deeper than the grave, and quench The gin-shop's light in hell's grim drench) Than he handled it so, in fine irreverence, As to hug the book of books to pieces: And, a patchwork of chapters and texts in severance, Not improved by the private dog's-ears and creases, Having clothed his own soul with, he'd fain see equipt yours,-- So tossed you again your Holy Scriptures. And you picked them up, in a sense, no doubt: Nay, had but a single face of my neighbors Appeared to suspect that the preacher's labors Were help which the world could be saved without, 'Tis odds but I might have borne in quiet A qualm or two at my spiritual diet, Or (who can tell?) perchance even mustered Somewhat to urge in behalf of the sermon: But the flock sat on, divinely flustered, Sniffing, methought, its dew of Hermon With such content in every snuffle, As the devil inside us loves to ruffle. My old fat woman purred with pleasure, And thumb round thumb went twirling faster, While she, to his periods keeping measure, Maternally devoured the pastor. The man with the handkerchief untied it, Showed us a horrible wen inside it, Gave his eyelids yet another screwing, And rocked himself as the woman was doing. The shoemaker's lad, discreetly choking, Kept down his cough. 'Twas too provoking! My gorge rose at the nonsense and stuff of it; So, saying like Eve when she plucked the apple, "I wanted a taste, and now there's enough of it," I flung out of the little chapel.

IV

There was a lull in the rain, a lull In the wind too; the moon was risen, And would have shone out pure and full, But for the ramparted cloud-prison, Block on block built up in the West, For what purpose the wind knows best, Who changes his mind continually. And the empty other half of the sky Seemed in its silence as if it knew What, any moment, might look through A chance gap in that fortress massy:-- Through its fissures you got hints Of the flying moon, by the shifting tints, Now, a dull lion-color, now, brassy Burning to yellow, and whitest yellow, Like furnace-smoke just ere flames bellow, All a-simmer with intense strain To let her through,--then blank again, At the hope of her appearance failing. Just by the chapel, a break in the railing Shows a narrow path directly across; 'Tis ever dry walking there, on the moss-- Besides, you go gently all the way uphill. I stooped under and soon felt better; My head grew lighter, my limbs more supple, As I walked on, glad to have slipt the fetter. My mind was full of the scene I had left, That placid flock, that pastor vociferant, --How this outside was pure and different! The sermon, now--what a mingled weft Of good and ill! Were either less, Its fellow had colored the whole distinctly; But alas for the excellent earnestness, And the truths, quite true if stated succinctly, But as surely false, in their quaint presentment, However to pastor and flock's contentment! Say rather, such truths looked false to your eyes, With his provings and parallels twisted and twined, Till how could you know them, grown double their size In the natural fog of the good man's mind, Like yonder spots of our roadside lamps, Haloed about with the common's damps? Truth remains true, the fault's in the prover; The zeal was good, and the aspiration; And yet, and yet, yet, fifty times over, Pharaoh received no demonstration, By his Baker's dream of Baskets Three, Of the doctrine of the Trinity,-- Although, as our preacher thus embellished it, Apparently his hearers relished it With so unfeigned a gust--who knows if They did not prefer our friend to Joseph? But so it is everywhere, one way with all of them! These people have really felt, no doubt, A something, the motion they style the _Call_ of them; And this is their method of bringing about, By a mechanism of words and tones, (So many texts in so many groans) A sort of reviving and reproducing, More or less perfectly, (who can tell?) The mood itself, which strengthens by using; And how that happens, I understand well. A tune was born in my head last week, Out of the thump-thump and shriek-shriek Of the train, as I came by it, up from Manchester; And when, next week, I take it back again. My head will sing to the engine's clack again, While it only makes my neighbor's haunches stir, --Finding no dormant musical sprout In him, as in me, to be jolted out. 'Tis the taught already that profits by teaching; He gets no more from the railway's preaching Than, from this preacher who does the rail's office, I: Whom therefore the flock cast a jealous eye on. Still, why paint over their door "Mount Zion," To which all flesh shall come, saith the prophecy?

The reasoning which follows upon this is characteristic of Browning. Perceiving everywhere in the world transcendent power, and knowing love in little, from that transcendent love may be deduced. His reasoning finally brings him to a state of vision. His subjective intuitions become palpable objective symbols, a not infrequent occurrence in highly wrought and sensitive minds.

V

But wherefore be harsh on a single case? After how many modes, this Christmas-Eve, Does the self-same weary thing take place? The same endeavor to make you believe, And with much the same effect, no more: Each method abundantly convincing, As I say, to those convinced before, But scarce to be swallowed without wincing By the not-as-yet-convinced. For me, I have my own church equally: And in this church my faith sprang first! (I said, as I reached the rising ground, And the wind began again, with a burst Of rain in my face, and a glad rebound From the heart beneath, as if, God speeding me, I entered his church-door, nature leading me) --In youth I looked to these 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. You know what I mean: God's all, man's nought: But also, God, whose pleasure brought Man into being, stands away As it were a handbreadth off, to give Room for the newly-made to live, And look at him from a place apart, And use his gifts of brain and heart, Given, indeed, but to keep for ever. Who speaks of man, then, must not sever Man's very elements from man, Saying, "But all is God's"--whose plan Was to create man and then leave him Able, his own word saith, to grieve him, But able to glorify him too, As a mere machine could never do, That prayed or praised, all unaware Of its fitness for aught but praise and prayer, Made perfect as a thing of course. Man, therefore, stands on his own stock Of love and power as a pin-point rock: And, looking to God who ordained divorce Of the rock from his boundless continent, Sees, in his power made evident, Only excess by a million-fold O'er the power God gave man in the mould. For, note: man's hand, first formed to carry A few pounds' weight, when taught to marry Its strength with an engine's, lifts a mountain, --Advancing in power by one degree; And why count steps through eternity? But love is the ever-springing fountain: Man may enlarge or narrow his bed For the water's play, but the water-head-- How can he multiply or reduce it? As easy create it, as cause it to cease; He may profit by it, or abuse it, But 'tis not a thing to bear increase As power does: be love less or more In the heart of man, he keeps it shut Or opes it wide, as he pleases, but Love's sum remains what it was before. 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 for me, I must go on learning endlessly) 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, Seeing 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, O God, and in thy light retrace How in all I loved here, still wast thou! Whom pressing to, then, as I fain would now, I 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! Oh, let men keep their ways Of seeking thee in a narrow shrine-- Be this my way! And this is mine!

VI

For lo, what think you? suddenly The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky Received at once the full fruition Of the moon's consummate apparition. The black cloud-barricade was riven, Ruined beneath her feet, and driven Deep in the West; while, bare and breathless, North and South and East lay ready For a glorious thing that, dauntless, deathless, Sprang across them and stood steady. 'Twas a moon-rainbow, vast and perfect, From heaven to heaven extending, perfect As the mother-moon's self, full in face. It rose, distinctly at the base With its seven proper colors chorded, Which still, in the rising, were compressed, Until at last they coalesced, And supreme the spectral creature lorded In a triumph of whitest white,-- Above which intervened the night. But above night too, like only the next, The second of a wondrous sequence, Reaching in rare and rarer frequence, Till the heaven of heavens were circumflexed, Another rainbow rose, a mightier, Fainter, flushier and flightier,-- Rapture dying along its verge. Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge, Whose, from the straining topmost dark, On to the keystone of that arc?

VII

This sight was shown me, there and then,-- Me, one out of a world of men, Singled forth, as the chance might hap To another if, in a thunderclap Where I heard noise and you saw flame, Some one man knew God called his name. For me, I think I said, "Appear! Good were it to be ever here. If thou wilt, let me build to thee Service-tabernacles three, Where, forever in thy presence, In ecstatic acquiescence, Far alike from thriftless learning And ignorance's undiscerning, I may worship and remain!" Thus at the show above me, gazing With upturned eyes, I felt my brain Glutted with the glory, blazing Throughout its whole mass, over and under Until at length it burst asunder And out of it bodily there streamed, The too-much glory, as it seemed, Passing from out me to the ground, Then palely serpentining round Into the dark with mazy error.

