Part 10 (1/2)
Earth breaks up, time drops away, In flows heaven, with its new day Of endless life, when He who trod, Very man and very G.o.d, This earth in weakness, shame and pain, Dying the death whose signs remain Up yonder on the accursed tree,-- Shall come again, no more to be Of captivity the thrall, But the one G.o.d, All in all, King of kings, Lord of lords, As His servant John received the words, ”I died, and live for evermore!” (ll. 581-593.)
The conviction is almost inevitable that here something beyond even the power of dramatic genius has to be reckoned with; that some spirit more nearly akin to intimate personal sympathy served as inspiration of this pa.s.sage.
Carried away by the infection of the prevailing enthusiasm, the spectator questions as to the cause which has led him to remain without upon the threshold-stone of the cathedral, whilst He who has led him hither is within. And the answer which Reason returns is, that whilst the Divine Wisdom may be capable of discerning the faith and love existent beneath the outward imagery, yet with ”mere man” the case is otherwise; hence for him to disregard the inward promptings of his nature is dangerous to his spiritual welfare. Thus the decision:
I, a mere man, fear to quit The due G.o.d gave me as most fit To guide my footsteps through life's maze, Because himself discerns all ways Open to reach him. (ll. 621-625.)
For him to whom the bare walls of Zion Chapel have proved repellant, the glories of St. Peter's may conceivably be fatally attractive in their appeal to the senses: such, reasonably or unreasonably, is at least the belief of the soliloquist. The argument of this eleventh Section is perhaps the most difficult to follow satisfactorily of all those leading to the ultimate choice of creed. Before attempting to estimate the worth of the conclusions, it may be well to trace briefly the line of thought by which they appear to have been reached.
(1) The spectator, at first struck by the glory of outward display as a means of still imposing upon the world ”Rome's gross yoke,” is yet led, through proximity to the Divine Presence, whilst seeing the error, ”above the scope of error” to realize the love. And further, to admit (2) that the love inspiring the wors.h.i.+ppers of St. Peter's on this Christmas Eve of 1849 was also ”the love of those first Christian days,” a love which did not hesitate to sacrifice all which might interpose between itself and the Divine Love whence it emanated. When
The antique sovereign Intellect Which then sat ruling in the world, ... was hurled From the throne he reigned upon. (ll. 650-653.)
Subsequently followed all the wealth of poetry and rhetoric, of sculpture and painting sometime the pride of the cla.s.sical world. Love, and it _was_ Love which was acting, drew her children aside from these intellectual and sensuous gratifications, and pointed to the Crucified. She thus, says the soliloquist, had demanded of her votaries vast sacrifices which might reasonably have been held essential in the early days of Christianity. We have already seen, indeed, how empty of ultimate satisfaction had been these same intellectual pleasures to Cleon: how obviously light would have been, to him, the sacrifice involved in an acceptance of any faith which should afford a definite and reasonable hope for a future state of existence: how small a price would have been the loss of life temporal in view of the gain of life eternal. (3) But the critic, whilst admitting the sublimity of the sacrifice of the first century of the Christian era, deprecates the demand made for its repet.i.tion in the nineteenth. It is time for Love's children not only to ”creep, stand steady upon their feet,” but to ”walk already. Not to speak of trying to climb” (ll.
697-699). The limitations imposed upon the intellect and its free development should long since have been discarded. (4) Yet, though recognizing this to the full, the speaker will not condemn one of those, however mistaken, whose foreheads bear ”_lover_ written above the earnest eyes of them.” These wors.h.i.+ppers within St. Peter's need some satisfaction of the demands made upon their nature by an inherent craving for beauty; and yet have they sacrificed for Love's sake all that they might have found of intense enjoyment in unfettered life. Dwelling amidst the glories of Rome, ancient and modern, they yet turn from the ”Majesties of art around them.” Faith struggles to suppress intellectual and artistic cravings; and these, at length subdued, they ”offer up to G.o.d for a present.” Denied in the world without the sensuous satisfaction for which they yearn, they would seek it in the display attendant on the Roman Catholic ritual. This is the view of the man who believes himself to be the true ”lover” of G.o.d, capable of wors.h.i.+pping in spirit and in truth.
