time, it would seem, made any conscious approach. But it
is clear that he found in the mysterious union and transfusion of
diverse being which takes place in Love, as Hegel found in the union of
opposites, the clue to the nature of reality, the very core of the heart
of life. He did not talk of the union of opposites, but of "infinitude
wreaking itself upon the finite." God himself would have been less
divine, and so, as God, less real, had he remained aloof in lonely
infinity instead of uniting himself with all creation in that love
which "moves the world and the other stars"; the "loving worm," to
quote his pregnant saying once more, were diviner than a loveless God.
We saw how his theology is double-faced between the pantheistic yearning
to find God everywhere and the individualist's resolute maintenance of
the autonomy of man. God's Love, poured through the world, inextricably
blended with all its power and beauty, thrilled with answering rapture
by all its joy, and striving to clasp every human soul, provided the
nearest approach to a solution of that conflict which Browning's
mechanical metaphysics permitted. One comprehends, then, the profound
significance for him of the actual solution apparently presented by
Christian theology. In one supreme, crucial example the union of God
with man in consummate love had actually, according to Christian belief,
taken place, and Browning probably uttered his own faith when he made St
John declare that

"The acknowledgment of God in Christ
Acknowledged by thy reason solves for thee
All questions in the earth and out of it."[139]

[Footnote 139: _Death in the Desert_. These lines, however "dramatic,"
mark with precision the extent, and the limits, of Browning's Christian
faith. The evidence of his writings altogether confirms Mrs Orr's
express statement that Christ was for him, from first to last, "a
manifestation of divine love," by human form accessible to human love;
but not the Redeemer of the orthodox creed.]

For to acknowledge this was to recognise that love was divine, and that
mankind at large, in virtue of their gift of love, shared in God's
nature, finite as they were; that whatever clouds of intellectual
illusion they walked in, they were lifted to a hold upon reality as
unassailable as God's own by the least glimmer of love. Whatever else is
obscure or elusive in Browning, he never falters in proclaiming the
absolute and flawless worth of love.