VIII

All at once I looked up with terror. He was there. He himself with his human air. On the narrow pathway, just before. I saw the back of him, no more-- He had left the chapel, then, as I. I forgot all about the sky. No face: only the sight Of a sweepy garment, vast and white, With a hem that I could recognize. I felt terror, no surprise; My mind filled with the cataract, At one bound of the mighty fact. "I remember, he did say Doubtless that, to this world's end, Where two or three should meet and pray, He would be in the midst, their friend; Certainly he was there with them!" And my pulses leaped for joy Of the golden thought without alloy, That I saw his very vesture's hem. Then rushed the blood back, cold and clear, With a fresh enhancing shiver of fear; And I hastened, cried out while I pressed To the salvation of the vest, "But not so, Lord! It cannot be That thou, indeed, art leaving me-- Me, that have despised thy friends! Did my heart make no amends? Thou art the love _of God_--above His power, didst hear me place his love, And that was leaving the world for thee. Therefore thou must not turn from me As I had chosen the other part! Folly and pride o'ercame my heart. Our best is bad, nor bears thy test; Still, it should be our very best. I thought it best that thou, the spirit, Be worshipped in spirit and in truth, And in beauty, as even we require it-- Not in the forms burlesque, uncouth, I left but now, as scarcely fitted For thee: I knew not what I pitied. But, all I felt there, right or wrong, What is it to thee, who curest sinning? Am I not weak as thou art strong? I have looked to thee from the beginning, Straight up to thee through all the world Which, like an idle scroll, lay furled To nothingness on either side: And since the time thou wast descried, Spite of the weak heart, so have I Lived ever, and so fain would die, Living and dying, thee before! But if thou leavest me----"

IX

Less or more, I suppose that I spoke thus. When,--have mercy, Lord, on us! The whole face turned upon me full. And I spread myself beneath it, As when the bleacher spreads, to seethe it In the cleansing sun, his wool,-- Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness Some defiled, discolored web-- So lay I, saturate with brightness. And when the flood appeared to ebb, Lo, I was walking, light and swift, With my senses settling fast and steadying, But my body caught up in the whirl and drift Of the vesture's amplitude, still eddying On, just before me, still to be followed, As it carried me after with its motion: What shall I say?--as a path were hollowed And a man went weltering through the ocean, Sucked along in the flying wake Of the luminous water-snake. Darkness and cold were cloven, as through I passed, upborne yet walking too. And I turned to myself at intervals,-- "So he said, so it befalls. God who registers the cup Of mere cold water, for his sake To a disciple rendered up, Disdains not his own thirst to slake At the poorest love was ever offered: And because my heart I proffered, With true love trembling at the brim, He suffers me to follow him For ever, my own way,--dispensed From seeking to be influenced By all the less immediate ways That earth, in worships manifold, Adopts to reach, by prayer and praise, The garment's hem, which, lo, I hold!"

The vision of high mass at St. Peters in Rome is the antipode of the little Methodist Chapel. The Catholic Church is the church of all others which has gathered about itself the marvels of art in sculpture, painting and music. As the chapel depressed with its ugliness, the great cathedral entrances with its beauty.

X

And so we crossed the world and stopped. For where am I, in city or plain, Since I am 'ware of the world again? And what is this that rises propped With pillars of prodigious girth? Is it really on the earth, This miraculous Dome of God? Has the angel's measuring-rod Which numbered cubits, gem from gem, 'Twixt the gates of the New Jerusalem, Meted it out,--and what he meted, Have the sons of men completed? --Binding, ever as he bade, Columns in the colonnade With arms wide open to embrace The entry of the human race To the breast of ... what is it, yon building, Ablaze in front, all paint and gilding, With marble for brick, and stones of price For garniture of the edifice? Now I see; it is no dream; It stands there and it does not seem; For ever, in pictures, thus it looks, And thus I have read of it in books Often in England, leagues away, And wondered how these fountains play, Growing up eternally Each to a musical water-tree, Whose blossoms drop, a glittering boon, Before my eyes, in the light of the moon, To the granite lavers underneath. Liar and dreamer in your teeth! I, the sinner that speak to you, Was in Rome this night, and stood, and knew Both this and more. For see, for see, The dark is rent, mine eye is free To pierce the crust of the outer wall, And I view inside, and all there, all, As the swarming hollow of a hive, The whole Basilica alive! Men in the chancel, body and nave, Men on the pillars' architrave, Men on the statues, men on the tombs With popes and kings in their porphyry wombs, All famishing in expectation Of the main-altar's consummation. For see, for see, the rapturous moment Approaches, and earth's best endowment Blends with heaven's; the taper-fires Pant up, the winding brazen spires Heave loftier yet the baldachin; The incense-gaspings, long kept in, Suspire in clouds; the organ blatant Holds his breath and grovels latent, As if God's hushing finger grazed him, (Like Behemoth when he praised him) At the silver bell's shrill tinkling, Quick cold drops of terror sprinkling On the sudden pavement strewed With faces of the multitude. Earth breaks up, time drops away, In flows heaven, with its new day Of endless life, when He who trod, Very man and very God, This earth in weakness, shame and pain, Dying the death whose signs remain Up yonder on the accursed tree,-- Shall come again, no more to be Of captivity the thrall, But the one God, All in all, King of kings, Lord of lords, As His servant John received the words, "I died, and live for evermore!"

XI

Yet I was left outside the door. "Why sit I here on the threshold-stone Left till He return, alone Save for the garment's extreme fold Abandoned still to bless my hold?" My reason, to my doubt, replied, As if a book were opened wide, And at a certain page I traced Every record undefaced, Added by successive years,-- The harvestings of truth's stray ears Singly gleaned, and in one sheaf Bound together for belief. Yes, I said--that he will go And sit with these in turn, I know. Their faith's heart beats, though her head swims Too giddily to guide her limbs, Disabled by their palsy-stroke From propping mine. Though Rome's gross yoke Drops off, no more to be endured, Her teaching is not so obscured By errors and perversities, That no truth shines athwart the lies: And he, whose eye detects a spark Even where, to man's the whole seems dark, May well see flame where each beholder Acknowledges the embers smoulder. But I, a mere man, fear to quit The clue God gave me as most fit To guide my footsteps through life's maze, Because himself discerns all ways Open to reach him: I, a man Able to mark where faith began To swerve aside, till from its summit Judgment drops her damning plummet, Pronouncing such a fatal space Departed from the founder's base: He will not bid me enter too, But rather sit, as now I do, Awaiting his return outside. --'Twas thus my reason straight replied And joyously I turned, and pressed The garment's skirt upon my breast, Until, afresh its light suffusing me, My heart cried--What has been abusing me That I should wait here lonely and coldly, Instead of rising, entering boldly, Baring truth's face, and letting drift Her veils of lies as they choose to shift? Do these men praise him? I will raise My voice up to their point of praise! I see the error; but above The scope of error, see the love.-- Oh, love of those first Christian days! --Fanned so soon into a blaze, From the spark preserved by the trampled sect, That the antique sovereign Intellect Which then sat ruling in the world, Like a change in dreams, was hurled From the throne he reigned upon: You looked up and he was gone. Gone, his glory of the pen! --Love, with Greece and Rome in ken, Bade her scribes abhor the trick Of poetry and rhetoric, And exult with hearts set free, In blessed imbecility Scrawled, perchance, on some torn sheet Leaving Sallust incomplete. Gone, his pride of sculptor, painter! --Love, while able to acquaint her While the thousand statues yet Fresh from chisel, pictures wet From brush, she saw on every side, Chose rather with an infant's pride To frame those portents which impart Such unction to true Christian Art. Gone, music too! The air was stirred By happy wings: Terpander's bird (That, when the cold came, fled away) Would tarry not the wintry day,-- As more-enduring sculpture must, Till filthy saints rebuked the gust With which they chanced to get a sight Of some dear naked Aphrodite They glanced a thought above the toes of, By breaking zealously her nose off. Love, surely, from that music's lingering, Might have filched her organ-fingering, Nor chosen rather to set prayings To hog-grunts, praises to horse-neighings. Love was the startling thing, the new: Love was the all-sufficient too; And seeing that, you see the rest: As a babe can find its mother's breast As well in darkness as in light, Love shut our eyes, and all seemed right. True, the world's eyes are open now: --Less need for me to disallow Some few that keep Love's zone unbuckled, Peevish as ever to be suckled, Lulled by the same old baby-prattle With intermixture of the rattle, When she would have them creep, stand steady Upon their feet, or walk already, Not to speak of trying to climb. I will be wise another time, And not desire a wall between us, When next I see a church-roof cover So many species of one genus, All with foreheads bearing _lover_ Written above the earnest eyes of them; All with breasts that beat for beauty, Whether sublimed, to the surprise of them, In noble daring, steadfast duty, The heroic in passion, or in action,-- Or, lowered for sense's satisfaction, To the mere outside of human creatures, Mere perfect form and faultless features. What? with all Rome here, whence to levy Such contributions to their appetite, With women and men in a gorgeous bevy, They take, as it were, a padlock, clap it tight On their southern eyes, restrained from feeding On the glories of their ancient reading, On the beauties of their modern singing, On the wonders of the builder's bringing, On the majesties of Art around them,-- And, all these loves, late struggling incessant, When faith has at last united and bound them, They offer up to God for a present? Why, I will, on the whole, be rather proud of it,-- And, only taking the act in reference To the other recipients who might have allowed it, I will rejoice that God had the preference.

