n the good, so that evil could not prevail; but God was not _within_
man, except as a voice of conscience issuing imperatives and threats. An
infinite duty was laid upon a finite being, and its weight made him
break out into a cry of despair.

Browning, however, not only sought to bring about the reconciliation,
but succeeded, in so far as that is possible _in terms of mere feeling_.
His poetry contains suggestions that the moral will without is also a
force within man; that the power which makes for righteousness in the
world has penetrated into, or rather manifests itself _as_, man.
Intelligence and will, the reason which apprehends the nature of things,
and the original impulse of self-conscious life which issues in action,
are God's power in man; so that God is realizing Himself in the deeds of
man, and human history is just His return to Himself. Outer law and
inner motive are, for the poet, manifestations of the same beneficent
purpose; and instead of duty in the sense of an autocratic imperative,
or beneficent tyranny, he finds, deep beneath man's foolishness and sin,
a constant tendency towards the good which is bound up with the very
nature of man's reason and will. If man could only understand himself he
would find without him no limiting necessity, but the manifestation of a
law which is one with his own essential being. A beneficent power has
loaded the dice, according to the epigram, so that the chances of
failure and victory are not even; for man's nature is itself a divine
endowment, one with the power that rules his life, and man must finally
reach through error to truth, and through sin to holiness. In the
language of theology, it may be said that the moral process is the
spiritual incarnation of God; it is God's goodness as love, effecting
itself in human action. Hence Carlyle's cry of despair is turned by
Browning into a song of victory. While the former regards the struggle
between good and evil as a fixed battle, in which the forces are
immovably interlocked, the latter has the consciousness of battling
against a retreating foe; and the conviction of coming triumph gives
joyous vigour to every stroke. Browning lifted morality into an
optimism, and translated its battle into song. This was the distinctive
mark and mission which give to him such power of moral inspiration.

In order, however, to estimate the value of this feature of the poet's
work, it is necessary to look more closely into the charac