LOVE IS INEXHAUSTIBLE 171 and completes the self, and in the completed self "Man begins anew a tendency to God."1 Contemplating human love and all it would do if it might, the poet finds in his own heart an argument for the existence of a loving Creator. It is impossible to imagine the creature surpassing the Creator "The loving worm within its clod Were diviner than a loveless god The meeting-place between God and man is love. Not by his intellect can man build a tower to reach God; foredoomed to failure and utter confusion are all attempts by searching to find out God; but every step love takes lifts us nearer heaven, and brings God down to man. Love, then, is the sole good of life, and its first demand is that it shall endure eternally. Love which is not eternal is but an emotion masquerading in love's dress. "Love me for ever!" is the demand of Earth's Immortalities.5 Love is the only treasure which is inexhaustible; disburse it wide as we please, its sum remains what it 172 THE DEVELOPMENT OF LOVE was before; for in giving us love God has given us Himself, and causes it to pass into our souls to "Add worth to worth, As wine enriches blood, and straightway send it forth, Conquering and to conquer, through all eternity, That's battle without end." 1 Browning's treatment of the principle of love, like everything else in his philosophy, was consistent from first to last. There is development, but no radical change. In Pauline he utters his grand Credo "I believe in God and truth and love." The first notes were intoned in 1832, and in 1889 he died with a love-chant on his lips, the day he gave us Asolando "Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved SO." 2 The theme of Paracelsus is the failure of knowledge alone to develop or satisfy the soul. Knowledge not strengthened by love obstructs the divine purpose, inasmuch as "Love-strong from weakness, Love which endures and doubts and is oppressed A half-enlightened, often-chequered trust," 3 is a faculty previsions and forecasts of which are 1 Fifine at the Fair. 2 Epilogue to Asolando. 3 Paracelsus. KNOWLEDGE AND LOVE 173 seen scattered confusedly amongst the inferior natures, and which point to a superior race— "The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false, It took Paracelsus, with his lifelong passion for knowledge, years of disappointed labour and brain-distracting toil to discover that he had aimed at the possession of only half the truth of the God-illumined soul. Love and knowledge make the divine in man; divorced, they are "two halves of a dissevered world." The lesson of Sordello is not wholly different. Soul and body have each alike need of the other: soul must content itself without the Infinite till the earthstage is over. Sordello, like Paracelsus, learned how to live as he came to die; he made the great renunciation, and in seeming defeat achieved his soul's success. "The cloud of hindrance broke But by the failing of the fleshly yoke."2 Nature did her best to teach Sordello the love that takes the single course indicated by the simplest lore, but Nature failed. At death "he found motive for human love in the Divine impulse sufficient for the humble service to his unworthy fellows in the worthiness of the Master 2 Sordello. 1 Paracelsus. 174 MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF LOVE whose service it is. Life's secret is found at last, but too late for this life's work."1 Love, Browning teaches, is not to be realized here; as it is eternal, a ray of the Divine nature, it cannot exhaust itself in time. In Cristina, as we have seen, we are here to learn love by mingling soul with soul. In Evelyn Hope the lover protests that he will claim his dead bride though he pass through more lives yet, and traverse worlds not a few. In the Last Ride Together the lover imagines they may "ride on, we two, for ever, changed not in kind but in degree." In all these poems the lesson is that love is not to be realized here. In the development of the soul love is the chief factor. The pure, platonic love of Caponsacchi and Pompilia in The Ring and the Book changes the fribble, coxcomb sonneteer into the "soldier-saint," and makes of a timid girl-bride, wedded by fraud to a villain, a noble, brave, and lofty-minded woman. Browning," says Professor Henry Jones, "in one thing stands alone. He has given to love a moral significance, a place and power amongst those substantial elements on which rest the dignity of man's being and the greatness of his destiny, in a way which is, I believe, without example in any other poet." 2 1 Sordello, by Jeanie Morison, pp. 111-12. 2 Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher, p. 160. PROGRESS BY RESISTANCE 175 In the lowest forms of love he recognizes its purifying and redeeming influence. He is repelled by no ugliness in these unhallowed unions, for he believes that "Warm Beneath the veriest ash, there hides a spark of soul Which, quickened by love's breath, may yet pervade the whole." 1 When Browning, leaving human love for the Divine, is confronted by the difficulty that misery, sin, pain, and death abound, though Love is declared to reign supreme, he calls philosophy to aid his theology. "All's Love," he says, "yet all's Law," 2 for love has made the law. The commandments written in our hearts were inscribed therein by the pen of Love. Love spoke in the awful thunders of Sinai, for Justice is only another manifestation of Love.3 In this connection we may recall what has been previously said. God's love is unlimited in its self-sacrifice, and there is no difficulty in believing that the dread machinery of sin, pain, and sorrow were devised to evolve the moral qualities of man, "to make him love in turn, and be beloved." 4 The development theory applied to the mystery of sin and pain will help us to solve many riddles. 1 Fifine at the Fair. 2 Saul. 3 See George Macdonald's fine discourse, "Love Thy Neighbour," Unspoken Sermons, p. 191. 4 The Ring and the Book: "The Pope," ll. 1375-86. |