XII

So I summed up my new resolves: Too much love there can never be. And where the intellect devolves Its function on love exclusively, I, a man who possesses both, Will accept the provision, nothing loth, --Will feast my love, then depart elsewhere, That my intellect may find its share.

In his next experience the speaker learns what the effect of scientific criticism has been upon historical Christianity.

The warfare between science and religion forms one of the most fascinating and terrible chapters in the annals of the development of the human mind. About the middle of the nineteenth century the war became general. It was no longer a question of a skirmish over this or that particular discovery in science which would cause some long-cherished dogma to totter; it was a full battle all along the line, and now that the smoke has cleared away, it is safe to say that science sees, on the one hand, it cannot conquer religion, and religion sees, on the other, it cannot conquer science. What each has done is to strip the other of its untruths, leaving its truths to grow by the light each holds up for the other. Together they advance toward the knowledge of the Most High.

XIII

No sooner said than out in the night! My heart beat lighter and more light: And still, as before, I was walking swift, With my senses settling fast and steadying, But my body caught up in the whirl and drift Of the vesture's amplitude, still eddying On just before me, still to be followed, As it carried me after with its motion, --What shall I say?--as a path were hollowed, And a man went weltering through the ocean, Sucked along in the flying wake Of the luminous water-snake.

XIV

Alone! I am left alone once more-- (Save for the garment's extreme fold Abandoned still to bless my hold) Alone, beside the entrance-door Of a sort of temple,--perhaps a college, --Like nothing I ever saw before At home in England, to my knowledge. The tall old quaint irregular town! It may be ... though which, I can't affirm ... any Of the famous middle-age towns of Germany; And this flight of stairs where I sit down, Is it Halle, Weimar, Cassel, Frankfort Or Gˆttingen, I have to thank for 't? It may be Gˆttingen,--most likely. Through the open door I catch obliquely Glimpses of a lecture-hall; And not a bad assembly neither, Ranged decent and symmetrical On benches, waiting what's to see there; Which, holding still by the vesture's hem, I also resolve to see with them, Cautious this time how I suffer to slip The chance of joining in fellowship With any that call themselves his friends; As these folk do, I have a notion. But hist--a buzzing and emotion! All settle themselves, the while ascends By the creaking rail to the lecture-desk, Step by step, deliberate Because of his cranium's over-freight, Three parts sublime to one grotesque, If I have proved an accurate guesser, The hawk-nosed high-cheek-boned Professor. I felt at once as if there ran A shoot of love from my heart to the man-- That sallow virgin-minded studious Martyr to mild enthusiasm, As he uttered a kind of cough-preludious That woke my sympathetic spasm, (Beside some spitting that made me sorry) And stood, surveying his auditory With a wan pure look, well nigh celestial,-- Those blue eyes had survived so much! While, under the foot they could not smutch, Lay all the fleshly and the bestial. Over he bowed, and arranged his notes, Till the auditory's clearing of throats Was done with, died into a silence; And, when each glance was upward sent, Each bearded mouth composed intent, And a pin might be heard drop half a mile hence,-- He pushed back higher his spectacles, Let the eyes stream out like lamps from cells, And giving his head of hair--a hake Of undressed tow, for color and quantity-- One rapid and impatient shake, (As our own Young England adjusts a jaunty tie When about to impart, on mature digestion, Some thrilling view of the surplice-question) --The Professor's grave voice, sweet though hoarse, Broke into his Christmas-Eve discourse.

XV

And he began it by observing How reason dictated that men Should rectify the natural swerving, By a reversion, now and then, To the well-heads of knowledge, few And far away, whence rolling grew The life-stream wide whereat we drink, Commingled, as we needs must think, With waters alien to the source; To do which, aimed this eve's discourse; Since, where could be a fitter time For tracing backward to its prime This Christianity, this lake, This reservoir, whereat we slake, From one or other bank, our thirst? So, he proposed inquiring first Into the various sources whence This Myth of Christ is derivable; Demanding from the evidence, (Since plainly no such life was liveable) How these phenomena should class? Whether 'twere best opine Christ was, Or never was at all, or whether He was and was not, both together-- It matters little for the name, So the idea be left the same. Only, for practical purpose's sake, 'Twas obviously as well to take The popular story,--understanding How the ineptitude of the time, And the penman's prejudice, expanding Fact into fable fit for the clime, Had, by slow and sure degrees, translated it Into this myth, this Individuum,-- Which, when reason had strained and abated it Of foreign matter, left, for residuum, A man!--a right true man, however, Whose work was worthy a man's endeavor: Work, that gave warrant almost sufficient To his disciples, for rather believing He was just omnipotent and omniscient, As it gives to us, for as frankly receiving His word, their tradition,--which, though it meant Something entirely different From all that those who only heard it, In their simplicity thought and averred it, Had yet a meaning quite as respectable: For, among other doctrines delectable, Was he not surely the first to insist on The natural sovereignty of our race?-- Here the lecturer came to a pausing-place. And while his cough, like a drouthy piston, Tried to dislodge the husk that grew to him, I seized the occasion of bidding adieu to him, The vesture still within my hand.

