Browning and Dogma Part 19

Still less could he speak of himself as 'crowned by prose and verse.'"

Whence arises Dr. Berdoe's misapprehension? Apart from the context the significance might not be obvious; taken in connection with the pa.s.sage immediately preceding, it is valuable as adding emphasis to the conclusions of the foregoing argument, and proclaiming in unmistakable language the worth to Browning as a personal possession of that creed which he has just declared himself to hold. Reflecting upon the widespread influence of those literary men whose presence has rendered celebrated the region lying before him, he attributes it to the "phosphoric fame" which attended the path of each. "Famed unfortunates" all, yet "the world was witched" and became enslaved by their pessimistic theories of life. Forced to believe because "the famous bard believed!" because the renowned man of letters could say, "Which believe--for I believe it." Such being the power of fame as an agency for influencing the human mind, what might not the author of _La Saisiaz_ achieve, were he, too, armed with this "brand flamboyant!" No pessimistic creed is his, but that which involving an absolute belief in G.o.d and in the soul would thence deduce a confidence in "that power and purpose" existent throughout life, indicated and recognized by the presence and revelations of "hope the arrowy." So would he gather in one the fame of his predecessors in the literary world; would become as Rousseau, "eloquent, as Byron prime in poet's power":

Learned for the nonce as Gibbon, witty as wit's self Voltaire.

Thus would he stand "crowned by prose and verse." And why? Because the millions still take "the flare for evidence," and "find significance" in the fireworks of fame. Only by wielding "the brand flamboyant" may he succeed in impressing upon mankind his own supreme a.s.surance. To this end he would desire Fame.

It remains to a.s.sign to _La Saisiaz_ the position which, as a declaration of faith, it occupies in relation to the poems we have already considered.

In _Caliban_, dealing with a peculiar phase of "Natural Theology," we found the suggestions of a deity those derived from the conceptions of a semi-savage being, with whom the intellectual development would seem to have outrun the moral. Pa.s.sing to the reflections of Cleon, with the Greek theory and practice of life there set forth, we reached the utmost heights attainable by paganism. In _Bishop Blougram's Apology_ the unbelief threatening was not that of paganism in the early interpretation of the word, but of the paganism which would subst.i.tute authority for faith. With _Christmas Eve_ came the individual choice of creed, the voluntary acceptance of the position of wors.h.i.+pper at one of the narrow shrines of human invention; but an acceptance which involved likewise a personal faith in the divinity of Jesus Christ. The faith thus accepted received fuller a.n.a.lysis and investigation through the questionings of _Easter Day_. But all these poems are, as we have been forced to conclude, more or less dramatic in character, the first three wholly, the two last to a degree which we have attempted to define. Only with _La Saisiaz_ do we reach the undisguised and definite expression of Browning's personal faith, the basis, though not the culmination of which, is emphatically a.s.serted as a belief in the soul and in G.o.d.

At first sight it may appear disappointing to many readers that the irreducible minimum of the creed should contain but these two tenets. On this ground, indeed, we might have been tempted, had such a transposition been justifiable to place _La Saisiaz_ before, instead of after, _Christmas Eve and Easter Day_, allowing the profession of faith on La Saleve to serve as a foundation for the superstructure supplied by the arguments of the listener without the Lecture Hall at Gottingen. On consideration, however, nothing is discoverable in the position occupied by the author of _La Saisiaz_ to render untenable that held by the soliloquist of _Christmas Eve_ or the First Speaker of _Easter Day_. There is, as we have indeed noticed, a marked similarity between the arguments employed in the two last cases (_La Saisiaz_ and _Easter Day_) and in the conclusions reached: in both, the a.s.surance that in the probationary character of this present life, with its possibilities for spiritual development through the exercise of faith, lies its main value.

Mrs. Sutherland Orr admits that Browning "was no less, in his way, a Christian when he wrote _La Saisiaz_ than when he published _A Death in the Desert_ and _Christmas Eve and Easter Day_, or at any period subsequent to that in which he accepted without questioning what he had learned at his mother's knee. He has repeatedly written or declared in the words of Charles Lamb: 'If Christ entered the room I should fall on my knees'; and again in those of Napoleon: 'I am an understander of men, and _He_ was no man.' He has even added: 'If he had been, he would have been an imposter.'" But she has already remarked of the poem that "It is conclusive both in form and matter as to his heterodox att.i.tude towards Christianity." And she continues: "The arguments, in great part negative, set forth in _La Saisiaz_ for the immortality of the soul, leave no place for the idea, however indefinite, of a Christian revelation on the subject."[96] We may indeed regret that such criticism should result from a study of the poem; but, after all, do the truths discussed in _La Saisiaz_ involve any immediate question either of the acceptance or rejection of a Christian revelation on this or on any subject? Do they not go deeper, if we may so say, than Christianity itself? Until faith in these fundamental truths has been una.s.sailably established, no basis for Christianity has been secured. To him who is not yet "sure of G.o.d," the revelation of G.o.d in Christ can have little meaning. For whilst far more than the belief necessarily implied in the confession on La Saleve must be held essential to the fulness of life, without it no superstructure of faith is possible. Its very strength would seem to lie in the fact that, avoiding the limitations of strictly defined dogma, it "leaves place" for all subsequent revelations of spiritual truth.

