Browning and Dogma Part 14

How shall ye help this man who knows himself, That he must love and would be loved again, Yet, owning his own love that proveth Christ, Rejecteth Christ through very need of Him?

The lamp o'erswims with oil, the stomach flags Loaded with nurture, and that man's soul dies.[71]

The soliloquist of _Easter Day_, experiencing practically the position imagined by St. John, makes (with the opening of Section x.x.xI) a final appeal to the Love of G.o.d, that he may be permitted to continue in that uncertainty which, in the midst of "darkness, hunger, toil, distress," yet allows room for hope. Better the sufferings of unending struggle than the deadly calm of despair. To him who has experienced what satiety may bring, the life of probation offers powerful attractions. Whether the Vision may have been a reality or the creation of his own imagination, even this uncertainty is preferable to the judgment that shall grudge "no ease henceforth," whilst the soul is "condemned to earth for ever."

Thus the poem closes with the inevitable demand of the soul for progress, for growth; and the collateral recognition of its present life as a state of probation, hence of essential uncertainty--

Only let me go on, go on, Still hoping ever and anon To reach one eve the Better Land! (ll. 1001-1003.)

Feeble as is the hope at times, the dawn of Easter Day yet recalls the boundless possibilities opening out for human nature. And, for the moment at least, faith is paramount; no vague, impersonal belief, but that which looks for its direct inspiration to a living Christ.

Christ rises! Mercy every way Is Infinite,--and who can say?

LECTURE VI

CHRISTMAS EVE AND EASTER DAY (iii)

LECTURE VI

CHRISTMAS EVE AND EASTER DAY (iii)

The closer and more unprejudiced the study accorded it, the stronger becomes the conviction of the essentially dramatic character of the composition of both _Christmas Eve_ and _Easter Day_. And at first sight it may, to many readers, be matter of regret that this is so: to those readers more especially who had at first rejoiced to discover, in the a.s.sertions of the soliloquists, what they held to be an immediate a.s.surance that Browning's faith was that form of dogmatic belief which was also theirs. If, in all honesty, we are compelled to renounce our original acceptance of the less complex nature of the poems, what is the worth, it may be asked, of the arguments which would unquestionably, were they the direct expression of the writer's feelings, stamp him as a devout Christian, prepared to make even "doubt occasion still more faith"?

Nevertheless, further reflection minimizes the cause for regret. Although we may not accept without question, as Browning's own, the criticisms of the soliloquist of _Christmas Eve_, directed against the arguments of the humanitarian Lecturer, or the reasoning of the concluding Sections of _Easter Day_, in favour of belief in the Gospel story and in the essentially probationary character of human life; yet that which we have already had occasion to notice as true concerning all dramatic work, is true also here. The expression of the author's own opinions is not necessarily excluded, as it is not necessarily implied. Thus, in the present instance, occur not a few pa.s.sages in which it seems almost impossible that we should be in error in discerning Browning's own personality beneath the disguise of the speaker; the immediate expression of his own vital belief, in the theories advanced. And the pa.s.sages seemingly thus directly inspired are those dealing with the permanent truths of life, which find at once embodiment and limitation in the dogma of various religious bodies. How far such pa.s.sages may justly be accepted as non-dramatic in character can only be ascertained by reference to and comparison with treatment of these and similar subjects elsewhere in the works. We may not judge from one poem alone as to the writer's intention; evidence so obtained is insufficient.