XVI

I could interpret its command. This time he would not bid me enter The exhausted air-bell of the Critic. Truth's atmosphere may grow mephitic When Papist struggles with Dissenter, Impregnating its pristine clarity, --One, by his daily fare's vulgarity, Its gust of broken meat and garlic; --One, by his soul's too-much presuming To turn the frankincense's fuming And vapors of the candle starlike Into the cloud her wings she buoys on. Each, that thus sets the pure air seething, May poison it for healthy breathing-- But the Critic leaves no air to poison; Pumps out with ruthless ingenuity Atom by atom, and leaves you--vacuity. Thus much of Christ does he reject? And what retain? His intellect? What is it I must reverence duly? Poor intellect for worship, truly, Which tells me simply what was told (If mere morality, bereft Of the God in Christ, be all that's left) Elsewhere by voices manifold; With this advantage, that the stater Made nowise the important stumble Of adding, he, the sage and humble, Was also one with the Creator. You urge Christ's followers' simplicity: But how does shifting blame, evade it? Have wisdom's words no more felicity? The stumbling-block, his speech--who laid it? How comes it that for one found able To sift the truth of it from fable, Millions believe it to the letter? Christ's goodness, then--does that fare better? Strange goodness, which upon the score Of being goodness, the mere due Of man to fellow-man, much more To God,--should take another view Of its possessor's privilege, And bid him rule his race! You pledge Your fealty to such rule? What, all-- From heavenly John and Attic Paul, And that brave weather-battered Peter, Whose stout faith only stood completer For buffets, sinning to be pardoned, As, more his hands hauled nets, they hardened,-- All, down to you, the man of men, Professing here at Gˆttingen, Compose Christ's flock! They, you and I, Are sheep of a good man! And why? The goodness,--how did he acquire it? Was it self-gained, did God inspire it? Choose which; then tell me, on what ground Should its possessor dare propound His claim to rise o'er us an inch? Were goodness all some man's invention, Who arbitrarily made mention What we should follow, and whence flinch,-- What qualities might take the style Of right and wrong,--and had such guessing Met with as general acquiescing As graced the alphabet erewhile, When A got leave an Ox to be, No Camel (quoth the Jews) like G, For thus inventing thing and title Worship were that man's fit requital. But if the common conscience must Be ultimately judge, adjust Its apt name to each quality Already known,--I would decree Worship for such mere demonstration And simple work of nomenclature, Only the day I praised, not nature, But Harvey, for the circulation. I would praise such a Christ, with pride And joy, that he, as none beside, Had taught us how to keep the mind God gave him, as God gave his kind, Freer than they from fleshly taint: I would call such a Christ our Saint, As I declare our Poet, him Whose insight makes all others dim: A thousand poets pried at life, And only one amid the strife Rose to be Shakespeare: each shall take His crown, I'd say, for the world's sake-- Though some objected--"Had we seen The heart and head of each, what screen Was broken there to give them light, While in ourselves it shuts the sight, We should no more admire, perchance, That these found truth out at a glance, Than marvel how the bat discerns Some pitch-dark cavern's fifty turns, Led by a finer tact, a gift He boasts, which other birds must shift Without, and grope as best they can." No, freely I would praise the man,-- Nor one whit more, if he contended That gift of his, from God descended. Ah friend, what gift of man's does not? No nearer something, by a jot, Rise an infinity of nothings Than one: take Euclid for your teacher: Distinguish kinds: do crownings, clothings, Make that creator which was creature? Multiply gifts upon man's head, And what, when all's done, shall be said But--the more gifted he, I ween! That one's made Christ, this other, Pilate, And this might be all that has been,-- So what is there to frown or smile at? What is left for us, save, in growth Of soul, to rise up, far past both, From the gift looking to the giver, And from the cistern to the river, And from the finite to infinity, And from man's dust to God's divinity?

XVII

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: And were no eye in us to tell, Instructed by no inner sense, The light of heaven from the dark of hell, That light would want its evidence,-- Though justice, good and truth were still Divine, if, by some demon's will, Hatred and wrong had been proclaimed Law through the worlds, and right misnamed. No mere exposition of morality Made or in part or in totality, Should win you to give it worship, therefore: And, if no better proof you will care for, --Whom do you count the worst man upon earth? Be sure, he knows, in his conscience, more Of what right is, than arrives at birth In the best man's acts that we bow before: This last knows better--true, but my fact is, 'Tis one thing to know, and another to practise. And thence conclude that the real God-function Is to furnish a motive and injunction For practising what we know already. And such an injunction and such a motive As the God in Christ, do you waive, and "heady, High-minded," hang your tablet-votive Outside the fane on a finger-post? Morality to the uttermost, Supreme in Christ as we all confess, Why need we prove would avail no jot To make him God, if God he were not? What is the point where himself lays stress? Does the precept run "Believe in good, In justice, truth, now understand For the first time?"--or, "Believe in me, Who lived and died, yet essentially Am Lord of Life?" Whoever can take The same to his heart and for mere love's sake Conceive of the love,--that man obtains A new truth; no conviction gains Of an old one only, made intense By a fresh appeal to his faded sense.

XVIII

Can it be that he stays inside? Is the vesture left me to commune with? Could my soul find aught to sing in tune with Even at this lecture, if she tried? Oh, let me at lowest sympathize With the lurking drop of blood that lies In the desiccated brain's white roots Without throb for Christ's attributes, As the lecturer makes his special boast! If love's dead there, it has left a ghost. Admire we, how from heart to brain (Though to say so strike the doctors dumb) One instinct rises and falls again, Restoring the equilibrium. And how when the Critic had done his best, And the pearl of price, at reason's test, Lay dust and ashes levigable On the Professor's lecture-table,-- When we looked for the inference and monition That our faith, reduced to such condition, Be swept forthwith to its natural dust-hole,-- He bids us, when we least expect it, Take back our faith,--if it be not just whole, Yet a pearl indeed, as his tests affect it, Which fact pays damage done rewardingly, So, prize we our dust and ashes accordingly! "Go home and venerate the myth I thus have experimented with-- This man, continue to adore him Rather than all who went before him, And all who ever followed after!"-- Surely for this I may praise you, my brother! Will you take the praise in tears or laughter? That's one point gained: can I compass another? Unlearned love was safe from spurning-- Can't we respect your loveless learning? Let us at least give learning honor! What laurels had we showered upon her, Girding her loins up to perturb Our theory of the Middle Verb; Or Turk-like brandishing a scimitar O'er anapÊsts in comic-trimeter; Or curing the halt and maimed 'Iketides,' While we lounged on at our indebted ease: Instead of which, a tricksy demon Sets her at Titus or Philemon! When ignorance wags his ears of leather And hates God's word, 'tis altogether; Nor leaves he his congenial thistles To go and browse on Paul's Epistles. --And you, the audience, who might ravage The world wide, enviably savage, Nor heed the cry of the retriever, More than Herr Heine (before his fever),-- I do not tell a lie so arrant As say my passion's wings are furled up, And, without plainest heavenly warrant, I were ready and glad to give the world up-- But still, when you rub brow meticulous, And ponder the profit of turning holy If not for God's, for your own sake solely, --God forbid I should find you ridiculous! 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 mock horse, And they really carry what they say carries them.

XIX

So sat I talking with my mind. I did not long to leave the door And find a new church, as before, But rather was quiet and inclined To prolong and enjoy the gentle resting From further tracking and trying and testing. "This tolerance is a genial mood!" (Said I, and a little pause ensued). "One trims the bark 'twixt shoal and shelf, And sees, each side, the good effects of it, A value for religion's self, A carelessness about the sects of it. Let me enjoy my own conviction, Not watch my neighbor's faith with fretfulness, Still spying there some dereliction Of truth, perversity, forgetfulness! Better a mild indifferentism, Teaching that both our faiths (though duller His shine through a dull spirit's prism) Originally had one color! Better pursue a pilgrimage Through ancient and through modern times To many peoples, various climes, Where I may see saint, savage, sage Fuse their respective creeds in one Before the general Father's throne!"

XX

--'Twas the horrible storm began afresh! The black night caught me in his mesh, Whirled me up, and flung me prone. I was left on the college-step alone. I looked, and far there, ever fleeting Far, far away, the receding gesture, And looming of the lessening vesture!-- Swept forward from my stupid hand, While I watched my foolish heart expand In the lazy glow of benevolence, O'er the various modes of man's belief. I sprang up with fear's vehemence. Needs must there be one way, our chief Best way of worship: let me strive To find it, and when found, contrive My fellows also take their share! This constitutes my earthly care: God's is above it and distinct. For I, a man, with men am linked And not a brute with brutes; no gain That I experience, must remain Unshared: but should my best endeavor To share it, fail--subsisteth ever God's care above, and I exult That God, by God's own ways occult, May--doth, I will believe--bring back All wanderers to a single track. Meantime, I can but testify God's care for me--no more, can I-- It is but for myself I know; The world rolls witnessing around me Only to leave me as it found me; Men cry there, but my ear is slow: Their races flourish or decay --What boots it, while yon lucid way Loaded with stars divides the vault? But soon my soul repairs its fault When, sharpening sense's hebetude, She turns on my own life! So viewed, No mere mote's-breadth but teems immense With witnessings of providence: And woe to me if when I look Upon that record, the sole book Unsealed to me, I take no heed Of any warning that I read! Have I been sure, this Christmas-Eve, God's own hand did the rainbow weave, Whereby the truth from heaven slid Into my soul? I cannot bid The world admit he stooped to heal My soul, as if in a thunder-peal Where one heard noise, and one saw flame, I only knew he named my name: But what is the world to me, for sorrow Or joy in its censure, when to-morrow It drops the remark, with just-turned head Then, on again, "That man is dead"? Yes, but for me--my name called,--drawn As a conscript's lot from the lap's black yawn, He has dipt into on a battle-dawn: Bid out of life by a nod, a glance,-- Stumbling, mute-mazed, at nature's chance,-- With a rapid finger circled round, Fixed to the first poor inch of ground To fight from, where his foot was found; Whose ear but a minute since lay free To the wide camp's buzz and gossipry-- Summoned, a solitary man To end his life where his life began, From the safe glad rear, to the dreadful van! Soul of mine, hadst thou caught and held By the hem of the vesture!--

XXI

And I caught At the flying robe, and unrepelled Was lapped again in its folds full-fraught With warmth and wonder and delight, God's mercy being infinite. For scarce had the words escaped my tongue, When, at a passionate bound, I sprung, Out of the wandering world of rain, Into the little chapel again.