How far is he justified in such criticism? Unquestionably he is prejudiced. There exists an unconscious mental bias towards that creed which he is represented as finally accepting; and there is little doubt that it is Browning's intention to expose the prejudice. The failure in appreciation of the ceremonial at St. Peter's arises from inability to apprehend beauty in the outward accessories of the service of which he is witness. To his nature it would appear that the demand upon the sensuous side is not so strong as he imagines when he expresses the fear of entering the cathedral and joining the wors.h.i.+pping crowd. He seems, moreover, to ignore, or to pa.s.s over lightly, the productions of Christian art, whether in painting or in the music of religious ritual, when he inquires (ll. 681, _et seq._):
Love, surely, from that music's lingering, Might have filched her organ-fingering, Nor chosen rather to set prayings To hog-grunts, praises to horse-neighings.
He ignores, too, the value of symbolism in the later mocking allusion to this experience as ”buffoonery--posturings and petticoatings.”
In the main line of thought, however, beginning with Section XI, and developed more fully in XII, is treated no imaginary danger, but that bound inevitably to attend on any religious system in which authority is paramount. The error attributed to the advocates of the Roman Catholic creed is that of rendering the head too completely subservient to the heart. Faith cannot indeed be acquired by any considerations of logic; nevertheless, there is no necessity that Reason and Faith should prove antagonistic forces. To the brain, as well as to the heart, must be allowed scope for development. Hence the speaker represents that Church, in which freedom of thought is limited, as interposing as an intermediary between the conscience and the Divine influence. Such Church he regards as having devoted its energies to the development of a single element or faculty of human nature to the exclusion or limitation of the rest.
Nevertheless, in one direction there has been development to an extraordinary degree: and Browning himself, as we have good reason to know, would have been unlikely to criticize adversely this whole-hearted devotion to a cause. For ill.u.s.tration the soliloquist employs that of the sculptor who, without calculating the dimensions of his marble, devotes his energies to the production of a perfect head and shoulders only. This, though necessarily unfinished in actual performance, is far grander in conception than a smaller and fully modelled figure; and the spectator is free to seek elsewhere the completion of the unfinished statue in the work of an artist complementary to that of the first. Thus the onlooker at St.
Peter's resolves to accept the provision there offered for the ”satisfaction of his love,” then depart elsewhere--depart to seek the completion of the statue--”that [his] intellect may find its share.” And it is noteworthy that the same critic, who condescends to the employment of language such as that marking the references to the service of St Peter's, ascribes to the Church of Rome the development of that element which he esteems highest in human nature. Love is ever with the author of _Christmas Eve_, as with the soliloquist, of worth immeasurably greater than mere intellect.
IV. With Section XIII the critic of Zion Chapel pa.s.ses once more into the night in search of satisfaction for those demands of the intellect which have been left unanswered at St. Peter's; and in Section XIV he is represented as finding that which he seeks. Love and Faith to the exclusion of intellectual development he has left in the cathedral at Rome; Intellect without Love he meets in the Lecture Hall at Gottingen.
Believing himself to have learned the lesson that wherever even nominal followers of Christ are to be found, there, too, is the Divine Presence, he is now ”cautious” how he ”suffers to slip”
The chance of joining in fellows.h.i.+p With any that call themselves his friends. (ll. 800-803.)
Hence, entering the Hall, he follows the course of the consumptive Lecturer's reasoning on ”the myth of Christ.” As to this fable which ”Millions believe to the letter” he (the Lecturer) proposes to attempt the work of discrimination between truth and legend.
(1) He reminds his audience, and justly, that it is well at times to pause to inquire concerning the source of articles of their belief; historic fact may become disguised or concealed by accretions of legendary narrative gathered round it: by the various expositions a.s.signed it by commentators of different ages. (2) Having thus examined and freed his ”myth” from the misinterpretations of the early disciples, from later additions and modifications; when all has been done he yet admits that the residuum is well worthy of preservation.
A Man!--a right true man, however, Whose work was worthy a man's endeavour. (ll. 876-877.)
Moreover
Was _he_ not surely the first to insist on The natural sovereignty of our race? (ll. 888-889.)
As it were in startling comment upon the a.s.sertion of this natural sovereignty, the Professor's further speech is interrupted by a fit of coughing, and the listener avails himself of the opportunity thus offered to leave the Hall.
Once more free to breathe the outer air his critical powers rea.s.sert themselves, and he sees from a point of observation, sufficiently removed, the relative effects of the excesses of the most widely differing forms of Christianity and of that form of belief or of scepticism which denies the divinity of the founder of the creed. His decision is given in favour of superst.i.tion as opposed to scepticism.
Truth's atmosphere may grow mephitic When Papist struggles with Dissenter,
Each, that thus sets the pure air seething, May poison it for healthy breathing-- But the Critic leaves no air to poison. (ll. 898-909.)