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highest without, but that only as he has such a faith has he a way of understanding himself and life. And so, in a sense for him, religion, "fit to be called such," is its own evidence. Its greatness is its evidence; it is only true as it is great. The ideal must be true if only it be ideal and keep spiritual. And the Christian religion is true to him, not because he is concerned with the doctrines that have grown about it, but because he accepts the spirit and ideal of Christ. In his temper and scope he is Christian. No poet has so finely, with such sympathy and power, interpreted the Christian ideas, their greatness, their humanity, their spiritual depth. No one has better seen what they have done in the life and thought of the past. No one more frankly affirms their essential promise. For him, as for Hegel, the Christian religion is true because it is the religion that has most profoundly read the spirit of man, and presented the purest spiritual ideal, both for duty and for hope. And so, as I read him, this poet is religious and Christian, not because he accepts any single statement of the greatest truths, but because he would keep for life and the soul a free way to the highest; because he would keep the freedom and depth of man's mind as religion indicates and promotes these would keep for the spirit of man its full power and scope.

You may think these words vague, as words are apt to be, about an aspect and function of religion that has not been much recognized in this country; but, in agreement with his genius and quality of

thought, Browning has aspects and truths more obvious. I said that no one had better understood the humanity of the Christian ideas; and that is true, whether we regard its doctrine of God, or the way in which he has grasped the problem of the world and the facts and needs of men's hearts. As a dramatist and thinker, he has the clearest and steadiest perception. of the conditions of life and the facts of the world. He takes men and the world as they stand for us all. No vain idealism hides from him the state of things. He refuses bluntly to disguise or evade the real problem by any partial solution of it.

And what light has he to throw on the problem of problems, the wrong and pain, and all the evil and sorrow of the world? The answer of St. Paul and St. John mainly, though not in their terms or on their grounds-divine love working out human good through a law of sacrifice as well as retribution. And something very like the great Hegelian idea of the nature and function of evil and pain you will find. Good and evil, truth and error, if not complementary and necessary in the great scheme, certainly work together towards some result not to be reached in its fulness, so far as we can see, without both factors. That is a difficulty for most who either think or feel; and some of us seek escape in a kindly optimism that reflects our own pity rather than the world's order, and in some way or other many of us hide the facts or forget them. Poets like Browning, and thinkers such as Hegel, meet the facts in full, state the problem in its

integrity, and seek a principle great enough to give a clue to the world-process.

Nor are they afraid of the principle in which, as they suggest, the solution may be found. In the case of Browning it runs all through his work and thought. What has been called "the unity of opposites" is both a poetic and a moral principle with him. His form of art and his criticism of life both go upon it, and the "tantalizing " quality of his thought, as many find, results from it. It is part of his real idealism. Through it he seeks that "unity of things with each other, and with the spirit of man," which art and thought both aim at.

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Matter-of-fact and critical, more aware of all the world and life present and suggest than concerned with theories of them, he is not, so far as I can see, at all careful to have a "big theory" of his own. I have indicated the foregoing ideas as in his works, but he leaves the impression of holding all but the largest principles lightly. His dramatic expression means this, and reflects it so strongly that some have regarded the poet's "Agnosticism as complete. I should rather describe it in his own strange phrase as "ignorance confirmed by knowledge," doubt qualified by faith, spiritual Agnosticism, or ignorance tempered by a sense of all that life and the soul suggest the faith of one who believes in God and the soul, not caring for any "dogma" about either, but affirming as to both the moral substance of the Christian ideas.

He is indeed strongly aware of the limits of knowledge, but holds that these are not the limits of man. Man is greater than his thought can state, and the facts and powers of man's nature are our largest suggestion of the truth, and must neither be ignored nor explained away because our "theory of the world" for the time being cannot interpret them or even be squared with them.

So at this point we see our poet's relation to the final mystery of religion, as it is seen or felt by so many in our time. The supreme test of the power and breadth of minds is found in their ability both to interpret and transcend the thoughts or tendency of their age, to give its truth or vital worth, and yet be clear as to its limits, and never to fall into the fallacy of its finality. The sense of mystery is prominent in faith as in science, and will be for years to come. Browning has it and a Butlerian modesty, but he holds firmly that reason and faith are good as far as they go; that their light is light and from the Sun.

Religion thus becomes the cordial and serious passion and endeavour of man towards all that is highest, in the belief that such effort not only is the proper law of man's nature, and a means of all good to man, but "reveals" the Highest to man, and unites him with it in vital realization.

CHAPTER XII.

POEMS ON IMMORTALITY.

THE question of man's immortality has had a strong interest for the mind of our century. The literature of the subject, from Wordsworth's great "Ode" to the present time, is abundant and beautiful. And even more than the value of these poems is their spirittheir broad and free consideration of the question on its merits and as part of life.

Browning's poems of this class are instances of this interest and examples of this spirit. No poet of our time has touched the question so often, or treated it with such power and freshness. You will find it in his work from "Paracelsus" to "Ferishtah," and whether love or art or life be its theme, he leads up to its bearing on this matter.

The poet's approach and aim on this theme have been so far defined, but it may be well to make still clearer our standpoint and purpose in our study of these poems. Let me say, then, that I have no wish to put this poetry forward as a plea, and still less to use it as a "polemic" on the grave and difficult

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