of the soul. The
little stanza beginning

"Flower in the crannied wall"

has shown us how the mysteries of being are shared by the commonest
lives; the short lyric "Wages" condenses into a few lines the
strongest proof of the life to come; and "Crossing the Bar" has borne
many a spirit in peace out to the boundless sea.

Robert Browning's robust faith helps us in a different way. His daring
and triumphant optimism makes us ashamed of doubt. In "Abt Vogler," in
"Rabbi Ben Ezra," in "Pompilia," in "Christmas Eve," we are caught up
and carried onward by an unflinching and overcoming faith. Perhaps the
most convincing arguments for religious reality in Browning's poems
are those of "An Epistle" and of "Cleon," where the cry of the human
soul for the assurance which the Christian faith supplies is given
such a penetrating voice. And there is no reasoning about the
Incarnation, in any theological book that I have ever read, which
seems to me so cogent as that great passage in "Saul," where David
cries:

"Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to enrich,
To fill up his life, starve my own out. I would--knowing which,
I know that my service is perfect. Oh, speak through me now!
Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst thou--so wilt thou!"

But, after all, Browning's great hymns of faith are those in which he
faces the future, like "Prospice," and the prologue of "La Saisiaz,"
and the epilogue of "Asolando,"--triumphant songs, in which one of the
healthiest-minded of human beings showed himself:

"One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed though right were worsted wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, sleep to wake!"

It would be a grateful task to make extended record of the service
rendered to religion by the great choir of singers whose names appear
upon the pages of this book. To Elizabeth Barrett Browning our debt is
large, though her note is oftenest plaintive and the faith which she
illustrates is that by which suffering is turned to strength. Our own
New England psalmist, also, has been to great multitudes a revealer
and a comforter; few in any age have seen the central truths of
Christianity more clearly, or felt them more deeply, or uttered them
more convincingly. In such poems as "My Soul and I," "My Psalm," "Our
Master," "The Eternal Goodness," "The Brewing of Soma," and "An