may be Christ's merit as a teacher of
the truth, the motive to action which His life and words supplied must
cease to exist if it be shown that the divine sacrifice of God manifest
in the flesh is no more than a figment of the devout imagination. At
every point the criticism of Browning is as far apart as it is possible
to conceive from the criticism set forth in the later writings of
Matthew Arnold. The one writer regards the "myth" as no more than the
grave-clothes of a risen Christ whose essential virtue lies in his sweet
reasonableness and his morality touched with enthusiasm. The other
believes that if the wonderful story of love be proved a fable, a
profound alteration--and an alteration for the worse--has been made in
the religious consciousness of Christendom. And undoubtedly the
difference between the supernatural and the natural theories of
Christianity is far greater than Arnold represented it to be. But
Browning at this date very inadequately conceived the power of Christ as
a revealer of the fatherhood of God. In that revelation, whether the Son
of God was human or divine, lay a truth of surpassing power, and a
motive of action capable of summoning forth the purest and highest
energies of the soul. That such is the case has been abundantly
evidenced by the facts of history. Browning finds only much learning and
the ghost of dead love in the Goettingen lecture-room; and of course it
was easy to adapt his Professor's lecture so as to arrive at this
conclusion. But the process and the conclusion are alike unjust.

Having traversed the various forms of Christian faith and scepticism,
the speaker in _Christmas Eve_ declines into a mood of lazy benevolence
and mild indifferentism towards each and all of these. Has not Christ
been present alike at the holding-forth of the poor dissenting son of
thunder, who tore God's word into shreds, at the tinklings and
posturings and incense-fumes of Roman pietism, and even at the learned
discourse which dissolved the myth of his own life and death? Why, then,
over-strenuously take a side? Why not regard all phases of belief or
no-belief with equal and serene regard? Such a mood of amiable
indifferentism is abhorrent to Browning's feelings. The hem of Christ's
robe passes wholly at this point from the hand of the seer of visions in
his poem. One best way of worship there needs must be; ours may indeed
not be the absolutely best, but it is our part, it is our probation to
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