Browning and Dogma Part 8

It is here almost as if Browning cannot restrain the expression of his own personal feeling, so markedly characteristic is this pa.s.sage of his general teaching. That which holds good of all struggle is applicable also to the contest between faith and doubt. That implicit faith of mediaeval times, which exerted too little influence on practical life, was in character less virile, a factor less potent for good than is the Bishop's own limited belief, constantly a.s.sailed by doubt. Good strengthened by the contest with evil, faith increased by the conflict with doubt. The creed of Browning, in brief:

I shew 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, G.o.d gave for that! (ll. 602-605.)

Let doubt occasion still more faith. (l. 675.)

Words recalling Tennyson's reference to the spiritual struggles of a more finely tempered nature than that of Blougram:

He fought his doubts and gather'd strength, He would not make his judgment blind, He faced the spectres of the mind And laid them: thus he came at length

To find a stronger faith his own.[60]

And the Bishop may not unjustly claim

The sum of all is--yes, my doubt is great, My faith's still greater, then my faith's enough. (ll. 724-725.)

These higher utterances, intermingled as they are with the openly expressed tenets of the opportunist; whilst testifying most clearly to the genius of Browning in its penetrative comprehension of human nature, that admixture of n.o.ble aspiration and base compromise; find their counterpart in the memorable advice of Polonius to Laertes, const.i.tuted for the main part of prudential maxims regulating the social comportment of the successful worldling; then, almost suddenly, as it were, at the close, breaking through to deeper ground and striking upon that unalterable principle of life, of universal import, of inexhaustible illuminative power, since it treats only of that which is in its essence infinite--

To thine ownself be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Though the life which the Bishop defends may not be the highest measured by the standard of his own ideal, yet, "truth is truth, and justifies itself in undreamed ways." And there _is_ truth in the recognition that the faith to which he looks for inspiration and guidance is a faith barely capable of holding its own in face of the battalion of a.s.sailant doubts.

It may yet be that "the dayspring's faith" shall finally crush "the midnight doubt." Some solution of the problems of life must be sought, and why should that alone be rejected which alone offers a satisfactory clue?

There is perhaps no finer pa.s.sage in Browning, certainly none more melodious, than that in which Blougram, after comparing the relative positions of faith and unbelief as influencing life, concludes with this query.

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, 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 G.o.d,--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?" (ll. 182-197.)

It must be left to the individual decision to acquit or condemn the Bishop. The decision may perhaps depend upon the acceptance or rejection of the alternative, "Whole faith or none?" And "whole faith" as defined by the Apology is that which accepts all things, from the existence of a G.o.d down to the latest ecclesiastical miracle. Such an att.i.tude is possible only to the uncritical mind. The spheres of faith and reason are not identical. The childlike intelligence may receive without question or effort of faith all that is offered it of things spiritual. It sees no cause for question, hence doubt does not arise. The logical and critical faculties have not been developed. But in the mind of the thinker, the logician, the metaphysician, reason will a.s.sert itself; judgment will not be blindfolded. If the postulates of faith are capable of proof by reason, then is faith no longer necessary; its sphere is usurped by reason which has become all-sufficient. To the man, therefore, whose intellect questions, a.n.a.lyses, dissects truths as they present themselves to him, a proportionately stronger faith is a necessity: the doubts so arising being, "the most consummate of contrivances to teach men faith."

Having once satisfied the insistent yearning of a nature which declares, I ...

want, am made for, and must have a G.o.d ... No mere name Want, but the true thing with what proves its truth, To wit, a relation from that thing to me, Touching from head to foot--which touch I feel. (ll. 846-850.)

(With this compare Mr. W. Ward on Cardinal Wiseman, "his own early doubts ... had been the alternative to a pa.s.sionate, mystical, and absorbing faith.") This relation having been attained, the speaker is prepared

To take the rest, this life of ours.

Faith in the greatest having been a.s.sured, faith in that which is less may or may not follow. He who feels in touch with the Divine may well endure the existence of doubts and questionings inevitable in matters of less vital import. To the child "who knows his father near" tears are not an unalloyed bitterness; or, to adopt the Bishop's own simile, so be it the path leads to the mountain top, a break or two by the way matters little.

