e or
abandonment of the latter will be found to be a matter of personal
feeling as to what form, or absence of form, best enables the particular
individual to realise the Truth itself.

XIII

A LESSON FROM BROWNING

Perhaps you know a little poem of Browning's called "An Epistle
Containing the Strange Medical Experiences of Karshish, the Arab
Physician." The somewhat weird conception is that the Arab physician,
travelling in Palestine soon after the date when the Gospel narrative
closes, meets with Lazarus whom Jesus raised from the dead, and in this
letter to a medical friend describes the strange effect which his vision
of the other life has produced upon the resuscitated man. The poem
should be studied as a whole; but for the present a few lines selected
here and there must do duty to indicate the character of the change
which has passed upon Lazarus. After comparing him to a beggar who,
having suddenly received boundless wealth, is unable to regulate its use
to his requirements, Karshish continues:--

"So here--we call the treasure knowledge, say,
Increased beyond the fleshly faculty--
Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth,
Earth forced on a soul's use while seeing heaven:
The man is witless of the size, the sum,
The value in proportion of all things."

In fact he has become almost exclusively conscious of

"The spiritual life around the earthly life:
The law of that is known to him as this,
His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here,"

and the result is a loss of mental balance entirely unfitting him for
the affairs of ordinary life.

Now there can be no doubt that Browning had a far more serious intention
in writing this poem than just to record a fantastic notion that flitted
through his brain. If we read between the lines, it must be clear from
the general tenor of his writings that, however he may have acquired it,
Browning had a very deep acquaintance with the inner region of spiritual
causes which give rise to all that we see of outward phenomenal
manifestation. There are continual allusions in his works to the life
behind the veil, and it is to this suggestion of some mystery underlying
his words that we owe the many attempts to fathom his meaning expressed
through Browning Societies and the like--attempts which fail or succeed
according as they are made from "the without" or from "the within." No
one was better qualified than the poet to r