flesh shall dare.
Some think, Creation's meant to show him forth: I say, it's meant
to hide him all it can, and that's what all the blessed Evil's for.
Its use in time is to environ us, our breath, our drop of dew,
with shield enough against that sight till we can bear its stress.
Under a vertical sun, the exposed brain and lidless eye
and disimprisoned heart less certainly would wither up at once,
than mind, confronted with the truth of Him. But time and earth
case-harden us to live; the feeblest sense is trusted most:
the child feels God a moment, ichors o'er the place,
plays on and grows to be a man like us. With me, faith means
perpetual unbelief kept quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's foot,
who stands calm just because he feels it writhe." *3*

--
*1* `The Ring and the Book', The Pope, v. 1853.

*2* `Bishop Blougram's Apology', vv. 198, 199.

*3* `Bishop Blougram's Apology', vv. 650-671.
--

There is a remarkable passage to the same effect in `Paracelsus',
in which Paracelsus expatiates on the "just so much of doubt
as bade him plant a surer foot upon the sun-road."

And in `Easter Day':--

"You must mix some uncertainty
With faith, if you would have faith BE."

And the good Pope in `The Ring and the Book', alluding to the absence
of true Christian soldiership, which is revealed by Pompilia's case,
says: "Is it not this ignoble CONFIDENCE, cowardly hardihood,
that dulls and damps, makes the old heroism impossible?
Unless. . .what whispers me of times to come? What if it be
the mission of that age my death will usher into life,
to SHAKE THIS TORPOR OF ASSURANCE FROM OUR CREED,
reintroduce the DOUBT discarded, bring the formidable danger back
we drove long ago to the distance and the dark?"

True healthy doubt means, in Browning, that the spiritual nature
is sufficiently quickened not to submit to the conclusions of
the insulated intellect. It WILL reach out beyond them,
and assert itself, whatever be the resistance offered by the intellect.
Mere doubt, without any resistance from the intuitive,
non-discursive side of our nature, is the dry-rot of the soul.
The spiritual functions are "smothered in surmise". Faith is not
a matter of blind belief, of slavish assent and acceptance,
as many no-faith people seem to regard it. It is what
Wordsworth calls it, "a passionate intuition", and springs out of
quickened and refined sentiment, out of inborn instincts which