as, and the advantage of the
Catholic Church is that it holds firmly to its dogmas, come what may. It
was expected, however, that this Romeward Movement would arouse intense
antipathy. "The arguments by which it was justified were considered, in
many cases, disingenuous, if not Jesuitical."

In opposition of this sort we come nearer to Browning's attitude of
mind. Because such arguments as Wiseman and the Tractarians used could
not convince him, he takes the ordinary ground of the opposition, that
in using such arguments they must be insincere, and they must be
perfectly conscious of their insincerity. Still, in spite of the fact
that Browning's mind could not get inside of Blougram's, he shows that
he has some sympathy for the Bishop in the close of the poem where he
says, "He said true things but called them by wrong names." Raise
Blougram's philosophy to the plane of the mysticism of a Browning, and
the arguments for belief would be much the same but the _counters_ in
the arguments would become symbols instead of dogmas.

In "Christmas-Eve and Easter Day," Browning becomes the true critic of
the nineteenth-century religious movements. He passes in review in a
series of dramatic pictures the three most diverse modes of religious
thought of the century. The dissenter's view is symbolized by a scene in
a very humble chapel in England, the Catholic view by a vision of high
mass at St. Peter's and the Agnostic view by a vision of a lecture by a
learned German professor,--while the view of the modern mystic who
remains religious in the face of all destructive criticism is shown in
the speaker of the poem. The intuitional, aspiring side of his nature is
symbolized by the vision of Christ that appears to him, while the
intensity of its power fluctuates as he either holds fast or lets go the
garment of Christ. Opposed to his intuitional side is his reasoning
side.

Possibly the picture of the dissenting chapel is exaggeratedly humble,
though if we suppose it to be a Methodist Chapel, it may be true to
life, as Methodism was the form of religion which made its appeal to the
lowest classes. Indeed, at the time of its first successes, it was the
saving grace of England. "But for the moral antiseptic," writes Withrow,
"furnished by Methodism, and the revival of religion in all the churches
which it produced, the history of England would have been far other than
it was. It would probably have been swept into the maelstrom of
re