As the voice passed, the man looked up, and there standing between earth and heaven, was the awful form of Christ.

HE stood there.

Like the smoke

Pillared o'er Sodom, when day broke,—
I saw him.

But he sees Him not as he appeared on Christmas Eve in garments of dazzling white which caught up the disciple in their sheltering folds; now he appears clothed in darkness blacker than the deepest midnight.

One magnific pall

Mantled in massive fold and fall

His dread, and coiled in snaky swathes

About His feet: night's black, that bathes

All else, broke, grizzled with despair,

Against the soul of blackness there.

A gesture told His mood within

That wrapped right hand which based the chin,
That intense meditation fixed'

On His procedure,-pity mixed
With the fulfilment of decree.
Motionless, thus, He spoke to me,
Who fell before His feet, a mass,
No man now.

Eternal Love is the Judge to decide the destiny on saint and sinner. And the vastness of the Love measures the direness of the condemnation. With divine pity in His face Christ looks upon the stricken man crouching at His feet, and speaks the words of doom. He tells him that his life was given him to make his choice between the earthly and heavenly, between the shows of time and the realities of eternity. And he knows how he has chosen :

:

This world,

This finite life, thou hast preferred,
In disbelief of God's own word,

To Heaven and to Infinity.

Even his spiritual powers he has employed merely to give new zest to the pleasures of sense and to explore more fully the passing beauties of the world. What shall be the penalty of such a choice? The man trembles to hear the sentence; he imagines the Judge will condemn him to some frightful hell.

At this point Browning shows himself a profound spiritual teacher. Christ condemns to no hell of fire and brimstone, he inflicts no outward punishment. The man's Choice shall be his Doom. Since he has forgotten the realities of eternity, he shall remain for ever amidst the empty shows of time,-un visited by one gleam of the light and love he has ignored. He has chosen the world, then let him keep the world :

Thou art shut

Out of the heaven of spirit: glut

Thy sense upon the world: 'tis thine
For ever-take it.

That is the judgment, the opening of the man's book of life, the unfolding of interior character, the revelation of what HE IS when all disguises are removed. What art thou, in thine inmost self, as seen by the eye of God? The answer to that question shall be thy final doom. That is the penalty of sin,-the sin itself with all its dire consequences in the soul. "He that is filthy, let him be filthy still;"-his filthiness shall be his punishment. The miser has chosen his gold,-then let

him keep it, and spend eternity in counting up some visionary treasure;- his avarice shall be his penalty. The man whose heart is full of hatred can, surely, have no more dreadful doom than to feel the malice eating away at his heart, his hatred shall be his hell. "And for thee," says Christ, "who hast desired nothing better than the unrestrained enjoyment of the earth, it shall seem as though the world continued as before, as though no judgment had swept it into nothingness. For thee the shows of time shall continue; the woods shall wave, the waters flow, men shall still seem to go about pursuing their works; thou shalt have the pleasures of time, the joys of sense; only now there shall come no visiting of God's spirit to strive with thee and to draw thee away from earthly shadows into heavenly realities; let that be thy fate :

So, once more, take thy world! expend

Eternity upon its shows,—

Flung thee as freely as one rose

Out of a summer's opulence,

Over the Eden-barrier whence

Thou art excluded. Knock in vain!

The door is shut; the man is excluded from the grandeurs of spiritual destiny; God simply lets him alone, and leaves him to the choice he has made.

V.

We must remember that this man was crouching at Christ's feet, expecting to be sentenced to some dreadful hell. But, as he listens, he takes courage. punishment!—why, he will take such a doom with joy!

This a

"How? Is mine,

The world?" (I cried while my soul broke
Out in a transport,) "Hast thou spoke
Plainly in that? Earth's exquisite
Treasures of wonder and delight,
For me?"

He rose from the ground; the terror was gone; his heart beat calmly again. "All the world," he said, "is mine!" He picked a leaf of fern from the common, he looked at it and thought, "Why even if I begin with this tiny form of life, there are myriads of other kinds of ferns, each as unique and beautiful as this. Think, what endless search there must be from this first specimen to the last! Conceive, then, the resources of all the earth! Vast, exhaustless beauty, endless change of wonder,---all this is mine. The world is mine; my feet shall range its whole extent; my eyes shall take in its boundless wealth."

As he thus receives his fate with joy, the voice of Christ, in yet sterner accents, falls upon his ear. 'Ah,” He says, 66 are you so satisfied with the many coloured veil, whose folds adorn this earth the ante-chamber to God's presence? Be welcome, then, to its shows of finite beauty! But there have been wiser men, who, from the glories of the earth, were able to discover what royalties must be prepared in the presence-chamber of the Divine. As for thee, a leaf of fern is able to entangle thy mind, and keep thee from seeking the spiritual purpose of thy life. These earthly forms were made so fair, to give some hints of the Supernal Beauty. All partial loveliness is a pledge of beauty in its plenitude. But thou art satisfied with the earthly

hints, the partial pledges. Take them! try to satisfy thyself with them; remain shut out for ever from the Beatific Vision."

V.

These reproachful words brought an inward despair. "But yet," the man answers,

even if the things of nature cease to satisfy my soul, yet there is that higher nature which men call ART. It is the artist who gives deeper meaning and subtiler beauty to the world, and makes dead matter instinct with thought and feeling. Here, then, is something which makes life worth living; I will be a student of art; I will seek the statuary of Greece, the painting of Italy; and with such a store of loveliness, need I mourn that my doom is to possess the present world?"

"Take it;

As he chooses, the voice again answers:— try to satisfy thyself with these finite creations of art. But remember that the greatest artists themselves felt that their finest works were only hints of the Perfect Ideal, only isolated parts of the Infinite Truth." How could he be satisfied with art alone, when the inspiration. of true art is the effort of the soul to rise into the fulness of God? The test of the genuine artist is his divine discontent. The very stamp of genius is a sense of imperfection, the desire to reach towards some finer form. The sculptor or painter feels ashamed when the crowds press in to behold and adore his work. Ah! if they could only guess how grand his vision, then how poor would seem the statue or the painting. Man's pursuit of art should be the education for an immortal life of power and progress. For example, we marvel at

F