The last of life for which the first was made; Our times are in His hand, Who saith: "A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust God; see all, nor be afraid!” He has infinite faith in God, that His love will, in ways unknown to us, work out ultimate blessedness for His children, and that the world will not pass out in darkness, but in the end of the ages it will be daybreak everywhere. Not only is there no despair: there is no touch of disheartenment even in Browning He awaits the Languor is not in his heart, Weakness is not in his word, revelation of eternity; then all will be made clear. The lost leader, who has forsaken the great cause of progress-"just for a handful of silver he left us"-may never be received back save in doubt, hesitation, and pain by his old comrades; but the estrangement of earth will not outlast earth Let him receive the new knowledge and wait us Caponsacchi, the great and noble priest, the "soldiersaint" of "The Ring and the Book," must needs henceforth pass through life with the shadow of Pompilia's sweet presence laid across his heart, and all the purest aspiration of his life covered in her grave. Well, is there not a further world, where they neither marry nor are given in marriage? Oh, how right it is! how like Jesus Christ So let him wait God's instant, men call years; The dying Pompilia sees how the love of souls like his interprets the meaning of the love of God, and cries: Through such souls alone God, stooping, shows sufficient of His light Even when Browning stands in such a place as the Morgue, amid the ghastliness of tragic failure and despair, touched though he be with mournfulness, yet this strong and living hope does not leave him, and he still can write : It's wiser being good than bad, It's safer being meek than fierce, My own hope is, a sun will pierce In other words, whatever dreary intervals there may be of folly, darkness, misery, the world God blessed in the beginning will roll round into the light at last; and when His purpose is complete, there will be a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. CHAPTER XXIX. BROWNING'S ATTITUDE TO CHRISTIANITY. N the last chapter we noticed that one of the abnormal growths of modern poetry is a poetry of negation. We may add that this, in its last development, has become a poetry of despair. And the source of that despair is inability to receive the truths of Christianity. Since the advent of Goethe a movement very similar to the Renaissance in Italy has passed over the whole of Europe. There has been a return to Paganism, concurrently with a widespread revival in art and culture. The dogmas of the Church have been vehemently assailed, and the ethical teachings of Christianity disputed. The movement initiated by Goethe has spread throughout the world. It has received impulse from strange quarters, and given impulse in strange directions. Its legitimate outcome in Germany is found in the long line of great scholars who have devoted indefatigable genius and patience to the work of destructive Biblical criticism. There may appear to be a wide enough gulf between the calm paganism of Goethe and the veheme 't controversial temper of German theological scholarship, but nevertheless the one is a true. child of the other. Added to this, there must be reckoned the extraordinary growth of natural science during the present century. The minds of the greatest thinkers have been riveted on the problem of the origin of things. The results of their investigations have been published with the hardihood and confidence of complete conviction. In their researches as to the working of natural law they have completely ignored all that is super natural. Their temper toward the supernatural has been one of contemptuous indifference or embittered hostility. Thus, then, two forces of immense strength have been steadily at work upon the structure of received opinion; the one force, fearless rationalism, the other, fearless paganism. Culture has been preached as the true substitute for Christianity, Art and Beauty as the all-sufficient gospels for human life. We have only to turn to the literature of the last half-century to see how far these influences have permeated. The essayist and poet have alike conspired to preach the new doctrine. The stream of tendency thus created has sufficient examples in the beautiful paganism of Keats and the garrulous mediavalism of Morris. But there is another class of writers who have not been able so easily to dismiss the great beliefs by which centuries of men and women have lived and striven. They have been allured, fascinated, and repelled alternately; they have hoped and doubted; in their voices is the sound of weeping, in their words the vibration of long suffering; for whatever attitude they may have taken toward Christianity they have never relapsed into reckless indifference. This eager scrutiny of religious dogmas by the best and keenest minds of the age is, at least, a proof that such men have been alive, and even agonisingly alive, to the tremendous importance of those dogmas. Poetry in the nineteenth century has sought to be the minister of theological truth not less than of artistic beauty, and as a consequence the theological problems of the century, and in less degree the scientific problems also, have been inextricably interwoven with its fine warp and woof of exquisite creation. So that let what will be said about the faithlessness of the nineteenth century, nevertheless the presence of Jesus Christ in nineteenth-century literature is one of its most remarkable and indisputable characteristics. But the solitary issue of this intermingling of theology with poetry is not perplexity or sadness. There is found a very different culmination in one poet at least, and that poet is Browning. Browning has attacked theology with the zeal and fervour of a born disputant. He is not merely a great religious poet, but is distinctively a theological poet. He has deliberately chosen for the exercise of his art the most subtle problems of theology, and has made his verse the vehicle for the statement of theological difficulties and personal beliefs. The historical evidences and arguments of Christianity have exercised upon him a deep and enduring fascination. In "Pauline," his earliest poem, the vision of Christ has visited Browning, and he cries O Thou pale form, so dimly seen, deep-eyed, nd pleasures, let me die That vision of Christ has been not only an everpresent, but an ever-growing, vision with Browning. This spirit of passionate reverence for Christ, which |