n `The Heretic's Tragedy'.
More subtle forms are drawn with greater elaboration.
If `Bishop Blougram's Apology', in many of its circumstances
and touches, suggests the thought of actual portraiture,
recalling a form and face once familiar to us, . . .it is also
a picture of a class of minds which we meet with everywhere.
Conservative scepticism that persuades itself that it believes,
cynical acuteness in discerning the weak points either
of mere secularism or dreaming mysticism, or passionate eagerness
to reform, avoiding dangerous extremes, and taking things as they are
because they are comfortable, and lead to wealth, enjoyment,
reputation,--this, whether a true account or not of the theologian
to whom we have referred. . .is yet to be found under many
eloquent defences of the faith, many fervent and scornful denunciations
of criticism and free thought. . . . In `Calaban upon Setebos',
if it is more than the product of Mr. Browning's fondness for
all abnormal forms of spiritual life, speculating among other things
on the religious thoughts of a half brute-like savage, we must see
a protest against the thought that man can rise by himself
to true thoughts of God, and develop a pure theology out of
his moral consciousness. So far it is a witness for the necessity
of a revelation, either through the immediate action of the Light
that lighteth every man, or that which has been given to mankind
in spoken or written words, by The WORD that was in the beginning.
In the `Death in the Desert', in like manner, we have another
school of thought analyzed with a corresponding subtlety. . . .
The `Death in the Dessert' is worth studying in its bearing upon
the mythical school of interpretation, and as a protest,
we would fain hope, from Mr. Browning's own mind against the thought
that because the love of God has been revealed in Christ,
and has taught us the greatness of all true human love, therefore,

"`We ourselves make the love, and Christ was not.'

"In one remarkable passage at the close of `The Legend of Pornic',
Mr. Browning, speaking apparently in his own person,
proclaims his belief in one great Christian doctrine,
which all pantheistic and atheistic systems formally repudiate,
and which many semi-Christian thinkers implicitly reject:--

"`The candid incline to surmise of late
That the Christian faith may be false, I find,
For our `Essays and Reviews'*1* debate
Begins to tell on the public