Part 11 (2/2)

CHRISTMAS EVE AND EASTER DAY (ii)

How very hard it is to be A Christian!

Thus in the opening lines of _Easter Day_ is suggested the subject occupying the entire poem: a consideration of the difficulty attendant upon an acceptance of the Christian faith, sufficiently practical in character to serve as the mainspring of life. The difficulty is not solved at the close, since identical in form with the earlier a.s.sertion is the final decision

I find it hard To be a Christian. (ll. 1030-1031.)

Nevertheless, the nature of the position has been modified. The obstacles in the way of faith are no longer regretted as a bar to progress, rather are they welcomed as an impetus towards the increase of spiritual vitality and growth. It is the work of the intervening reflections and resultant deductions to effect this change, by supplying a reasonable hypothesis on which to base an explanation of the existent conditions of life.

As with _Christmas Eve_, so here, for a full appreciation of the arguments advanced, some understanding is essential of the character of the speaker.

It is at once obvious that he who finds it hard to be a Christian may not be identified with the critic of the Gottingen lecturer: but, that no loophole may be left for question, the statement is directly made in Section XIV.

On such a night three years ago, It chanced that I had cause to cross The common, where the chapel was, Our friend spoke of, the other day. (ll. 372-375.)

Later, in the same Section (ll. 398-418), a descriptive touch is supplied, recalling curiously Browning's estimate of himself in _Prospice_.

I was ever a fighter, so--one fight more, The best and the last!

I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore, And bade me creep past.

Thus the first speaker in _Easter Day_ refers to his childish aversion to uncertainty, even though uncertainty meant present safety.

I would always burst The door ope, know my fate at first. (ll. 417-418.)

This then is the man, a fearless fighter, an uncompromising investigator who, whilst he would ”fain be a Christian,” is yet bound to reject a mere uncritical acceptance of the tenets of Christianity. Opposed to him in the first twelve Sections is a second speaker to whom, somewhat strangely it would seem, the designation sceptic has been applied. The t.i.tle in its virtual sense, is, indeed, justly applicable, but in the ordinary acceptation might possibly prove misleading. It is a fact of common experience that among professing Christians, of whatever form of creed, are to be found those who, in that peculiar crisis of life when death removes from sight those dearest to them, go back from the fundamental tenets of a faith in which hitherto their confidence appeared to have been unshaken. Even that main pillar of faith, a belief in the immortality of the soul, lies temporarily shattered. Such failure suggests itself as the result of an insufficiently considered acceptance of dogma; an acceptance without question, rather than in spite of doubts and questionings. This distinction we have seen Bishop Blougram drawing between the position of the man who implicitly believes, since, his logical and reasoning faculties being undeveloped or inactive, no cause for question arises; and the position of him who, in the midst of spiritual perplexity, makes ”doubt occasion still more faith.” To Browning, with whom half-heartedness was the one unpardonable sin, this so-called faith would necessarily be far more dangerous than downright acknowledged scepticism. Hence the succeeding argument of _Easter Day_ becomes one, not between a p.r.o.nounced sceptic and a would-be Christian, but rather between two nominal Christians whose outward profession may be similar but the motives inspiring it wholly at variance--This in accordance with Browning's peculiar attraction towards problems involving the establishment of connection between motive and action. As in _Bishop Blougram's Apology_ his psychological a.n.a.lysis would reconcile two apparently irreconcilable aspects of the mind of a prelate whose position had perplexed the world. As by a method closely akin to this treatment, he offers explanation of the presence, amongst the illiterate and bigoted congregation of Zion Chapel, of a man whose intellectual capacity should have led him to a.s.sume a position of wider tolerance: so here, too, he would discover and reveal the link between the outward form of creed and the widely differing spiritual acceptance of the same in two individual cases.

I. The arguments of Sections I to XII are not always easy to follow closely; but, in pa.s.sing with Section XIII to the history of the Vision, all obscurity vanishes, and we have no difficulty in tracing the line of thought of the first speaker, resulting in his willing reconcilement to the uncertainties inseparable from human life as at present const.i.tuted. A brief attempt to follow the preceding course of argument will afford an explanation of the speaker's position at the opening of Section XIII. (1) The difficulty advanced at the outset of attaining to even a moderate realization of the possibilities of the Christian life is ascribed by the first speaker (at the close of Section I) to the essential indefiniteness in things spiritual implied in the very suggestion of advance, of growth.

That which we believed yesterday to be the mountain-top proves to-day but the vantage-ground for a yet higher ascent:

And where we looked for crowns to fall, We find the tug's to come. (ll. 27-28.)

In reply, the second speaker admits the existence of difficulty, but of one differing somewhat in character from that recognized by his interlocutor. The Christian life were a sufficiently straightforward matter, if belief pure and simple were possible: if, as he puts the case, the relative worth of things temporal and eternal were once rendered clear and unmistakable. Even martyrdom itself would then become as nothing to the believer.

(2) The first speaker, or the soliloquist (since he it is who actually advances the arguments consistent with the position of his imaginary companion), whilst accepting the truth of the proposition, rea.s.serts the theory, little more than suggested in Section I, that such fixity and definiteness of belief is, under existing conditions, an impossibility. If not in the visible world, granting so much, yet beyond it, is that which may not be grasped by the finite intelligence. Such limitations may perchance serve for the term of mortal life; but in the light thrown upon life by the approach of death a change will inevitably pa.s.s over the aspect of all things, and

Eyes, late wide, begin to wink Nor see the path so well. (ll. 57-58.)

Again, the Christian who does not wish his position of moderate faith to be disturbed, agrees; but attributes the s.h.i.+fting ground of belief to the self-evident truth that faith would no longer be faith were the objects with which it deals mere matters of common and proved knowledge, belief in them as inevitable as the necessity of breath to the living creature.

You must mix some uncertainty With faith, if you would have faith be. (ll. 71-72.)

Even in the intercourse of everyday life, faith is a necessity. Now, had the easy-going Christian paused at this stage of the discussion, with line 82, his argument would have had the weight which attaches to an elaboration of the same theory given by Browning elsewhere--in _An Epistle of Kars.h.i.+sh_. But even he, upon whom these considerations are forced for what one may well believe to be the first time, finds that any individual proposition requires constant modification, that a doubt will ”peep unexpectedly.” Thus, though faith, with its attendant uncertainty, may well obtain in the relations between man and man, yet, between the Creator and his creation, is it not possible that more clearly defined regulations shall subsist?

(3) The thinker who is anxious to rightly adjust his own position in the world of faith interposes before the argument has pa.s.sed to its final stage, and points to the conditions prevailing in the world of lower animal life where the entire creation ”travails and groans”--reverting again to the a.s.surance which, as the conclusion of the poem is to show, had been indelibly stamped upon his mind by the experience of the Vision--the a.s.surance already referred to in Sections I and II, that could these conditions be changed, then, too, would be altered the character of human life, its purpose--as Browning ever regards it--would be annulled.

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