ning a mystery and a message of
Divine Love, but no messenger of Divine intention towards mankind.

* These words have more significance when taken with their
context. 'If Shakespeare was to come into the room, we
should all rise up to meet him; but if that Person [meaning
Christ] was to come into the room, we should all fall down
and try to kiss the hem of his garment.'

The dialogue between Fancy and Reason is not only an admission of
uncertainty as to the future of the Soul: it is a plea for it; and as
such it gathers up into its few words of direct statement, threads of
reasoning which have been traceable throughout Mr. Browning's work. In
this plea for uncertainty lies also a full and frank acknowledgment of
the value of the earthly life; and as interpreted by his general views,
that value asserts itself, not only in the means of probation which
life affords, but in its existing conditions of happiness. No one, he
declares, possessing the certainty of a future state would patiently and
fully live out the present; and since the future can be only the ripened
fruit of the present, its promise would be neutralized, as well as
actual experience dwarfed, by a definite revelation. Nor, conversely,
need the want of a certified future depress the present spiritual and
moral life. It is in the nature of the Soul that it would suffer from
the promise. The existence of God is a justification for hope. And
since the certainty would be injurious to the Soul, hence destructive
to itself, the doubt--in other words, the hope--becomes a sufficient
approach to, a working substitute for it. It is pathetic to see how
in spite of the convictions thus rooted in Mr. Browning's mind, the
expressed craving for more knowledge, for more light, will now and then
escape him.

Even orthodox Christianity gives no assurance of reunion to those whom
death has separated. It is obvious that Mr. Browning's poetic creed
could hold no conviction regarding it. He hoped for such reunion in
proportion as he wished. There must have been moments in his life when
the wish in its passion overleapt the bounds of hope. 'Prospice' appears
to prove this. But the wide range of imagination, no less than the lack
of knowledge, forbade in him any forecast of the possibilities of the
life to come. He believed that if granted, it would be an advance on the
present--an accession of knowledge if not an increase of happiness. He
was satisfied t