“Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffable Name?
Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands!
What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same?
Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power expands?”
In Rabbi Ben Ezra he takes up the ancient figure of the potter and the clay and uses it to express his boundless trust in God.
The characteristic mark of Browning’s view of God is that it is always taken from the side of humanity. The Perfect Glory is the correlative of the glory of the imperfect. The Divine Love is the answer to the human longing. God is, because man needs Him. From this point of view it almost seems, as a brilliant essayist has said, as if “In Browning, God is adjective to man.”[18]
But it may be said in answer, that, at least for man, this is the only point of view that is accessible. We can never leave our own needs behind us, however high we may try to climb. Certainly if we succeed in forgetting them for a moment, in that very moment we have passed out of the region of poetry, which is the impassioned interpretation of man’s heart.
2. The second element of power in Browning’s poetry is that he sees in the personal Christ the very revelation of God that man’s heart most needs and welcomes. Nowhere else in all the range of modern poetry has this vision been expressed with such spiritual ardour, with such poignant joy. We must turn back to the pages of Isaiah to find anything to equal the Messianic rapture of the minstrel in Saul.
“He who did most shall bear most: the strongest shall stand the most weak.
’Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for! my flesh that I seek