d
Shaftesburys" of Matthew Arnold's irony are regarded with no fine scorn
by the intellect of Browning. His early Christian faith has expanded and
taken the non-historical form of a Humanitarian Theism, courageously
accepted, not as a complete account of the Unknowable, but as the best
provisional conception which we are competent to form. This theism
involves rather than displaces the truth shadowed forth in the life of
Christ. The crudest theism would seem to him far more reasonable than to
direct the religious emotions towards a "stream of tendency."

The presence of evil in a world created and governed by One all-wise,
all-powerful, all-loving, is justified in _Mirhab Shah_ as a necessity
of our education. How shall love be called forth unless there be the
possibility of self-sacrifice? How shall our human sympathy be perfected
unless there be pain? What room is there for thanks to God or love of
man if earth be the scene of such a blank monotony of well-being as may
be found in the star Rephan? But let us not call evil good, or think
pain in itself a gain. God may see that evil is null, and that pain is
gain; for us the human view, the human feeling must suffice. This
justification of pain as a needful part of an education is, however,
inapplicable to never-ending retributive punishment. Such a theological
horror Browning rejects with a hearty indignation, qualified only by a
humorous contempt, in his apologue of _A Camel-driver_; her driver, if
the camel bites, will with good cause thwack, and so instruct the brute
that mouths should munch not bite; he will not, six months afterwards,
thrust red-hot prongs into the soft of her flesh to hiss there. And God
has the advantage over the driver of seeing into the camel's brain and
of knowing precisely what moved the creature to offend. The poem which
follows is directed against asceticism. Self-sacrifice for the sake of
our fellows is indeed "joy beyond joy." As to the rest--the question is
not whether we fast or feast, but whether, fasting or feasting, we do
our day's work for the Master. If we would supply joy to our fellows, it
is needful that we should first know joy ourselves--

Therefore, desire joy and thank God for it!

Browning's argument is not profound, and could adroitly be turned
against himself; but his temperament would survive his argument; his
capacity for manifold pleasures was great, and he not only valued these
as good in themselves, but turned