VERY MAN AND VERY GOD 4I critics concerning the transmission of the gospel story, nor with the riddles set to solve. The very difficulties of the narrative are but as those of life; we must march over obstacles we compel to give way before us; the moral sense grows but by exercise; there would be no progress in the world did solid, bare truth always confront us. The unceasing criticism of the Sacred Narrative keeps the life and work of the Lord Jesus ever before the minds of men; the efforts to destroy the faith serve but to make it stronger and grow more vigorously, just as grass by cutting and rolling becomes rich and compact. In the exquisitely beautiful poem Christmas Eve is a description of the midnight mass at St. Peter's at Rome, in which Christ is represented as "He who trod, Very man and very God, This earth in weakness, shame, and pain;" dying on the cross, but to come again "the One God, All in all, King of kings, Lord of lords." In the companion poem, Easter Day, Christ is addressed as "Thou Love of God!" Christ speaks of Himself as the One who created man and underwent death in his stead in flesh like his. Christ demands to know why this is doubted. Is it upon the ground that in the 42 THE ALL-GREAT THE ALL-LOVING story too much love had been found? could God love so? How Again, in the powerful and remarkable poem An Epistle of Karshish, the Arab physician, who, travelling through Palestine soon after the death of our Lord, has heard the story of Jesus and how He raised Lazarus from the dead, and writes it all as a medical case for the benefit of his old teacher, exclaims "The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think? Can he imagine the Creator in human form, with a beating, loving heart like a man's, with sympathizing face like the human face, with love heaven-sent, with God's own self to love, crying to him "And thou must love Me, who have died for thee. So said Lazarus did the One who raised him from the tomb say to him. Then in the beautiful and touching poem A Death in the Desertwhich describes the last scenes in the life of the aged disciple John, whom Jesus loved; who lay on His breast at the last paschal supper; who stood by the cross; who saw the awful vision of 1 Christmas Eve. THE SOLUTION OF ALL QUESTIONS 43 Patmos ; and who now lies dying in a cave, hiding from the bloody hands of the persecutors of the followers of Christ-we have the testimony of the beloved disciple to the truth as it is in Jesus set down for us by a poet who must have believed and loved the story, to have given it to us in words that burn with the love of Christ, and which are redolent of the odour of Christian sanctity. If Browning were not a believer in the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity when he wrote this exquisite poem, or if he were merely uttering dramatically words such as St. John might have spoken, then the poet must forfeit his claim to be considered what he has always been held to be a religious teacher with a definite message to his age. The beloved disciple, as he presses his finger on the leaden plate on which is traced the text, "I am the Resurrection and the Life," declares that "the love that tops the might" is "the Christ in God." "I say the acknowledgment of God in Christ In the poem entitled Saul1 we have perhaps the noblest of all Mr. Browning's religious poems. It is a Messianic oratorio in words. David is shown to us charming away the melancholy of Saul by his music and prophecy. In a 1 Dramatic Lyrics. 44 FIRE IN THE FLINT magnificent prophetic outburst the sweet singer of Israel proclaims "the Christ that is to be " "O Saul, it shall be A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me, Thou shalt love and be loved by, for ever; a Hand like this hand Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ stand! In a poem in Ferishtah's Fancies entitled "The Sun," the poet tells how a student had once reported that there was a story that "God once assumed on earth a human shape." The Arab teacher explained that in days of ignorance men took the sun for God. "Let it be considered as the symbol of the Supreme," said the Dervish. Suppose the sun to be the Author of life and light; when we eat fruit we praise the grower and so on, up to the sun, which gathers to itself all love and praise. The sun is fire, and more beside. Are we to expend our love on fire? If we must thank it, there must be purpose with the power-a humanity like our own. We cannot thank insentient things. Man's soul can only be moved by kindred soul. We lack a union of fire with flesh; perhaps the greatly-yearnedfor once befell: "perhaps the sun was flesh once." As the divine element of fire is imprisoned in the earthly flint-hard as it is to conceive the relationship between fire and flintso God was once incarnate in the form of man, THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE 45 and this some find it harder to believe. Christ is evidently referred to in the lines "He, the Truth, is, too, the Word." 1 "The Great Word which makes all things new." "2 He is "The Star which chose to stoop and stay for us." 3 He is "That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, for the Christ of to-day is a far higher conception than any which the critics think they have dispelled. Pompilia, in The Ring and the Book,5 says Christ was "likest God in being born." It is such pure souls as hers who can assimilate a sublime truth like the Incarnation while philosophers stumble at it. Yet for those who cannot accept the divinity of Christ, Browning has no words but those of sympathy. For example, in the story of the German professor lecturing on the Christ-myth at Göttingen. Full of philosophic reverence, the critic reduces the pearl of great price to dust and ashes; yet just as the audience expected him to bid them sweep the 1 The Ring and the Book: "The Pope," ll. 376-77. 2 Dramatic Lyrics: "By the Fireside." 3 Epilogue to Dramatis Personæ. |