Part 14 (2/2)

Since ”such progress” as is the peculiar characteristic of human nature

Could no more attend his soul Were all it struggles after found at first And guesses changed to knowledge absolute, Than motion wait his body, were all else Than it the solid earth on every side, Where now through s.p.a.ce he moves from rest to rest.[74]

Thus with Christianity itself

Will [man] give up fire For gold or purple once he knows its worth?

Could he give Christ up were His worth as plain?

Therefore, I say, to test man, the proofs s.h.i.+ft, Nor may he grasp that fact like other fact, And straightway in his life acknowledge it, As, say, the indubitable bliss of fire.[75]

The effect on human nature and life of the change of ”guesses” to ”knowledge absolute” is elsewhere exhibited in concrete form where Lazarus, in _An Epistle of Kars.h.i.+sh_, is represented, as Browning's imagination would visualize him, in the years succeeding his resurrection from the dead. There the need for faith is accounted as no longer existing. During those four days of the spirit's sojourn beyond the limits of the visible world, the unveiled light of eternity had thrown into their true relative positions the things of time. Thenceforth, for him who had once _known_, the hopes and fears attendant upon uncertainty were no longer a possibility. In view of that which is eternal, temporal prosperity or adversity had become of small moment. The advance of a hostile force upon the sacred city, centre of the national life, was to the risen nature an event trifling as ”the pa.s.sing of a mule with gourds.”

Sickness, death, were alike met by the imperturbable ”G.o.d wills.” Yet this apparently immovable serenity was at once overthrown by contact with ”ignorance and carelessness and sin.” To the non-Christian onlooker, the att.i.tude thus attained was attributable to the peculiar condition of life by which heaven was

Opened to a soul while yet on earth, Earth forced on a soul's use while seeing heaven.

The man capable of this two-fold vision had indeed become but ”a sign,”

noteworthy it is true, yet of little value as a practical example to his fellows, since what held good in this single and unprecedented case must be of no avail as a criterion for the mult.i.tude.

The importance, as an educative instrument, of the demands on faith made by the absence of overwhelmingly conclusive and unalterable evidence in matters spiritual, is again ill.u.s.trated in that remarkable little poem _Fears and Scruples_, following _Easter Day_ after an interval of more than a quarter of a century (pub. 1876). The writer there declares his personal preference for the condition of life ultimately the choice of the First Speaker, in which uncertainty may admit of hope, even though the future should prove such hope fallacious. The old theory is advanced beneath the ill.u.s.tration of relations.h.i.+p to an absent friend, proofs of whose affection, of whose very existence, rest upon the evidence of letters, the genuineness of which has been called in question by experts.

Nevertheless, the friend at home, the soliloquist of the poem, refuses to yield credence to calumny. His faith in the friend, if misplaced, has been hitherto a source of spiritual elevation and inspiration. Even though the truth be ultimately proved but falsehood, he is yet the better for those days in which he deemed it truth. Therefore,

One thing's sure enough: 'tis neither frost, No, nor fire, shall freeze or burn from out me Thanks for truth--though falsehood, gained--though lost.

All my days, I'll go the softlier, sadlier, For that dream's sake! How forget the thrill Through and through me as I thought ”The gladlier Lives my friend because I love him still!”

The parallel is enforced by the suggestion at the close--

Hush, I pray you!

What if this friend happen to be--G.o.d? (_F. and S._, viii, ix, xii.)

III. In considering the position of the First Speaker in _Easter Day_, we have already noticed the character of the final judgment, the nature of the h.e.l.l designed for the punishment of him who had chosen the things of the flesh in preference to the things of the spirit.--A h.e.l.l consisting in absolute future exclusion from opportunities of spiritual satisfaction and development.--A judgment which we remarked in pa.s.sing, as peculiarly characteristic in its conception of Browning's usual treatment of matters relative to the spiritual life of man. In _Ferishtah's Fancies_, we are able to obtain direct confirmation of this suggestion, with reference to the subject actually in question. In reading this collection of poems, the work of the author's later life (pub. 1884), we hardly need his warning (or so at least we believe) to avoid the a.s.sumption that ”there is more than a thin disguise of a few Persian names and allusions.” Sheltering himself thus behind the imagined personality of the Persian historian, Browning, in his seventy-second year, gave freer utterance than was customary with him to his own opinions and beliefs touching certain momentous questions of Life and Faith. _A Camel-driver_ is devoted to a discussion of the doctrine of Judgment and Future Punishment of the sins committed in the flesh. Ferishtah, as Dervish, submits that here, as in all allied matters, man with finite capacities cannot conceive of the infinite purpose. Knowing ”but man's trick to teach,” he does but reason from the character of his own dealings, in this respect, with the animals, as creatures of lower intelligence, employed in his service. The general conclusions from the arguments thus deduced are, in brief: (1) The punishment as regards the sufferer is not designed to be retributive only, but remedial and reformatory in character. (2) With respect to the sinner and his fellow mortals, it must be deterrent. (3) Hence, to be effective, its infliction should be immediate rather than future. By postponement, the exemplary effect of punishment is rendered void: the connection between offence and penalty is obscured, and sympathy with the sufferer will result, rather than avoidance of the offence for which the suffering is inflicted. Such is the estimate by Ferishtah, or Browning, of the punishment of a future h.e.l.l of fire. From a merely human point of view it is illogical. For the purification of the sinner, or for the admonition of the onlooker, it is alike useless. And the deduction? Man can but work and, therefore, teach as man, and not as G.o.d. At best he may but see a little way into the Eternal purpose: into that portion alone which is revealed through the experiences of mortal life. Here he must be content to rest without further speculation.

Before man's First, and after man's poor Last, G.o.d operated, and will operate,

is the a.s.sertion of Reason. To which adds Ferishtah,

Process of which man merely knows this much,-- That nowise it resembles man's at all, Teaching or punis.h.i.+ng.

For the character of the divine process:--as in _Easter Day_, so here the penalty is immediately adjusted to the peculiar requirements of the nature to be ”taught or punished.” To the man of spiritual discernment, of right thought and purpose, but of imperfect performance, no h.e.l.l is needed beyond that to be found in the comparison of the Might-have-been with the Has-been and the Is. And in this sadness of retrospect are to be remembered, too, the sins of ignorance; even forgiveness is powerless to efface wholly the misery of remorse. Thus shall Omnipotence deal with the individual soul. Thus does the work of judgment and of education differ essentially from that of man who ”lumps his kind i' the ma.s.s,” pa.s.sing upon the ma.s.s sentence, involving a uniformity of punishment, which must fall in individual cases with varying degrees of intensity, by no means proportionate to the magnitude of the offences committed. That which to the sensitive soul is torture unfathomable, to the ”bold and blind” is as naught. By some other method must be forced on _him_ the recognition and realization of past sin. Terror may ”burn in the truth,” where the recollection of irremediable evil has failed to create remorse. Only a mind incapable of spiritual discernment would award a similar penalty for a life's faults of omission and commission to the several inmates of the Morgue, and to the onlooker who would see, in the temporary despair which had caused the end, failure apparent, not absolute. For his part he could but deem that the misery which had resulted in an overwhelming abhorrence of life had, in itself, been punishment sufficient; he could but think ”their sin's atoned.”[76] Yet in his own case, even though he held that ”we fall to rise,” those falls from which no human life may be wholly exempt, were in themselves cause more than adequate for remorseful anguish without the super-addition of external penalty:

Forgiveness? rather grant Forgetfulness! The past is past and lost.

However near I stand in his regard, So much the nearer had I stood by steps Offered the feet which rashly spurned their help.

That I call h.e.l.l; why further punishment?[77]

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