He finds himself back in the chapel, all that has occurred having been a vision. His conclusions have that broadness of view which belongs only to those most advanced in thought. He has learned that not only must there be the essential truth behind every sincere effort to reach it, but that even his own vision of the truth is not necessarily the final way of truth but is merely the way which is true for him. The jump from the attitude of mind that persecutes those who do not believe according to one established rule to such absolute toleration of all forms because of their symbolizing an eternal truth gives the measure of growth in religious thought from the days of Wesley to Browning. The Wesleys and their fellow-helpers were stoned and mobbed, and some died of their wounds in the latter part of the eighteenth century, while in 1850, when "Christmas-Eve" was written, an Englishman could express a height of toleration and sympathy for religions not his own, as well as taking a religious stand for himself so exalted that it is difficult to imagine a further step in these directions. Perhaps we are suffering to-day from over-toleration, that is, we tolerate not only those whose aspiration takes a different form, but those whose ideals lead to degeneracy. It seems as though all virtues must finally develop their shadows. What, however, is a shadow but the darkness occasioned by the approach of some greater light.

XXII

How else was I found there, bolt upright On my bench, as if I had never left it? --Never flung out on the common at night, Nor met the storm and wedge-like cleft it, Seen the raree-show of Peter's successor, Or the laboratory of the Professor! For the Vision, that was true, I wist, True as that heaven and earth exist. There sat my friend, the yellow and tall, With his neck and its wen in the selfsame place; Yet my nearest neighbor's cheek showed gall. She had slid away a contemptuous space: And the old fat woman, late so placable, Eyed me with symptoms, hardly mistakable, Of her milk of kindness turning rancid. In short, a spectator might have fancied That I had nodded, betrayed by slumber, Yet kept my seat, a warning ghastly, Through the heads of the sermon, nine in number, And woke up now at the tenth and lastly. But again, could such disgrace have happened? Each friend at my elbow had surely nudged it; And, as for the sermon, where did my nap end? Unless I heard it, could I have judged it? Could I report as I do at the close, First, the preacher speaks through his nose: Second, his gesture is too emphatic: Thirdly, to waive what's pedagogic, The subject-matter itself lacks logic: Fourthly, the English is ungrammatic. Great news! the preacher is found no Pascal, Whom, if I pleased, I might to the task call Of making square to a finite eye The circle of infinity, And find so all-but-just-succeeding! Great news! the sermon proves no reading Where bee-like in the flowers I bury me, Like Taylor's the immortal Jeremy! And now that I know the very worst of him, What was it I thought to obtain at first of him? Ha! Is God mocked, as he asks? Shall I take on me to change his tasks, And dare, despatched to a river-head For a simple draught of the element, Neglect the thing for which he sent, And return with another thing instead?-- Saying, "Because the water found Welling up from underground, Is mingled with the taints of earth, While thou, I know, dost laugh at dearth, And couldst, at wink or word, convulse The world with the leap of a river-pulse,-- Therefore I turned from the oozings muddy, And bring thee a chalice I found, instead: See the brave veins in the breccia ruddy! One would suppose that the marble bled. What matters the water? A hope I have nursed: The waterless cup will quench my thirst." --Better have knelt at the poorest stream That trickles in pain from the straitest rift! For the less or the more is all God's gift, Who blocks up or breaks wide the granite-seam. And here, is there water or not, to drink? I then, in ignorance and weakness, Taking God's help, have attained to think My heart does best to receive in meekness That mode of worship, as most to his mind, Where earthly aids being cast behind, His All in All appears serene With the thinnest human veil between, Letting the mystic lamps, the seven, The many motions of his spirit, Pass, as they list, to earth from heaven. For the preacher's merit or demerit, It were to be wished the flaws were fewer In the earthen vessel, holding treasure Which lies as safe in a golden ewer; But the main thing is, does it hold good measure? Heaven soon sets right all other matters!-- Ask, else, these ruins of humanity, This flesh worn out to rags and tatters, This soul at struggle with insanity, Who thence take comfort--can I doubt?-- Which an empire gained, were a loss without. May it be mine! And let us hope That no worse blessing befall the Pope, Turned sick at last of to-day's buffoonery, Of posturings and petticoatings, Beside his Bourbon bully's gloatings In the bloody orgies of drunk poltroonery! Nor may the Professor forego its peace At Gˆttingen presently, when, in the dusk Of his life, if his cough, as I fear, should increase, Prophesied of by that horrible husk-- When thicker and thicker the darkness fills The world through his misty spectacles, And he gropes for something more substantial Than a fable, myth or personification,-- May Christ do for him what no mere man shall, And stand confessed as the God of salvation! Meantime, in the still recurring fear Lest myself, at unawares, be found, While attacking the choice of my neighbors round, With none of my own made--I choose here! The giving out of the hymn reclaims me; I have done: and if any blames me, Thinking that merely to touch in brevity The topics I dwell on, were unlawful,-- Or worse, that I trench, with undue levity, On the bounds of the holy and the awful,-- I praise the heart, and pity the head of him, And refer myself to THEE, instead of him, Who head and heart alike discernest, Looking below light speech we utter, When frothy spume and frequent sputter Prove that the soul's depths boil in earnest! May truth shine out, stand ever before us! I put up pencil and join chorus To Hepzibah Tune, without further apology, The last five verses of the third section Of the seventeenth hymn of Whitfield's Collection, To conclude with the doxology.

In "Easter-Day" the interest is purely personal. It is a long and somewhat intricate discussion between two friends upon the basis of belief and gives no glimpses of the historical progress of belief. In brief, the poem discusses the relation of the finite life to the infinite life. The first speaker is not satisfied with the different points of view suggested by the second speaker. First, that one would be willing to suffer martyrdom in this life if only one could truly believe it would bring eternal joy. Or perhaps doubt is God's way of telling who are his friends, who are his foes. Or perhaps God is revealed in the law of the universe, or in the shows of nature, or in the emotions of the human heart. The first speaker takes the ground that the only possibility satisfying modern demands is an assurance that this world's gain is in its imperfectness surety for true gain in another world. An imaginatively pictured experience of his own soul is next presented, wherein he represents himself at the Judgment Day as choosing the finite life instead of the infinite life. As a result, he learns there is nothing in finite life except as related to infinite life. The way opened out toward the infinite through love is that which gives the light of life to all the good things of earth which he desired--all beauties, that of nature and art, and the joy of intellectual activity.

EASTER-DAY

. . . . . . .

XV

And as I said This nonsense, throwing back my head With light complacent laugh, I found Suddenly all the midnight round One fire. The dome of heaven had stood As made up of a multitude Of handbreadth cloudlets, one vast rack Of ripples infinite and black, From sky to sky. Sudden there went, Like horror and astonishment, A fierce vindictive scribble of red Quick flame across, as if one said (The angry scribe of Judgment) "There-- Burn it!" And straight I was aware That the whole ribwork round, minute Cloud touching cloud beyond compute, Was tinted, each with its own spot Of burning at the core, till clot Jammed against clot, and spilt its fire Over all heaven, which 'gan suspire As fanned to measure equable,-- Just so great conflagrations kill Night overhead, and rise and sink, Reflected. Now the fire would shrink And wither off the blasted face Of heaven, and I distinct might trace The sharp black ridgy outlines left Unburned like network--then, each cleft The fire had been sucked back into, Regorged, and out it surging flew Furiously, and night writhed inflamed, Till, tolerating to be tamed No longer, certain rays world-wide Shot downwardly. On every side Caught past escape, the earth was lit; As if a dragon's nostril split And all his famished ire o'erflowed; Then, as he winced at his lord's goad, Back he inhaled: whereat I found The clouds into vast pillars bound, Based on the corners of the earth, Propping the skies at top: a dearth Of fire i' the violet intervals, Leaving exposed the utmost walls Of time, about to tumble in And end the world.