I. In both _Christmas Eve_ and _Easter Day_ the most prominent position in the thoughts and dissertations of the soliloquist is necessarily--so the t.i.tle would suggest--afforded the Doctrine of the Incarnation. Its introduction may not, in the single instance, be incontrovertibly significant as to Browning's att.i.tude towards Christianity. But, when we find the same subject dealt with repeatedly from different points of view, by speakers widely separated from one another by time, place, nationality, and personal character; and when, in spite of the variety of external conditions, we yet find the arguments employed ever converging towards the same goal; here even the hypercritical student is surely bound to conclude that Browning did, indeed, realize, and was anxious to make plain his realization of, the value to the individual life of the belief involved, and of the intelligibility and reasonableness of such belief. To notice a few amongst the numerous aspects in which this Doctrine of the Incarnation has been presented. In _Saul_, the logical inevitableness of its acceptance by the seeker after G.o.d, as revealed, first in Nature, then in His dealings with Humanity, is traced by the seer of a remote past before the historic fact has been accomplished. In _Cleon_, the demand for a direct revelation of G.o.d in man is the result of the cravings of a nature unable to rest satisfied in the merely deistic creed hitherto responsible for its theories of life. The very pagan character of the treatment of subject by the soliloquist, in this instance, is so handled by the poet as to lend additional force to the negative deductions from the suggestions advanced. In _An Epistle of Kars.h.i.+sh_, once more as in _Saul_, the speaker, though an onlooker only where Christianity is concerned, is yet a believer in a divine order of the universe, and in a personal G.o.d revealed in His creation. The subject of which Kars.h.i.+sh treats in his letter is no longer, however, as with David, an expectation to be realized in a distant future, but a matter comprehending a series of historic events recently enacted. Nevertheless, he too, whilst nominally rejecting the evidence of the witnesses as to fact, forces upon the reader the conviction that not only is it possible, but inevitable, that the "All-Great" shall be "the All-Loving too"; and must have revealed His love through the life lived by the Physician of Galilee, whose deeds Lazarus reported. Later, when that Life has become still further a thing of the past, when "what first were guessed as points," have become known as "stars," in _A Death in the Desert_ are put into the mouth of the dying Evangelist, St. John, arguments which reach the final culmination towards which those of David and of Cleon alike tended. And St. John, in imagination confronting opponents of Christianity, sees not only his own contemporaries, but those of Browning: his reasoning would refute not so much the heresy of the Gnostics of the first and second centuries of the Christian era as the criticisms of German literary men of the nineteenth. And here, too, is attained the same result as that of the foregoing instances--proof of the inevitableness of an Incarnation, and of such an Incarnation as that of the Gospel story, in any definite and clearly formulated scheme of human life. Thus then, when we turn to _Christmas Eve and Easter Day_ to find again, in the conclusions reached, not only the outcome of the suggestions and arguments of David, of Kars.h.i.+sh, and of Cleon, but, further, a position occupied by the speaker closely akin to that held in imagination by the Evangelist; we can hardly fail to be justified in believing that Browning cared sufficiently for the subject under consideration to wish to present it to his public in those varying lights which should afford proof of its universal import, and confirm, if possible, credence in its absolute truth. To refuse, indeed, to allow due weight to the evidence thus obtained, would be to neglect the best available opportunities for estimating the true nature of the beliefs of a dramatic author; since it is necessarily by such indirect and comparative methods alone that it is possible to ascertain their character. In this exposition, then, of the fundamental truths of Christianity, as set forth by the soliloquist in either poem, we may reasonably believe ourselves to be listening to authorized a.s.sertions and arguments.

II. Again is the voice of Browning himself unmistakably heard in the acceptance by both speakers in _Easter Day_ (although with different practical results in each case) of the inevitable extinction of faith as a necessary consequence of absolute certainty in matters spiritual. It is, in fact, but another form of the constantly advanced theory of the progressive character of human nature, involving a recognition of the world as a training-ground, mortal life as a probation. A theory finding expression in terms more or less p.r.o.nounced throughout Browning's literary career; from the suggestions, dramatic in form, of _Pauline_, 1833, to the direct personal a.s.sertions of the _Asolando Epilogue_ in 1889. Whether it be in the _individual_ aspiration of the lover of _Pauline_,

How should this earth's life prove my only sphere?

Can I so narrow sense but that in life Soul still exceeds it? (ll. 634-636.)

or in the final estimate of _the race_ by Paracelsus--

Upward tending all though weak, Like plants in mines which never saw the sun, But dream of him, and guess where he may be, And do their best to climb and get to him. (_Par._, v, ll. 883-886.)

The same belief, whilst it inspires the utterances of Pompilia and of Abt Vogler, of the Grammarian and the lover of _Evelyn Hope_, is likewise discernible as underlying, though possibly less consciously instigating the reflections of Luria and of the organist of _Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha_, of Andrea del Sarto and of the victim of a prudence outweighing love, in _Dis Aliter Visum_. And progress is the recognized law of Faith as of Life. The existence of Truth, absolute, does not preclude its gradual revelation and realization. In the _Epilogue_ to the _Dramatis Personae_, Browning, by the mouth of the "Third Speaker," would point out that the lamentation of Renan over a vanished faith is unwarranted by fact since, Truth existing in its entirety, the peculiar revelations of Truth are adapted to each successive stage of the development of the human race. Hence "that Face," the vestige even of which the "Second Speaker" held to be "lost in the night at last,"

That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, Or decomposes but to recompose, Become my universe that feels and knows.

