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 classical 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 repetition 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 worshippers 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 God 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 God, capable of worshipping 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 worshipping crowd. He seems, moreover, to ignore, or to pass 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 illustration 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 passes 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 Göttingen. 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 fellowship
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 assigned 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.