east in some
directions, less confident of the completeness of his triumph as he
grows older. His faith in the good does not fail, but it is the faith of
one who confesses to ignorance, and links himself to his finitude.
Still, so thorough is his conviction of the moral purpose of life, of
the certainty of the good towards which man is moving, and of the
beneficence of the power which is at work everywhere in the world, that
many of his poems ring like the triumphant songs of Luther.

CHAPTER IV.

BROWNING'S OPTIMISM.

"Gladness be with thee, Helper of the World!
I think this is the authentic sign and seal
Of Godship, that it ever waxes glad,
And more glad, until gladness blossoms, bursts
Into a rage to suffer for mankind,
And recommence at sorrow."[A]

[Footnote A: _Balaustion's Adventure_.]

I have tried to show that one of the distinctive features of the present
era is the stress it lays on the worth of the moral life of man, and the
new significance it has given to that life by its view of the continuity
of history. This view finds expression, on its social and ethical side,
in the pages of Carlyle and Browning: both of whom are interested
exclusively, one may almost say, in the evolution of human character;
and both of whom, too, regard that evolution as the realization by man
of the purposes, greater than man's, which rule in the world. And,
although neither of them developed the organic view of humanity, which
is implied in their doctrines, into an explicit philosophy, still the
moral life of the individual is for each of them the infinite life in
the finite. The meaning of the universe is moral, its last might is
rightness; and the task of man is to catch up that meaning, convert it
into his own motive, and thereby make it the source of his actions, the
inmost principle of his life. This, fully grasped, will bring the finite
and the infinite, morality and religion, together, and reconcile them.

But the reconciliation which Carlyle sought to effect was incomplete on
every side--even within the sphere of duty, with which alone, as
moralist, he specially concerned himself. The moral law was imposed upon
man by a higher power, in the presence of whom man was awed and crushed;
for that power had stinted man's endowment, and set him to fight a
hopeless battle against endless evil. God was everywhere around man, and
the universe was just the expression of His will--a will inexorably bent
o