where he could alone hear and interpret the music of heaven-and so this was confused and marred by the din of earth; but in later times, when those controversies and "little systems" which come between men's eyes and the spiritual sun have passed away, we shall see more clearly through the teaching of Milton's poem, those great spiritual truths which are a possession for all time, but which for most of us need "to be embodied in a tale" -that we shall be helped by him to realise more vividly that which our own hearts tell us, that the selfish man who casts out a belief in love and goodness, suffers a torture more terrible than we can conceive, that he excludes himself from the vision of God, from the communion with the blessed, from peace and joy, that he will drag down others into chaos and darkness. This story of the fall from heaven is a lurid hieroglyphic writing of the necessary inevitable suffering, the utter darkness and misery of the soul that knows not the love of God.

The Religious Teaching of Browning.

THERE are those who judge others, as the world does, by their faults and failures, who seem to think that in these the true character comes out; and there are those who, knowing that they have within themselves a high ideal, which they fail to attain, believe that the true character comes out in the best that we know of any one.

"What I aspired to be,

And was not, comforts me.”

So they judge a thinker by his noblest works: Wordsworth by his Ode to Duty rather than by The Idiot Boy; Milton by his Areopagitica rather than his Divorce tracts. Thus we love Browning for his great thoughts, his high enthusiasm, for his faith in God and man and woman. // We come to him for his philosophy, and we care not to dwell upon the shortcomings, upon the superficial faults, which every one can see; rather would we bring to light the hidden treasures. We thank him for the comfort and strength he has given us. We know that he has enriched our sympathies, cheered us under failure and disappointment, and helped us to understand the meaning of life. But I think what draws most of us to him is this: we are struggling with the waves of doubt-storm-tost and ready to sink -and as we look at him, we see him with a smile on his face, calmly floating, his head above the waves, his body supported therein. He quietly tells us our safety teaches that to bury ourselves

is to do the same.

He

in the things of earth is death; to try to rise out of the conditions in which God has placed us may end in a Soul's Tragedy; to make use of the things of time to sustain us as we look upward, this is our wisdom during our life here, ere the disembodied Psyche can soar into more ethereal regions, and revel in the sunlight; and so he conciliates philosophy and religion.

The lovers of Browning's poetry wonder that any one can ask the question, Is he a religious poet? True, he has not written religious epics as Dante and Milton, and there are but few poems which are definitely on religious subjects, but the unseen is ever present to him. He is ever seeking to interpret the seen by the unseen, to justify the ways of God to man. He is ever conscious of the double life, of a Divine presence.

"The spiritual life around the earthly life:
Which runs across some vast distracting orb
Of glory on either side that meagre thread."

(An Epistle.)

"God glows above

With scarce an intervention; presses close
And palpitatingly His soul o'er ours!

We feel Him, nor by painful reason know."

(Luria.)

So we are never shut in by the visible universe; it is to us the veil, the sacrament of the invisible, the infinite, the καλόν καγαθὸν. Yet is the Infinite no mere pantheistic presence, but the Father of spirits, manifested first and pre-eminently in the soul of man, His child, who, because he is a son, is heir of all things. Thus does the Christian teaching penetrate all his thoughts.

Yet to the religious consciousness of some, Browning does not speak. There are child-like souls who have

1 See Fifine.

ever looked up to God in simple loving faith, over whose being the storms of doubt have never swept, who have not known what it is to sit in the midst of a thick darkness, a darkness that may be felt; an unquestioning faith is theirs, and they have never had to wrestle with the problems of life. To such, Browning may appear non-religious, yes, even irreligious, as did Job to his friends, because he cannot receive truth from the outside; it must be looked at from his deepest consciousness, an external revelation is not enough; it is not put in the forefront, because to him it is the outcome, the completion of that which is known by the intuitions of the soul; for though we may believe a person, we cannot believe in a person because some one tells us he did wonderful works-we must be united by inward sympathies,

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Whereby truth, deadened of its absolute blaze,

Might need love's eye to pierce the o'erstretched doubt".
(Death in the Desert.)

We know the Divine through the Spirit bearing witness with our spirit; in other words, the kingdom of heaven is within.

Thus Browning seems to me a prophet whom God has given to our storm-tost age, a pilot who has learnt by long experience the hidden rocks and sandbanks on which the vessel of faith may be wrecked, now that the old anchor chains are burst asunder. An infallible Church, an infallible Book, an infallible Pope, all these have failed us-failed us that, rejecting the stones of the desert, we may learn that man does not live by bread alone, but by the word of God doth man live. I will take a few typical poems familiar to most of us, to establish my position :

.

His idea of what a poet is called to be is given in his picture of a Contemporary :

"I only knew one poet in my life,

And this or something like it was his way".

And then we read of one who walked about in the

haunts of men :

"Scenting the world, looking it full in the face,

Trying the mortar's temper 'tween the chinks".

Watching common sights and common people, and seeing, not the outside shows, but the real thing behind, and thus awakening the conscience, and exercising a kingship by right Divine. Judging not according to the appearance, but righteous judgment.

"My father, like the man of sense he was,
Would point him out to me a dozen times.
'St, st,' he'd whisper, 'the Corregidor.""

"If any beat a horse, you felt he saw;
If any cursed a woman, he took note,
Yet stared at nobody-you stared at him,
And found, less to your pleasure than surprise,
He seemed to know you, and expect as much."
(How it Strikes a Contemporary.)

His reward was to know he was

"Doing the king's work all the dim day long,"

though the tongue of scandal was busy with his life,— a life which the low and sensual cannot believe in. Though no audible voice spoke to the poet, though no vision of glory appeared, yet he knew, he felt the king's approval.

"But never word or sign that I could hear

Notified to this man about the street

The king's approval of those letters.

Was some such understanding 'twixt the two?"

"Hereby we know that we know Him, because we love Him and keep His commandments."

At last we see him dying on