XVI

I felt begin The Judgment-Day: to retrocede Was too late now. "In very deed," (I uttered to myself) "that Day!" The intuition burned away All darkness from my spirit too: There, stood I, found and fixed, I knew, Choosing the world. The choice was made; And naked and disguiseless stayed, And unevadable, the fact. My brain held all the same compact Its senses, nor my heart declined Its office; rather, both combined To help me in this juncture. I Lost not a second,--agony Gave boldness: since my life had end And my choice with it--best defend, Applaud both! I resolved to say, "So was I framed by thee, such way I put to use thy senses here! It was so beautiful, so near, Thy world,--what could I then but choose My part there? Nor did I refuse To look above the transient boon Of time; but it was hard so soon As in a short life, to give up Such beauty: I could put the cup Undrained of half its fulness, by; But, to renounce it utterly, --That was too hard! Nor did the cry Which bade renounce it, touch my brain Authentically deep and plain Enough to make my lips let go. But Thou, who knowest all, dost know Whether I was not, life's brief while, Endeavoring to reconcile Those lips (too tardily, alas!) To letting the dear remnant pass, One day,--some drops of earthly good Untasted! Is it for this mood, That Thou, whose earth delights so well, Hast made its complement a hell?"

XVII

A final belch of fire like blood, Overbroke all heaven in one flood Of doom. Then fire was sky, and sky Fire, and both, one brief ecstasy, Then ashes. But I heard no noise (Whatever was) because a voice Beside me spoke thus, "Life is done, Time ends, Eternity's begun, And thou art judged for evermore."

XVIII

I looked up; all seemed as before; Of that cloud-Tophet overhead No trace was left: I saw instead The common round me, and the sky Above, stretched drear and emptily Of life. 'Twas the last watch of night, Except what brings the morning quite; When the armed angel, conscience-clear, His task nigh done, leans o'er his spear And gazes on the earth he guards, Safe one night more through all its wards, Till God relieve him at his post. "A dream--a waking dream at most!" (I spoke out quick, that I might shake The horrid nightmare off, and wake.) "The world gone, yet the world is here? Are not all things as they appear? Is Judgment past for me alone? --And where had place the great white throne? The rising of the quick and dead? Where stood they, small and great? Who read The sentence from the opened book?" So, by degrees, the blood forsook My heart, and let it beat afresh; I knew I should break through the mesh Of horror, and breathe presently: When, lo, again, the voice by me!

XIX

I saw.... Oh brother, 'mid far sands The palm-tree-cinctured city stands, Bright-white beneath, as heaven, bright-blue, Leans o'er it, while the years pursue Their course, unable to abate Its paradisal laugh at fate! One morn,--the Arab staggers blind O'er a new tract of death, calcined To ashes, silence, nothingness,-- And strives, with dizzy wits, to guess Whence fell the blow. What if, 'twixt skies And prostrate earth, he should surprise The imaged vapor, head to foot, Surveying, motionless and mute, Its work, ere, in a whirlwind rapt It vanished up again?--So hapt My chance. HE stood there. Like the smoke Pillared o'er Sodom, when day broke,-- I saw Him. One magnific pall Mantled in massive fold and fall His head, and coiled in snaky swathes About His feet: night's black, that bathes All else, broke, grizzled with despair, Against the soul of blackness there. A gesture told the mood within-- That wrapped right hand which based the chin, That intense meditation fixed On His procedure,--pity mixed With the fulfilment of decree. Motionless, thus, He spoke to me, Who fell before His feet, a mass, No man now.

XX

"All is come to pass. Such shows are over for each soul They had respect to. In the roll Of judgment which convinced mankind Of sin, stood many, bold and blind, Terror must burn the truth into: Their fate for them!--thou hadst to do With absolute omnipotence, Able its judgments to dispense To the whole race, as every one Were its sole object. Judgment done, God is, thou art,--the rest is hurled To nothingness for thee. This world, This finite life, thou hast preferred, In disbelief of God's plain word, To heaven and to infinity. Here the probation was for thee, To show thy soul the earthly mixed With heavenly, it must choose betwixt. The earthly joys lay palpable,-- A taint, in each, distinct as well; The heavenly flitted, faint and rare, Above them, but as truly were Taintless, so, in their nature, best. Thy choice was earth: thou didst attest 'Twas fitter spirit should subserve The flesh, than flesh refine to nerve Beneath the spirit's play. Advance No claim to their inheritance Who chose the spirit's fugitive Brief gleams, and yearned, 'This were to live Indeed, if rays, completely pure From flesh that dulls them, could endure,-- Not shoot in meteor-light athwart Our earth, to show how cold and swart It lies beneath their fire, but stand As stars do, destined to expand, Prove veritable worlds, our home!' Thou saidst,--'Let spirit star the dome Of sky, that flesh may miss no peak, No nook of earth,--I shall not seek Its service further!' Thou art shut Out of the heaven of spirit; glut Thy sense upon the world: 'tis thine For ever--take it!"

XXI

"How? Is mine, The world?" (I cried, while my soul broke Out in a transport.) "Hast Thou spoke Plainly in that? Earth's exquisite Treasures of wonder and delight, For me?"

XXII

The austere voice returned,-- "So soon made happy? Hadst thou learned What God accounteth happiness, Thou wouldst not find it hard to guess What hell may be his punishment For those who doubt if God invent Better than they. Let such men rest Content with what they judged the best. Let the unjust usurp at will: The filthy shall be filthy still: Miser, there waits the gold for thee! Hater, indulge thine enmity! And thou, whose heaven self-ordained Was, to enjoy earth unrestrained, Do it! Take all the ancient show! The woods shall wave, the rivers flow, And men apparently pursue Their works, as they were wont to do, While living in probation yet. I promise not thou shalt forget The past, now gone to its account; But leave thee with the old amount Of faculties, nor less nor more, Unvisited, as heretofore, By God's free spirit, that makes an end. So, once more, take thy world! Expend Eternity upon its shows, Flung thee as freely as one rose Out of a summer's opulence, Over the Eden-barrier whence Thou art excluded. Knock in vain!"

XXIII

I sat up. All was still again. I breathed free: to my heart, back fled The warmth. "But, all the world!"--I said. I stooped and picked a leaf of fern, And recollected I might learn From books, how many myriad sorts Of fern exist, to trust reports, Each as distinct and beautiful As this, the very first I cull. Think, from the first leaf to the last! Conceive, then, earth's resources! Vast Exhaustless beauty, endless change Of wonder! And this foot shall range Alps, Andes,--and this eye devour The bee-bird and the aloe-flower?

XXIV

Then the voice, "Welcome so to rate The arras-folds that variegate The earth, God's antechamber, well! The wise, who waited there, could tell By these, what royalties in store Lay one step past the entrance-door. For whom, was reckoned, not so much, This life's munificence? For such As thou,--a race, whereof scarce one Was able, in a million, To feel that any marvel lay In objects round his feet all day; Scarce one, in many millions more, Willing, if able, to explore The secreter, minuter charm! --Brave souls, a fern-leaf could disarm Of power to cope with God's intent,-- Or scared if the south firmament With north-fire did its wings refledge! All partial beauty was a pledge Of beauty in its plenitude: But since the pledge sufficed thy mood, Retain it! plenitude be theirs Who looked above!"

XXV

Though sharp despairs Shot through me, I held up, bore on. "What matter though my trust were gone From natural things? Henceforth my part Be less with nature than with art! For art supplants, gives mainly worth To nature; 'tis man stamps the earth-- And I will seek his impress, seek The statuary of the Greek, Italy's painting--there my choice Shall fix!"

