lphur offends his
nostrils. And the rage of piety is hotter than the fire; it is a mingled
passion, compounded of delight in the fierce spectacle, a thrilling
ecstacy at the sight of a fellow-creature tortured, the self-complacency
of conscious orthodoxy, and the horrible zeal of the Lord's house. Yet
though the event is sung by one of the rejoicing orthodox, somehow we
are made to feel that when John the apostate, bound in the flames and
gagged, prays to Jesus Christ to save him, that prayer may have been
answered. This passage from the story of the age of faith was not
selected with a view to please the mediaeval revivalists of the
nineteenth century, but in truth its chief value is not theological or
historical but artistic. _Holy Cross Day_, a second fragment from
history, does not fall from the sublime to the ridiculous but rises from
the ridiculous to the sublime. The picture of the close-packed Jews
tumbling or sidling churchwards to hear the Christian sermon (for He
saith "Compel them to come in") and to partake of heavenly grace has in
it something of Rembrandt united with something of Callot. Such a crew
of devout impostors is at once comic and piteous. But while they are
cared for in the merciful bowels of the Church, and groan out the
expected compunction, their ancient piety is not extinct; their hearts
burn in them with the memory of Jacob's House and of Jerusalem. Christ
at least was of their kindred, and if they wronged Him in past time,
they will not wrong Him now by naming these who outrage and insult them
after His name.

The historical distortions of the religion of Christ do not, however,
disturb the faith of Browning in the Christian revelation of Divine
love. In _Cleon_ he exhibits the failure of Paganism, even in its forms
of highest culture, to solve the riddle of life and to answer the
requirements of the human spirit. All that regal power liberally and
wisely used can confer belongs to Protus in his Tyranny; all that
genius, and learning and art can confer is the possession of Cleon; and
a profound discouragement has settled down upon the soul of each. The
race progresses from point to point; self-consciousness is deepened and
quickened as generation succeeds generation; the sympathies of the
individual are multiplied and extended. But he that increases knowledge,
increases sorrow; most progress is most failure; the soul climbs the
heights only to perish there. Every day the sense of joy grows