And what _is_ "the Christian revelation" on these matters? The questions concerning death, immortality, and future recognition and reunion, ever suggesting themselves in new form to the human heart and intellect, are yet unanswered. Even that "acknowledgment of G.o.d in Christ" to which the dying Evangelist points as to the solution of "all questions in the earth and out of it,"[97] implies the acceptance of a creed not necessarily involving a revelation of the future life. The teaching of the Gospel serves as _present_ inspiration of a faith content to leave the future in the confidence

Our times are in His hand Who saith "A whole I planned."[98]

Life eternal is there defined, not with reference to a future state, but as the knowledge of G.o.d, the beginnings of which are attainable here and now, by present service and self-devotion: to him who should do the will should the doctrine be made known.[99] The record of the intercourse between the Master and His disciples during the forty days following the resurrection is silent concerning any lifting of the veil before which they so consciously stood. That Browning was a Christian in the broadest, deepest, and possibly in the least conventional acceptation of the term, it was the attempt of the last Lecture to demonstrate by a consideration of the dramatic poems bearing reference to Christianity and its relation to human life. And there is no word throughout _La Saisiaz_ which should preclude belief in the conclusions of David in _Saul_ or of St. John in _A Death in the Desert_. To the man who was "very sure of G.o.d"--who had recognized the Divine revelation in Nature--an acceptance of the more immediate and special revelation was but a natural sequence. "Ye believe in G.o.d, believe also in me":[100] when the a.s.sertion holds good the command is not difficult of fulfilment. Whilst extreme caution is necessary in dealing with a matter in which the student is too readily tempted to "find what he desires to find," the historical and logical necessity for an Incarnation was, as we have seen, so favourite a theme with Browning for dramatic treatment, that it is wellnigh impossible to dissociate the personal interest. This subject the reflections of _La Saisiaz_ do not directly approach.

He at least believed in Soul, was very sure of G.o.d.

The creed so expressed meant for the author a gain, once experienced, too great to remain unshared. No mere abstract belief, but an a.s.surance of which he could a.s.sert

Fact it is I know I know not something which is fact as much. (l. 224.)

For him the power and the purpose which he beheld, "if no one else beheld," ruling in Nature and in human life were alike Love. The last word on the subject comes to us direct, unmodified by any dramatic medium--

Power is Love--

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? Where 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.[101]

The hope of _La Saisiaz_ has become the a.s.surance of the _Reverie_.

This recognition of "the continuity of life" is the main inspiration, the invigorating principle of Browning's creed. Cleon _felt_ the necessity which Reason demonstrated on La Saleve. Yet again, eleven years later, the author of _Asolando_ can speak with absolute confidence of the certainty that death will afford no interruption to the energies, the activities, the progress of the soul's life. That he who has _here_ "never turned his back" will _there_ still continue the forward march. It is, in other words, the faith of Pompilia which can look beyond the limitations of the present to the boundless developments of which this life, with its struggles and apparent failures, is but the beginning: and in the hour of defeat can hold that "No work begun shall ever pause for death."

It is in the midst of the "bustle of man's work-time" that "the unseen" is to be greeted. Is it too much to say that Browning, in the admonition of these closing lines of the _Asolando Epilogue_, makes confession of his belief in the Communion of Saints? But it is characteristic that the expression of faith (if such we may account it) is made in terms which admit of no distinctly formulated definition. The command comes as an inspiration to the seen and the unseen.

Greet the unseen with a cheer!

Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, "Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed,--fight on, fare ever There as here!"

The underlying confidence is beyond that of the reasoning of _La Saisiaz_, but not far in advance of the joyful spontaneity of the _Prologue_

_Dying we live._ Fretless and free, Soul, clap thy pinion!

Body shall c.u.mber Soul-flight no more.

And if--admitting that Browning, even when writing _La Saisiaz_, possessed the a.s.surance thus expressed--we ask why he should have rested satisfied with the confession of faith contained in its concluding line, the answer must be--that the author of _La Saisiaz_ is to be numbered amongst that small minority of religious teachers for whom it may be claimed that "they cannot fail to recognize that the formulas which express the Truth suggested by the facts of their Creed are themselves of necessity partial and provisional." It is impossible to doubt that with him the consciousness was strongly present, that "Formulas do not exhaust the Truth"; that "the character and expression of Doctrine ... is relative to the age."[102] That in proportion as satisfaction is found in formula does faith lose its life-giving power. Progress being the law of life, he would, therefore, enforce upon no man as binding formulae of which the comparative inelasticity might tend to fetter mental or spiritual development. On the contrary, he would have the seeker after Truth prepared to relinquish in due time definitions once essential, since threatening to become restrictive to growth. Before all things, is to be avoided the danger of resting on that which is not the Truth itself, but merely a necessary introduction to the Truth. Hence,

The help whereby he mounts, The ladder-rung his foot has left, may fall, Since all things suffer change save G.o.d the Truth.[103]

Only through such employment of the means may the end be attained, since whether it be concerning "G.o.d the Truth," "the eternal power," or "the love that tops the might, the Christ in G.o.d," in all

New lessons shall be learned ...

Till earth's work stop and useless time run out.[104]