XXVI

"Obtain it!" said the voice, "--The one form with its single act, Which sculptors labored to abstract, The one face, painters tried to draw, With its one look, from throngs they saw. And that perfection in their soul, These only hinted at? The whole, They were but parts of? What each laid His claim to glory on?--afraid His fellow-men should give him rank By mere tentatives which he shrank Smitten at heart from, all the more, That gazers pressed in to adore! 'Shall I be judged by only these?' If such his soul's capacities, Even while he trod the earth,--think, now, What pomp in Buonarroti's brow, With its new palace-brain where dwells Superb the soul, unvexed by cells That crumbled with the transient clay! What visions will his right hand's sway Still turn to forms, as still they burst Upon him? How will he quench thirst, Titanically infantine, Laid at the breast of the Divine? Does it confound thee,--this first page Emblazoning man's heritage?-- Can this alone absorb thy sight, As pages were not infinite,-- Like the omnipotence which tasks Itself to furnish all that asks The soul it means to satiate? What was the world, the starry state Of the broad skies,--what, all displays Of power and beauty intermixed, Which now thy soul is chained betwixt,-- What else than needful furniture For life's first stage? God's work, be sure, No more spreads wasted, than falls scant! He filled, did not exceed, man's want Of beauty in this life. But through Life pierce,--and what has earth to do, Its utmost beauty's appanage, With the requirement of next stage? Did God pronounce earth 'very good'? Needs must it be, while understood For man's preparatory state; Nought here to heighten nor abate; Transfer the same completeness here, To serve a new state's use,--and drear Deficiency gapes every side! The good, tried once, were bad, retried. See the enwrapping rocky niche, Sufficient for the sleep in which The lizard breathes for ages safe: Split the mould--and as light would chafe The creature's new world-widened sense, Dazzled to death at evidence Of all the sounds and sights that broke Innumerous at the chisel's stroke,-- So, in God's eye, the earth's first stuff Was, neither more nor less, enough To house man's soul, man's need fulfil. Man reckoned it immeasurable? So thinks the lizard of his vault! Could God be taken in default, Short of contrivances, by you,-- Or reached, ere ready to pursue His progress through eternity? That chambered rock, the lizard's world, Your easy mallet's blow has hurled To nothingness for ever; so, Has God abolished at a blow This world, wherein his saints were pent,-- Who, though found grateful and content, With the provision there, as thou, Yet knew he would not disallow Their spirit's hunger, felt as well,-- Unsated,--not unsatable, As paradise gives proof. Deride Their choice now, thou who sit'st outside!"

XXVII

I cried in anguish, "Mind, the mind, So miserably cast behind, To gain what had been wisely lost! Oh, let me strive to make the most Of the poor stinted soul, I nipped Of budding wings, else now equipped For voyage from summer isle to isle! And though she needs must reconcile Ambition to the life on ground, Still, I can profit by late found But precious knowledge. Mind is best-- I will seize mind, forego the rest, And try how far my tethered strength May crawl in this poor breadth and length. Let me, since I can fly no more, At least spin dervish-like about (Till giddy rapture almost doubt I fly) through circling sciences, Philosophies and histories Should the whirl slacken there, then verse, Fining to music, shall asperse Fresh and fresh fire-dew, till I strain Intoxicate, half-break my chain! Not joyless, though more favored feet Stand calm, where I want wings to beat The floor. At least earth's bond is broke!"

XXVIII

Then, (sickening even while I spoke) "Let me alone! No answer, pray, To this! I know what Thou wilt say! All still is earth's,--to know, as much As feel its truths, which if we touch With sense, or apprehend in soul, What matter? I have reached the goal-- 'Whereto does knowledge serve!' will burn My eyes, too sure, at every turn! I cannot look back now, nor stake Bliss on the race, for running's sake. The goal's a ruin like the rest!-- And so much worse thy latter quest," (Added the voice) "that even on earth-- Whenever, in man's soul, had birth Those intuitions, grasps of guess, Which pull the more into the less, Making the finite comprehend Infinity,--the bard would spend Such praise alone, upon his craft, As, when wind-lyres obey the waft, Goes to the craftsman who arranged The seven strings, changed them and rechanged-- Knowing it was the South that harped. He felt his song, in singing, warped; Distinguished his and God's part: whence A world of spirit as of sense Was plain to him, yet not too plain, Which he could traverse, not remain A guest in:--else were permanent Heaven on the earth its gleams were meant To sting with hunger for full light,-- Made visible in verse, despite The veiling weakness,--truth by means Of fable, showing while it screens,-- Since highest truth, man e'er supplied, Was ever fable on outside. Such gleams made bright the earth an age; Now the whole sun's his heritage! Take up thy world, it is allowed, Thou who hast entered in the cloud!"

XXIX

Then I--"Behold, my spirit bleeds, Catches no more at broken reeds,-- But lilies flower those reeds above: I let the world go, and take love! Love survives in me, albeit those I love be henceforth masks and shows, Not living men and women: still I mind how love repaired all ill, Cured wrong, soothed grief, made earth amends With parents, brothers, children, friends! Some semblance of a woman yet With eyes to help me to forget, Shall look on me; and I will match Departed love with love, attach Old memories to new dreams, nor scorn The poorest of the grains of corn I save from shipwreck on this isle, Trusting its barrenness may smile With happy foodful green one day, More precious for the pains. I pray,-- Leave to love, only!"

XXX

At the word, The form, I looked to have been stirred With pity and approval, rose O'er me, as when the headsman throws Axe over shoulder to make end-- I fell prone, letting Him expend His wrath, while thus the inflicting voice Smote me. "Is this thy final choice? Love is the best? 'Tis somewhat late! And all thou dost enumerate Of power and beauty in the world, The mightiness of love was curled Inextricably round about. Love lay within it and without, To clasp thee,--but in vain! Thy soul Still shrunk from Him who made the whole, Still set deliberate aside His love!--Now take love! Well betide Thy tardy conscience! Haste to take The show of love for the name's sake, Remembering every moment Who, Beside creating thee unto These ends, and these for thee, was said To undergo death in thy stead In flesh like thine: so ran the tale. What doubt in thee could countervail Belief in it? Upon the ground 'That in the story had been found Too much love! How could God love so?' He who in all his works below Adapted to the needs of man, Made love the basis of the plan,-- Did love, as was demonstrated: While man, who was so fit instead To hate, as every day gave proof,-- Man thought man, for his kind's behoof, Both could and did invent that scheme Of perfect love: 'twould well beseem Cain's nature thou wast wont to praise, Not tally with God's usual ways!"

XXXI

And I cowered deprecatingly-- "Thou Love of God! Or let me die, Or grant what shall seem heaven almost! Let me not know that all is lost, Though lost it be--leave me not tied To this despair, this corpse-like bride! Let that old life seem mine--no more-- With limitation as before, With darkness, hunger, toil, distress: Be all the earth a wilderness! Only let me go on, go on, Still hoping ever and anon To reach one eve the Better Land!"

XXXII

Then did the form expand, expand-- I knew Him through the dread disguise As the whole God within His eyes Embraced me.

XXXIII

When I lived again, The day was breaking,--the grey plain I rose from, silvered thick with dew. Was this a vision? False or true? Since then, three varied years are spent, And commonly my mind is bent To think it was a dream--be sure A mere dream and distemperature-- The last day's watching: then the night,-- The shock of that strange Northern Light Set my head swimming, bred in me A dream. And so I live, you see, Go through the world, try, prove, reject, Prefer, still struggling to effect My warfare; happy that I can Be crossed and thwarted as a man, Not left in God's contempt apart, With ghastly smooth life, dead at heart, Tame in earth's paddock as her prize. Thank God, she still each method tries To catch me, who may yet escape, She knows,--the fiend in angel's shape! Thank God, no paradise stands barred To entry, and I find it hard To be a Christian, as I said! Still every now and then my head Raised glad, sinks mournful--all grows drear Spite of the sunshine, while I fear And think, "How dreadful to be grudged No ease henceforth, as one that's judged. Condemned to earth for ever, shut From heaven!" But Easter-Day breaks! But Christ rises! Mercy every way Is infinite,--and who can say?