LECTURE IV

CHRISTMAS EVE AND EASTER DAY (i)

LECTURE IV

CHRISTMAS EVE AND EASTER DAY (i)

No poems of Browning's have probably excited more widely-spread interest (the question of admiration being set aside) than those which we have before us for consideration in this and the two following Lectures. The interest so excited is due, one believes, less to artistic merit than to the character of the subjects treated--unfailing in their attraction for the speculative tendencies of the human intellect. The form in which they now make appeal is no longer identical with that in which they presented themselves when _Christmas Eve and Easter Day_ appeared in the middle of the last century: fifty years hence the embodiment of thoughts thus suggested may well differ yet more widely from that obtaining at the present day. Nevertheless, beneath all external variations, that which is essentially permanent remains: and in this enduring interest of subject inevitably subsists the immortality of that literary work, whether poetry or prose, in which it has found, or is destined to find, a vehicle of expression. If it were permissible to suggest a division where the author clearly intended no division should be, it might on the foregoing hypothesis be reasonable to prognosticate for _Easter Day_ a more enduring interest than for the companion poem; since, whilst the dramatic attraction is less powerful than in _Christmas Eve_, the treatment of subject goes deeper, and is more independent of temporary accessaries. In a memorable phrase Professor Dowden has defined the subjects of the two poems as "the spiritual life individual, and the spiritual life corporate."[61] Both indeed deal with faith in its relation to life: the first with faith as found incorporated in typical religious communities of the civilized world; the second with faith as it makes direct appeal to the individual apart from the influence of external formulae. The one aspect of the subject is obviously regarded by Browning as complementary to the other. "Easter Day" is essential to the completion of "Christmas Eve." Both poems were originally published in one volume (1850), and still remain united by the joint t.i.tle standing at the head of both. Individual faith is necessary to the vitality of faith corporate. The considerations engaging the attention of the soliloquist of _Christmas Eve_ are confined to a decision as to which of the forms of creed presented for choice shall receive his adherence; or whether it may be justly yielded to that which he finally accounts no creed, the theory of life based upon the teaching of the Professor of Gottingen? In _Easter Day_ the debate in the mind of the speaker goes deeper yet, and relates mainly to the difficulties attendant upon a practical and consistent acceptance of Christian belief in its simplest form: an acceptance involving a necessary reconstruction of life on the lines of faith. In another sense also are the two poems complementary. As indicated by the sequence of names in the t.i.tle, the love and universal tolerance suggested by the Peace and Goodwill of Christmas find their fuller development, their essential, practical outcome in the personal faith, implying a personal acceptance of the sacrifice of which Easter Day marks the triumphant culmination. Hence the more notable _asceticism_, if we are so to term it, of the second poem as compared with the first. Rightly, he who would fain be a Christian stands in awe before

The all-stupendous tale,--that Birth, That Life, that Death! (_E. D._, ll. 233-234.)

Thus in _Easter Day_ is to be found no trace of that "easy tolerance" in matters spiritual which suggests itself--only, however, to be finally rejected--to the soliloquist of _Christmas Eve_ as the result of his night's experiences. But a comparison of the two poems will be more satisfactorily made after a brief separate consideration of each in this and Lecture V. Lecture VI will be mainly occupied with a discussion of criticisms relating to both, as well as to the question of vital importance touching Browning's own position--How far must the conclusions of either or both be regarded as dramatic in character?

From a merely artistic point of view _Christmas Eve_ presents its own peculiar interest. Having once read it, in whatever degree our minds may have become impressed by its theological or dogmatic arguments, externals have been so forcibly presented, that Zion Chapel and the common outside "at the edge of which the Chapel stands," always thereafter bear for us a curious kind of familiarity similar to that which attaches itself to remembered haunts of our childish days. The first three Sections of the Poem contain what may certainly be cla.s.sed amongst the most grimly realistic descriptions in English literature. It may, indeed, be objected that these opening stanzas are _perilously_ realistic in character where poetry is concerned, fitted rather for the pages of d.i.c.kens or of Gissing than for their present position.

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 "the many-tattered little old-faced peaking sister-turned-mother,"

"the sickly babe with its spotted face," and the

Tall yellow man, like the Penitent Thief, With his jaw bound up in a handkerchief. (ll. 48-82.)

In short, read the second Section in its entirety. Such description is certainly not "poetic." But Browning knew well what he was doing.

Influenced doubtless by his love of striking effects, we cannot but feel that he makes the unpleasing characteristics of the congregation a.s.sembled within the walls of Zion Chapel the more repellant, that the transition from the mundane to the divine may strike the reader with greater force.

From the flock sniffing

Its dew of Hermon With such content in every snuffle.

the soliloquist of the poem calls us to follow him as he "flings out of the little chapel"; and with Section IV we have pa.s.sed into the boundless waste of the common, where is

A lull in the rain, a lull In the wind too; the moon ... risen [Which] would have shone out pure and full, But for the ramparted cloud-prison, Block on block built up in the West. (ll. 185-189.)

The scene thus outlined prepares us for the culmination of Section 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.

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 circ.u.mflexed, Another rainbow rose, a mightier, Fainter, flus.h.i.+er and flightier,-- Rapture dying along its verge. (ll. 373-399.)

So the poet leads us to the climax--to the silence awaiting the answer to the speaker's query