ce,
recognize its stubborn resistance to the good, and still regard the
victory of the latter as sure and complete. He has not to reduce it into
a phantom, or mere appearance, in order to give it a place within the
divine order. He sees the night, but he also sees the day succeed it.
Man falls into sin, but he cannot rest in it. It is contradictory to his
nature, he cannot content himself with it, and he is driven through it.
Mephistopheles promised more than he could perform, when he undertook to
make Faust declare himself satisfied. There is not within the kingdom of
evil what will satisfy the spirit of man, whose last law is goodness,
whose nature, however obscured, is God's gift of Himself.

"While I see day succeed the deepest night--
How can I speak but as I know?--my speech
Must be, throughout the darkness. It will end:
'The light that did burn, will burn!' Clouds obscure--
But for which obscuration all were bright?
Too hastily concluded! Sun--suffused,
A cloud may soothe the eye made blind by blaze,--
Better the very clarity of heaven:
The soft streaks are the beautiful and dear.
What but the weakness in a faith supplies
The incentive to humanity, no strength
Absolute, irresistible, comports?
How can man love but what he yearns to help?
And that which men think weakness within strength,
But angels know for strength and stronger yet--
What were it else but the first things made new,
But repetition of the miracle,
The divine instance of self-sacrifice
That never ends and aye begins for man?
So, never I miss footing in the maze,
No,--I have light nor fear the dark at all."[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1640-1660.]

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***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROWNING AS A PHILOSOPHICAL AND
RELIGIOUS TEACHER***

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