This poem has often been cited as a proof of Browning's own belief in historical Christianity. It can hardly be said to be more than a doubtful proof, for it depends upon a subjective vision of which the speaker, himself, doubts the truth. The speaker in this poem belongs in the same category with Bishop Blougram. A belief in infinite Love can come to him only through the dogma of the incarnation, he therefore holds to that, no matter how tossed about by doubts. The failure of all human effort to attain the Absolute and, as a consequence, the belief in an Absolute beyond this life is a dominant note in Browning's own philosophy. The nature of that Absolute he further evolves from the intellectual observation of power that transcends human comprehension, and the even more deep-rooted sense of love in the human heart.

Much of his thought resembles that of the English scientist, Herbert Spencer. The relativity of knowledge and the relativity of good and evil are cardinal doctrines with both of them. Herbert Spencer's mystery behind all phenomena and Browning's failure of human knowledge are identical--the negative proof of the absolute,--but where Spencer contents himself with the statement that though we cannot know the Absolute, yet it must transcend all that the human mind has conceived of perfection, Browning, as we have already seen, declares that we _can_ know something of the nature of that Absolute through the love which we know in the human heart as well as the power we see displayed in Nature.

In connection with this subject, which for lack of space can merely be touched on in the present volume, it will be instructive to round out Browning's presentations of his own contributions to nineteenth-century thought with two quotations, one from "The Parleyings:" "With Bernard de Mandeville," and one from a poem in his last volume "Reverie." In the first, human love is symbolized as the image made by a lens of the sun, which latter symbolizes Divine Love.

BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE

. . . . . . .

IX

Boundingly up through Night's wall dense and dark, Embattled crags and clouds, outbroke the Sun Above the conscious earth, and one by one Her heights and depths absorbed to the last spark His fluid glory, from the far fine ridge Of mountain-granite which, transformed to gold, Laughed first the thanks back, to the vale's dusk fold On fold of vapor-swathing, like a bridge Shattered beneath some giant's stamp. Night wist Her work done and betook herself in mist To marsh and hollow there to bide her time Blindly in acquiescence. Everywhere Did earth acknowledge Sun's embrace sublime Thrilling her to the heart of things: since there No ore ran liquid, no spar branched anew, No arrowy crystal gleamed, but straightway grew Glad through the inrush--glad nor more nor less Than, 'neath his gaze, forest and wilderness, Hill, dale, land, sea, the whole vast stretch and spread, The universal world of creatures bred By Sun's munificence, alike gave praise-- All creatures but one only: gaze for gaze, Joyless and thankless, who--all scowling can-- Protests against the innumerous praises? Man, Sullen and silent.

Stand thou forth then, state Thy wrong, thou sole aggrieved--disconsolate-- While every beast, bird, reptile, insect, gay And glad acknowledges the bounteous day!

X

Man speaks now:--"What avails Sun's earth-felt thrill To me? Sun penetrates the ore, the plant-- They feel and grow: perchance with subtler skill He interfuses fly, worm, brute, until Each favored object pays life's ministrant By pressing, in obedience to his will, Up to completion of the task prescribed, So stands and stays a type. Myself imbibed Such influence also, stood and stand complete-- The perfect Man,--head, body, hands and feet, True to the pattern: but does that suffice? How of my superadded mind which needs --Not to be, simply, but to do, and pleads For--more than knowledge that by some device Sun quickens matter: mind is nobly fain To realize the marvel, make--for sense As mind--the unseen visible, condense --Myself--Sun's all-pervading influence So as to serve the needs of mind, explain What now perplexes. Let the oak increase His corrugated strength on strength, the palm Lift joint by joint her fan-fruit, ball and balm,-- Let the coiled serpent bask in bloated peace,-- The eagle, like some skyey derelict, Drift in the blue, suspended glorying,-- The lion lord it by the desert-spring,-- What know or care they of the power which pricked Nothingness to perfection? I, instead, When all-developed still am found a thing All-incomplete: for what though flesh had force Transcending theirs--hands able to unring The tightened snake's coil, eyes that could outcourse The eagle's soaring, voice whereat the king Of carnage couched discrowned? Mind seeks to see, Touch, understand, by mind inside of me, The outside mind--whose quickening I attain To recognize--I only. All in vain Would mind address itself to render plain The nature of the essence. Drag what lurks Behind the operation--that which works Latently everywhere by outward proof-- Drag that mind forth to face mine? No! aloof I solely crave that one of all the beams Which do Sun's work in darkness, at my will Should operate--myself for once have skill To realize the energy which streams Flooding the universe. Above, around, Beneath--why mocks that mind my own thus found Simply of service, when the world grows dark, To half-surmise--were Sun's use understood, I might demonstrate him supplying food, Warmth, life, no less the while? To grant one spark Myself may deal with--make it thaw my blood And prompt my steps, were truer to the mark Of mind's requirement than a half-surmise That somehow secretly is operant A power all matter feels, mind only tries To comprehend! Once more--no idle vaunt 'Man comprehends the Sun's self!' Mysteries At source why probe into? Enough: display, Make demonstrable, how, by night as day, Earth's centre and sky's outspan, all's informed Equally by Sun's efflux!--source from whence If just one spark I drew, full evidence Were mine of fire ineffably enthroned-- Sun's self made palpable to Man!"

XI

Thus moaned Man till Prometheus helped him,--as we learn,-- Offered an artifice whereby he drew Sun's rays into a focus,--plain and true, The very Sun in little: made fire burn And henceforth do Man service--glass-conglobed Though to a pin-point circle--all the same Comprising the Sun's self, but Sun disrobed Of that else-unconceived essential flame Borne by no naked sight. Shall mind's eye strive Achingly to companion as it may The supersubtle effluence, and contrive To follow beam and beam upon their way Hand-breadth by hand-breadth, till sense faint--confessed Frustrate, eluded by unknown unguessed Infinitude of action? Idle quest! Rather ask aid from optics. Sense, descry The spectrum--mind, infer immensity! Little? In little, light, warmth, life are blessed-- Which, in the large, who sees to bless? Not I More than yourself: so, good my friend, keep still Trustful with--me? with thee, sage Mandeville!

The second "Reverie" has the effect of a triumphant swan song, especially the closing stanzas, the poem having been written very near the end of the poet's life.

"In a beginning God Made heaven and earth." Forth flashed Knowledge: from star to clod Man knew things: doubt abashed Closed its long period.

Knowledge obtained Power praise. Had Good been manifest, Broke out in cloudless blaze, Unchequered as unrepressed, In all things Good at best--

Then praise--all praise, no blame-- Had hailed the perfection. No! As Power's display, the same Be Good's--praise forth shall flow Unisonous in acclaim!

Even as the world its life, So have I lived my own-- Power seen with Love at strife, That sure, this dimly shown, --Good rare and evil rife.

Whereof the effect be--faith That, some far day, were found Ripeness in things now rathe, Wrong righted, each chain unbound, Renewal born out of scathe.

Why faith--but to lift the load, To leaven the lump, where lies Mind prostrate through knowledge owed To the loveless Power it tries To withstand, how vain! In flowed

Ever resistless fact: No more than the passive clay Disputes the potter's act, Could the whelmed mind disobey Knowledge the cataract.

But, perfect in every part, Has the potter's moulded shape, Leap of man's quickened heart, Throe of his thought's escape, Stings of his soul which dart

Through the barrier of flesh, till keen She climbs from the calm and clear, Through turbidity all between, From the known to the unknown here, Heaven's "Shall be," from Earth's "Has been"?

Then life is--to wake not sleep, Rise and not rest, but press From earth's level where blindly creep Things perfected, more or less, To the heaven's height, far and steep,

Where, amid what strifes and storms May wait the adventurous quest, Power is Love--transports, transforms Who aspired from worst to best, Sought the soul's world, spurned the worms'.

I have faith such end shall be: From the first, Power was--I knew. Life has made clear to me That, strive but for closer view, Love were as plain to see.

When see? When there dawns a day, If not on the homely earth, Then yonder, worlds away, Where the strange and new have birth, And Power comes full in play.