A fuller realization of Truth has become possible in these later days than in the past of Jewish ritual, when

The presence of the Lord, _In the glory of His cloud_, Had filled the House of the Lord.

Of _Easter Day_ it has been remarked in this connection, "If Mr. Browning has meant to say ... that religious certainties are required for the undeveloped mind, but that the growing intelligence walks best by a receding light, he denies the positive basis of Christian belief."[72]

Comparing this criticism with the treatment in _A Death in the Desert_ of the subject of faith in relation to the Incarnation, it becomes sufficiently clear that an acceptance of "the positive basis of Christian belief" was to Browning's mind perfectly compatible, not indeed with "a receding light," but with that absence of certainty in matters spiritual which the First Speaker of _Easter Day_ accepts as inevitable. And surely the suggestion in _Easter Day_, as elsewhere in Browning, is that the development of the "religious intelligence" is best advanced, not by _a receding light_, but by that ever-increasing illuminative power which shall effect gradually the revelation presented in the Vision of the Judgment as the work of a moment. The revelation of the true relation between things temporal and spiritual, between the divine and the human.

For, whilst St. John bases his arguments upon the central a.s.surance that "G.o.d the Truth" is, of all things, alone unchangeable, immediately upon the a.s.surance follows the a.s.sertion--

Man apprehends Him newly at each stage Whereat earth's ladder drops, its service done.[73]

Since "such progress" as is the peculiar characteristic of human nature

Could no more attend his soul Were all it struggles after found at first And guesses changed to knowledge absolute, Than motion wait his body, were all else Than it the solid earth on every side, Where now through s.p.a.ce he moves from rest to rest.[74]

Thus with Christianity itself

Will [man] give up fire For gold or purple once he knows its worth?

Could he give Christ up were His worth as plain?

Therefore, I say, to test man, the proofs s.h.i.+ft, Nor may he grasp that fact like other fact, And straightway in his life acknowledge it, As, say, the indubitable bliss of fire.[75]

The effect on human nature and life of the change of "guesses" to "knowledge absolute" is elsewhere exhibited in concrete form where Lazarus, in _An Epistle of Kars.h.i.+sh_, is represented, as Browning's imagination would visualize him, in the years succeeding his resurrection from the dead. There the need for faith is accounted as no longer existing. During those four days of the spirit's sojourn beyond the limits of the visible world, the unveiled light of eternity had thrown into their true relative positions the things of time. Thenceforth, for him who had once _known_, the hopes and fears attendant upon uncertainty were no longer a possibility. In view of that which is eternal, temporal prosperity or adversity had become of small moment. The advance of a hostile force upon the sacred city, centre of the national life, was to the risen nature an event trifling as "the pa.s.sing of a mule with gourds."

Sickness, death, were alike met by the imperturbable "G.o.d wills." Yet this apparently immovable serenity was at once overthrown by contact with "ignorance and carelessness and sin." To the non-Christian onlooker, the att.i.tude thus attained was attributable to the peculiar condition of life by which heaven was

Opened to a soul while yet on earth, Earth forced on a soul's use while seeing heaven.

The man capable of this two-fold vision had indeed become but "a sign,"

noteworthy it is true, yet of little value as a practical example to his fellows, since what held good in this single and unprecedented case must be of no avail as a criterion for the mult.i.tude.

The importance, as an educative instrument, of the demands on faith made by the absence of overwhelmingly conclusive and unalterable evidence in matters spiritual, is again ill.u.s.trated in that remarkable little poem _Fears and Scruples_, following _Easter Day_ after an interval of more than a quarter of a century (pub. 1876). The writer there declares his personal preference for the condition of life ultimately the choice of the First Speaker, in which uncertainty may admit of hope, even though the future should prove such hope fallacious. The old theory is advanced beneath the ill.u.s.tration of relations.h.i.+p to an absent friend, proofs of whose affection, of whose very existence, rest upon the evidence of letters, the genuineness of which has been called in question by experts.

Nevertheless, the friend at home, the soliloquist of the poem, refuses to yield credence to calumny. His faith in the friend, if misplaced, has been hitherto a source of spiritual elevation and inspiration. Even though the truth be ultimately proved but falsehood, he is yet the better for those days in which he deemed it truth. Therefore,

One thing's sure enough: 'tis neither frost, No, nor fire, shall freeze or burn from out me Thanks for truth--though falsehood, gained--though lost.

All my days, I'll go the softlier, sadlier, For that dream's sake! How forget the thrill Through and through me as I thought "The gladlier Lives my friend because I love him still!"

