xvi INTRODUCTION since the dawn of modern science in the beginning of the sixteenth century, two great classes of thinkers have been engaged in an intellectual feat of road-making on similar principles. The men of faith and the men of science have tunnelled their Alps from opposite points. Unlike the engineers of Mont Cenis, they fancied themselves in actual opposition to each other, never expecting to meet, still less to fraternize. The Conflict between Religion and Science has been the theme of many a treatise, and the necessary opposition of the two bodies of labourers in the field of human knowledge has been taken for granted. But already, faintly yet surely, we begin to hear the voices of the workmen of opposite sides, as the roads they are making tend to meet in one central point; they call to each other, not in threatening tones, but as fellow-labourers on the same path. None but the actual workmen can imagine how nearly they approach each other. To the great outside world they are lost in the bowels of the earth, are forgotten, or scarcely thought about. Yet a few more cubic feet of rock to bore, a few more tons of detritus to remove, and the path-makers will throw the road open to the world. One of our greatest spiritual path-makers and Alp-tunnellers was Robert Browning. Deep down under the mountain he laboured, practically forgotten, misunderstood, and neglected; yet he was foremost amongst the great constructors of INTRODUCTION xvii the ways of intellectual activity. Those of us who have been down with the miners, know how many obstacles Browning has cleared away; those who have worked under his orders, know how firm and straight is the roadway he has constructed. Not only has he established a modus vivendi between science and religion, but he has demonstrated that the one is the complement of the other. He has made scientific religion an accomplished fact. "The malady of the century" is melancholy. Mr. Myers tells us that in many minds there is a bankruptcy of hope; despair dwells in "the splendid and miserable temple which is the heart of man." Religion is held to be an illusion; a belief in the moral government of the world, in a future life in which earth's injustices may be redressed, and virtue victorious, are now everywhere on the defensive, if they are not, as in France, actually rapidly losing ground. Men treat as open questions the problem, "Is there a God?" "Is the soul immortal?" "Is the Christian revelation credible?" and are but little anxious for an affirmative reply to them. Yet the answer to such questions can never be anything but of vital importance to mankind. Morality must depend largely on the solution of these and similar questions. "There is no historic instance," says Professor Knight, "in which the decay of religious influence has promoted morality." On the other hand, if we xviii INTRODUCTION "suppose that there is conclusive evidence not only of a moral order existing independently of the individual, but also of a moral centre toward which individual effort tends, and of an infinite Orderer who, from that centre, controls the moral sphere, such a fact must, in a very important way, influence the conduct of the race." At first sight it may seem strange that we should be invited to study Browning as a religious teacher. It is not usually to the poets that we turn for lessons in philosophy and theology, but it is perfectly certain that Browning wrote with this object in view. The religious motive is plainly to be seen in almost every poem. He was above all things a great philosopher. The unity of his work is manifest to the most superficial observer, from the first lines of Pauline -his boyish effort to his death-song in the Epilogue to Asolando. In Pauline the poet confesses his sin and degradation, consequent on his all-encompassing selfishness; he tells how his soul was called out of mental darkness to the light of Christianity; how he was anointed poet; how his redemption and restoration were wrought by Divine love, by means of the mediation of human love; and from that time onwards, to the day of his death, Robert Browning never once looked back; never faltered in his message; never once despaired of God, of life, of human love, or of the infinite worth of the soul's period of training and passage— INTRODUCTION "Never doubted clouds would break, xix Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake.” 1 When a strong, brave man has proclaimed his message to the world for six-and-fifty years, it is worth while to listen to him, more especially when we know that he has lived up to his own professions, and carried out faithfully in his own long life the precepts and maxims he has propounded to the world at large. His complete works in the new edition number seventeen volumes, and embrace many branches of human knowledge; yet from the first pages of the first volume down to the closing lines of the last, one clear trumpet note rings through his whole long life-work-"I believe in God." Pauline-his first, and embryonic work as it may be called, because it contains in their rudiments all the peculiarities and powers of his genius-is a passionate cry for the satisfying presence of God in his soul. "A need, a trust, a yearning after God." "I saw God everywhere." He calls the air "The clear, dear breath of God that loveth us." "What is that I hunger for but God? My God, my God, let me for once look on Thee 1 Epilogue to Asolando. L XX INTRODUCTION "I believe in God and truth and love."1 This then, at the outset, was the dominant note of the poet's work, and the "imperial chord subsists" and is heard no less clearly in the last pages of Asolando. But Browning was much more than a Theist, he was a Christian. The Son of God made man for us solves for Browning all the hard problems of existence. By Christ he came to know God, and knowing God as He can only be known in the person of the God-man, the infinite worth of the soul, the value of life, the certainty of a future state, the mystery of evil, pain, sin, and death were made plain to him. In his teaching on these high matters we have a religious system definite enough to satisfy all Christians save those who demand scholastic definitions of every article of their faith, and rigid lines of demarcation which must not be transgressed under pain of deadly sin. On these grounds, if the present work makes no pretension to be considered as a manual of theology, it is hoped that it may not be without value at least as a sidelight on Christianity. 1 Pauline. 2 Asolando: "" Reverie." |