To take the rest, this life of ours.
Faith in the greatest having been assured, faith in that which is less may or may not follow. He who feels in touch with the Divine may well endure the existence of doubts and questionings inevitable in matters of less vital import. To the child “who knows his father near” tears are not an unalloyed bitterness; or, to adopt the Bishop’s own simile, so be it the path leads to the mountain top, a break or two by the way matters little.
LECTURE IV
CHRISTMAS EVE AND EASTER DAY (i)
LECTURE IV
CHRISTMAS EVE AND EASTER DAY (i)
No poems of Browning’s have probably excited more widely-spread interest (the question of admiration being set aside) than those which we have before us for consideration in this and the two following Lectures. The interest so excited is due, one believes, less to artistic merit than to the character of the subjects treated—unfailing in their attraction for the speculative tendencies of the human intellect. The form in which they now make appeal is no longer identical with that in which they presented themselves when Christmas Eve and Easter Day appeared in the middle of the last century: fifty years hence the embodiment of thoughts thus suggested may well differ yet more widely from that obtaining at the present day. Nevertheless, beneath all external variations, that which is essentially permanent remains: and in this enduring interest of subject inevitably subsists the immortality of that literary work, whether poetry or prose, in which it has found, or is destined to find, a vehicle of expression. If it were permissible to suggest a division where the author clearly intended no division should be, it might on the foregoing hypothesis be reasonable to prognosticate for Easter Day a more enduring interest than for the companion poem; since, whilst the dramatic attraction is less powerful than in Christmas Eve, the treatment of subject goes deeper, and is more independent of temporary accessaries. In a memorable phrase Professor Dowden has defined the subjects of the two poems as “the spiritual life individual, and the spiritual life corporate.”[61] Both indeed deal with faith in its relation to life: the first with faith as found incorporated in typical religious communities of the civilized world; the second with faith as it makes direct appeal to the individual apart from the influence of external formulae. The one aspect of the subject is obviously regarded by Browning as complementary to the other. “Easter Day” is essential to the completion of “Christmas Eve.” Both poems were originally published in one volume (1850), and still remain united by the joint title standing at the head of both. Individual faith is necessary to the vitality of faith corporate. The considerations engaging the attention of the soliloquist of Christmas Eve are confined to a decision as to which of the forms of creed presented for choice shall receive his adherence; or whether it may be justly yielded to that which he finally accounts no creed, the theory of life based upon the teaching of the Professor of Göttingen? In Easter Day the debate in the mind of the speaker goes deeper yet, and relates mainly to the difficulties attendant upon a practical and consistent acceptance of Christian belief in its simplest form: an acceptance involving a necessary reconstruction of life on the lines of faith. In another sense also are the two poems complementary. As indicated by the sequence of names in the title, the love and universal tolerance suggested by the Peace and Goodwill of Christmas find their fuller development, their essential, practical outcome in the personal faith, implying a personal acceptance of the sacrifice of which Easter Day marks the triumphant culmination. Hence the more notable asceticism, if we are so to term it, of the second poem as compared with the first. Rightly, he who would fain be a Christian stands in awe before