Browning and His Century

by Helen A. Clarke

There was one broad line of division between the Established Church and the dissenting bodies. In the first was inherent the ancient principle of authority, while the principle of self-government in matters of faith guided all the dissenters in their search for the light.

It is not surprising that with so many differing shades of opinion within the bosom of the Anglican Church it should, in the earlier half of the century, have lost its grip upon not only the people at large, but upon many of its higher intellects. The principle of authority seemed to be tottering to its fall. In this crisis the Roman Catholic Church exercised a peculiar fascination upon men of intellectual endowment who, fearing the direction in which their intellect might lead them, turned to that church where the principle of authority kept itself firmly rooted by summarily dismissing any one who might question it. It is of interest to remember that at the date when this poem was written the Tractarian Movement, in which was conspicuous the Oxford group of men, had succeeded in carrying over four hundred clergymen and laity into the Catholic Church.

Those who were unafraid followed the lead of German criticism and French materialism, but the large mass of common people found in Methodism the sort of religious guidance which it craved.

To this sect has been attributed an unparalleled influence in the moral development of England. By rescuing multitudes from ignorance and from almost the degradation of beasts, and by fostering habits of industry and thrift, Methodism became a chief factor in building up a great, intelligent and industrious middle-class. Its influence has been felt even in the Established Church, and as its enthusiastic historians have pointed out, England might have suffered the political and religious convulsions inaugurated by the French Revolution if it had not been for the saving grace of Methodism.

Appealing at first to the poor and lowly, suffering wrong and persecution with its founder, Wesley, it was so flexible in its constitution that after the death of Wesley it broadened out and differentiated in a way that made it adaptable to very varied human needs. In consequence of this it finally became a genuine power in the Church and State of Great Britain.

The poem “Christmas Eve” becomes much more understandable when these facts about Methodism are borne in mind—facts which were evidently in the poet’s mind, although the poem itself has the character of a symbolic rather than a personal utterance. The speaker might be regarded as a type of the religious conscience of England. In spite of whatever direct visions of the divine such a type of conscience may gain through the contemplation of nature and the revelations of the human heart, its relations to the past cause it to feel the need of some sectarian form of religion—a sort of inherited need to be orthodox in one form or another. This religious conscience has its artistic side; it can clothe its inborn religious instincts in exquisite imaginative vision. Also, it has its clear-sighted reasoning side. This is able unerringly to put its finger upon any flaw of doctrine or reasoning in the forms of religion it contemplates. Hence, Catholic doctrine, which was claiming the allegiance of those who were willing to put their troublesome intellects to sleep and accept authority where religion was concerned, does not satisfy this keen analyzer. Nor yet is it able to see any religious reality in such a myth of Christ rehabilitated as an ethical prophet as the Göttingen professor constructs in a manner so reminiscent of a passage in Strauss’s “Life of Jesus,” where he is describing the opinions of the rationalists’ school of criticism, that a comparison with that passage is enlightening.

Having swept away completely the supernatural basis of religion, the rationalist is able still to conceive of Jesus as a divine Messenger, a special favorite and charge of the Deity:

“He had implanted in him by God the natural conditions only of that which he was ultimately to become, and his realization of this destiny was the result of his own spontaneity. His admirable wisdom he acquired by the judicious application of his intellectual powers and the conscientious use of all the aids within his reach; his moral greatness, by the zealous culture of his moral dispositions, the restraint of his sensual inclinations and passions, and a scrupulous obedience to the voice of his conscience; and on these alone rested all that was exalted in his personality, all that was encouraging in his example.”

The difficulty to this order of mind of the direct personal revelation lies in the fact that it is convincing only to those who experience it, having no basis in authority, and may even for them lose its force.

What then is the conclusion forced upon this English religious conscience? Simply this: that, though failing both from the intellectual and the æsthetic standpoint, the dissenting view was the only religious view of the time possessing any genuine vitality. It represented the progressive, democratic religious force which was then in England bringing religion into the lives of the people with a positiveness long lost to the Anglican Church. The religious conscience of England was growing through this Methodist movement. This is why the speaker of the poem chooses at last that form of worship which he finds in the little chapel.