66 has shown us how the mysteries of being are shared by the commonest lives; the short lyric 'Wages" condenses into a few lines the strongest proof of the life to come; and "Crossing the Bar" has borne many a spirit in peace out to the boundless sea. Robert Browning's robust faith helps us in a different way. His daring and triumphant optimism makes us ashamed of doubt. In "Abt Vogler," in "Rabbi Ben Ezra," in "Pompilia," in "Christmas Eve," we are caught up and carried onward by an unflinching and overcoming faith. Perhaps the most convincing arguments for religious reality in Browning's poems are those of "An Epistle" and of "Cleon," where the cry of the human soul for the assurance which the Christian faith supplies is given such a penetrating voice. And there is no reasoning about the Incarnation, in any theological book that I have ever read, which seems to me so cogent as that great passage in "Saul," where David cries: "Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to enrich, To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would-knowing which, I know that my service is perfect. Oh, speak through me now! Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst thou--so wilt thou!" But, after all, Browning's great hymns of faith are those in which he faces the future, like "Prospice," and the prologue of "La Saisiaz," and the epilogue of "Asolando,"-triumphant songs, in which one of the healthiest-minded of human beings showed himself: "One who never turned his back but marched breast for ward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed though right were worsted wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, sleep to wake!" It would be a grateful task to make extended record of the service rendered to religion by the great choir of singers whose names appear upon the pages of this book. To Elizabeth Barrett Browning our debt is large, though her note is oftenest plaintive and the faith which she illustrates is that by which suffering is turned to strength. Our own New England psalmist, also, has been to great multitudes a revealer and a comforter; few in any age have seen the central truths of Christianity more clearly, or felt them more deeply, or uttered them more convincingly. In such poems as "My Soul and I,” “My Psalm,” Our Master," 66 The Eternal Goodness," 66 The Brewing of Soma," and "Andrew Ryckman's Prayer," Whittier has made the whole religious world his debtor. 66 How many more there are- -of those whom the world reckons as the greater bards, and of those whom it assigns to lower places-to whom we have found ourselves indebted for the clearing of our vision or the quickening of our pulses, in our studies or our meditations upon the deepest questions of life! How many there are, whose faces we never saw, but who by some luminous word, some strain vibrant with tenderness, some flash of insight, have endeared themselves to us forever! They are the friends of our spirits, ministers to us of the holiest things. They have clothed for us the highest truth in forms of beauty; they have made it winsome and real and dear and memorable. Is there anything better than this, that one man can do for another? |