was curled inextricably about the power
and the beauty which attached thee to the world--that through them it
has vainly striven to clasp thee? Abide by thy choice. Take the show for
the name's sake. Reject the reality as manifested in Him who created,
and then died for thee. Reject that Tale, as more fitly invented by the
sons of Cain--as proving too much love on the part of God.'"

"Terrified and despairing, I cowered before Him, imploring the remission
of the sentence, praying that the old life might be restored to me, with
its trials, its limitations; but with their accompanying hope that it
might lead to the life everlasting."

"When I 'lived' again, the plain was silvered over with dew; the dawn
had broken."

Looking back on this experience, the narrator is disposed to regard it
as having been a dream. It has nevertheless been a turning-point in his
existence; for it has taught him to hear in every blessing which
attaches him to the earth, a voice which bids him renounce it. And
though he still finds it hard to be a Christian, and is often
discouraged by the fact, he welcomes his consciousness of this: since it
proves that he is not spiritually stagnating--not cut off from the hope
of heaven.

Mr. Browning is, for the time being, outside the discussion. His own
feelings might equally have dictated some of the arguments on either
side; and although he silences the second speaker, he does not mean to
prove him in the wrong. He is at one with the first speaker, when he
suggests that certainty in matters of belief is no more to be desired
than to be attained; but that personage regards uncertainty as
justifying presumptions of a dogmatic kind; while its value to Mr.
Browning lies precisely in its right to exclude them. And, again; while
the value of spiritual conflict is largely emphasized in his works, he
disagrees with the man of faith in "Easter-Day" as with the dogmatic
believer in "Christmas-Eve," as to the manner in which it is to be
carried on. According to these the spirit fights against life: according
to him it fights in, and by means of, its opportunities. From his point
of view human experience is an education: from theirs it is a snare.

So much of personal truth as these poems contain will be found re-stated
in "La Saisiaz," written twenty-eight years later, and which impresses
on it the seal of maturer thought and more direct expression.

"LA SAISIAZ" (Savoyard for "The Sun") is the name of a vi