Tennyson, while believing that the true doctrine was taught by Christ's disciples, believed also that God revealed himself to, and inspired the present generation, just as truly as he did the chosen twelve. To Tennyson the all important question of religion was the question of immortality; if this could be settled in his mind the question of the Fatherhood of God, man's salvation, the brotherhood of man, is life worth living, would all be clear. If immortality could not be accepted then nothing could be accepted. He fought for his belief in immortality in a world full of doubts. Unlike Arnold, he sought to establish the truth not only through the intellect, but through an appeal to the emotions. "Immortal life in God who is immortal Love, and therefore immortal Life,..... inmortal development immortal union with all we love; the never-ending evolution of all into more and more of perfection." (Stopford A. Brooke.) Tennyson had fixed his belief in immortality and was about to rest from doubt - when Darwin's theory of evolution shook the world. This and the so-called "higher criticism" raised questions regarding the infallibility of the Bible, the interpretation of the New Testament stories and other related questions. The whole world was full of doubt, men fought with earnestness for the faith of the grey-haired fathers. It was then that Tennyson wrote the poem of "Despair" and "The Promise of May," and "By an Evolutionist" which show how deeply these questions affected his sensitive mind. "Vastness" still shows a way ering note and it is not until his last great poem "Crossing the Bar," that we see doubt vanish. This spirit of doubt in Browning is more like Arnold's in that it appeals directly to the intellect rather than to emotion, but Browning is far less negative than Between Browning's earlier and later work there Arnold. is a great distinction. "In the first the investigation is purely critical, in the last period he fell back upon a denial of knowledge and accepted faith blindly and even against reason." (Professor Jones.) We see Browning's inner life revealed in the poem "Pauline," where we find these stanzas: "I have always had one lode-star; now, A feeling I have analysed but late, From fear: and thence I date my trust in signs And omens, for I saw God everywhere; Of a sad after-time that I could doubt Even his being His presence, never acted from myself, Still trusted in a hand, to lead me through My God, my God, let me for once look on thee I need thee and I feel thee and I love thee. Which turns to thee, which loves or which should love." The poets of doubt, though widely separate in their investigations, were all groping toward a new faith - a faith in which the intellect leads a faith in the power While this spirit of science to test religious questions. of religious doubt and unbelief pervades the writings of all the Victorian poets, there is a total absence of this spirit among the Elizabethan poets. They seemed utterly unconscious of religious questionings; either they ac cepted the Christian religion or they were totally indifferent to it. Greville's sonnets, written about 1633, give some idea of the conceptions of life and death. |