The parallel is enforced by the suggestion at the close--

Hush, I pray you!

What if this friend happen to be--G.o.d? (_F. and S._, viii, ix, xii.)

III. In considering the position of the First Speaker in _Easter Day_, we have already noticed the character of the final judgment, the nature of the h.e.l.l designed for the punishment of him who had chosen the things of the flesh in preference to the things of the spirit.--A h.e.l.l consisting in absolute future exclusion from opportunities of spiritual satisfaction and development.--A judgment which we remarked in pa.s.sing, as peculiarly characteristic in its conception of Browning's usual treatment of matters relative to the spiritual life of man. In _Ferishtah's Fancies_, we are able to obtain direct confirmation of this suggestion, with reference to the subject actually in question. In reading this collection of poems, the work of the author's later life (pub. 1884), we hardly need his warning (or so at least we believe) to avoid the a.s.sumption that "there is more than a thin disguise of a few Persian names and allusions." Sheltering himself thus behind the imagined personality of the Persian historian, Browning, in his seventy-second year, gave freer utterance than was customary with him to his own opinions and beliefs touching certain momentous questions of Life and Faith. _A Camel-driver_ is devoted to a discussion of the doctrine of Judgment and Future Punishment of the sins committed in the flesh. Ferishtah, as Dervish, submits that here, as in all allied matters, man with finite capacities cannot conceive of the infinite purpose. Knowing "but man's trick to teach," he does but reason from the character of his own dealings, in this respect, with the animals, as creatures of lower intelligence, employed in his service. The general conclusions from the arguments thus deduced are, in brief: (1) The punishment as regards the sufferer is not designed to be retributive only, but remedial and reformatory in character. (2) With respect to the sinner and his fellow mortals, it must be deterrent. (3) Hence, to be effective, its infliction should be immediate rather than future. By postponement, the exemplary effect of punishment is rendered void: the connection between offence and penalty is obscured, and sympathy with the sufferer will result, rather than avoidance of the offence for which the suffering is inflicted. Such is the estimate by Ferishtah, or Browning, of the punishment of a future h.e.l.l of fire. From a merely human point of view it is illogical. For the purification of the sinner, or for the admonition of the onlooker, it is alike useless. And the deduction? Man can but work and, therefore, teach as man, and not as G.o.d. At best he may but see a little way into the Eternal purpose: into that portion alone which is revealed through the experiences of mortal life. Here he must be content to rest without further speculation.

Before man's First, and after man's poor Last, G.o.d operated, and will operate,

is the a.s.sertion of Reason. To which adds Ferishtah,

Process of which man merely knows this much,-- That nowise it resembles man's at all, Teaching or punis.h.i.+ng.

For the character of the divine process:--as in _Easter Day_, so here the penalty is immediately adjusted to the peculiar requirements of the nature to be "taught or punished." To the man of spiritual discernment, of right thought and purpose, but of imperfect performance, no h.e.l.l is needed beyond that to be found in the comparison of the Might-have-been with the Has-been and the Is. And in this sadness of retrospect are to be remembered, too, the sins of ignorance; even forgiveness is powerless to efface wholly the misery of remorse. Thus shall Omnipotence deal with the individual soul. Thus does the work of judgment and of education differ essentially from that of man who "lumps his kind i' the ma.s.s," pa.s.sing upon the ma.s.s sentence, involving a uniformity of punishment, which must fall in individual cases with varying degrees of intensity, by no means proportionate to the magnitude of the offences committed. That which to the sensitive soul is torture unfathomable, to the "bold and blind" is as naught. By some other method must be forced on _him_ the recognition and realization of past sin. Terror may "burn in the truth," where the recollection of irremediable evil has failed to create remorse. Only a mind incapable of spiritual discernment would award a similar penalty for a life's faults of omission and commission to the several inmates of the Morgue, and to the onlooker who would see, in the temporary despair which had caused the end, failure apparent, not absolute. For his part he could but deem that the misery which had resulted in an overwhelming abhorrence of life had, in itself, been punishment sufficient; he could but think "their sin's atoned."[76] Yet in his own case, even though he held that "we fall to rise," those falls from which no human life may be wholly exempt, were in themselves cause more than adequate for remorseful anguish without the super-addition of external penalty:

Forgiveness? rather grant Forgetfulness! The past is past and lost.

However near I stand in his regard, So much the nearer had I stood by steps Offered the feet which rashly spurned their help.

That I call h.e.l.l; why further punishment?[77]