"nature out, and ascertains his rank and final place;" and "just "the creature he was bound to be, he will become, nor thwart at "all God's purpose in creation."

Of man's work, the poet asks

"So, all men strive and who succeeds?
"Look at the end of work, contrast
"The petty Done, the Undone vast,
"This present with the hopeful past.
"What hand and brain went ever paired?
"What heart, alike conceived and dared?
"What act proved all its thought had been?
"What will but felt the fleshly screen?"

"Yet the will's somewhat!" "A man's reach should be beyond
"his grasp
" and "if this life gave all, what were there to look
"forward to?" Earth is the place for attempt-"anon per-
"formance." And this "stops my despair. 'Tis not what man
"does, that exalts him, but what he would do." "What I

66

aspired to be, and was not, comforts me; a brute I might have "been, but would not sink in the scale." And so, "I live, go "through the world, try, prove, reject, prefer, still struggling to "effect my warfare; happy that I can be thwarted as a man; "not left in God's contempt apart, with ghastly smooth life, dead 66 at heart."

Who shall say of his fellow, "he has failed"?

"That low man seeks a little thing to do,

"Sees it and does it;

"This high man with a great thing to pursue,
"Dies ere he knows it.

"That, has the world here

"This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed,

"Seeking, shall find Him;

"God's task, to make the heavenly period

"Perfect the earthen."

What is success and what failure?

"Now who shall arbitrate?

"Ten men love what I hate,

"Shun what I follow, slight what I receive:

"Ten who in eyes and ears

"Match me; they all surmise,

"They, this thing, and I that,

"Whom shall my soul believe?"

for "our human speech is naught, our testimony false, our fame "and human estimation, words and wind." Men's standards differ each from each, and all differ from the absolute and unknown standard by which lives might be rightly judged. Then too, men never gather all the facts. It has been said that, "this life “being but a small part of life, men should know of the rest be"fore they can say of this portion, that it is failure or success.' The perfect judgment waits God's time, who knows all from the beginning. Man, who "sees light, half shine, half shade," looks "to the size of things done that have their price here," the vulgar mass called work; the low world can value in a trice, plumb with its coarse thumb; God holds appraising in his hollow palm, the seed of act, thoughts hardly to be packed into a narrow act, fancies that broke through language and escaped; all instincts immature, all purposes unsure, that weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's account. "All he could never be, all men “ignored, this was he worth to God whose wheel the pitcher "shaped."

For the deformed, idiotic, stunted, limp, and ignorant, whom men call "foolish," Browning has infinite patience and hope; all are backward scholars waiting the Great Teacher. And for the hateful, noxious, the morally insane whom men call "wicked," he has infinite patience and hope,-for the little halfcompleted castaway who was so much worse than herself; for "Ot "tima, the temptress, magnificent in sin"; for Guido, chief of villains,—all wait the "touch of God's shadow wherein is heal"ing." The worst man has something that links him on to humanity, "some germ of good, that may grow to choke out the

poisonous, rank growth of a life-time." Quickening, soulkindling, conversion "may, will come to all, by God's own ways "occult." Some suddenness of fate may cleave the flesh, give issue to the spirit birth: some lightning-stroke may cure the blind; God's spear may pierce a window in the soul, whence the imprisoned flash shall leap and find itself at one with God's own sun-"Else I avert my face, nor penetrate into that sad, obscure, sequestered place, where God unmakes, but to remake "the soul, he else made first in vain."

66

And has earth no hope for such? Elisha raised the dead-" a "credible feat enough," our poet says, "Man may not create,"he may restore; a virgin wick he cannot light, the almost"dead lamp he may relume.”

"Such men are even now upon the earth,

"Serene amid the half-formed creatures round,

"Who should be saved by them, and joined with them."

Through Christ-like souls is "man born from above," or through higher personality; and through such souls alone, God stooping shows sufficient of His light for us in the dark to rise by. "By man, shall man be 'lifted to his level," "made cognizant of the master," see his true "function revealed," and "be admitted to a fellowship with the soul of things."

In a world of failure, loss, pain, decay and imperfection, our poet finds sufficient consolation for life as it is, and for man as he is, in the thought that "man is made to grow, not stop;" "what "comes to perfection perishes; ""what's whole can increase no "more, is dwarfed and dies, since here's its sphere." "Progress "is man's distinction, man's alone, not God's and not the beasts. "God is, they are,-man partly is, and wholly hopes to be."

"God's gift is that man shall conceive of truth,
"And yearn to gain it, catching at mistake,
"As midway help till he reach fact indeed."

Every sorrow, loss and pain yields "increase of knowledge, 66 since he learns because he lives, which is to be a man, set to "instruct himself by his past self." Rejoice, "that man is hurled "from change to change unceasingly, his soul's wings never furled."

What end to the striving? "To reach the ultimate, angel's law, "indulging every instinct of the soul, there, where law, life, joy, ❝impulse are one thing.”

MARY E. BAGG.

BROWNING AS A THEOLOGIAN.

In the study of Browning the chief thing is not criticism or defence of his teachings, but a careful understanding of what he has to say. And it is difficult, if not impossible, to understand a man who is on a level above the student. It is specially difficult to be entirely fair in questions of theology, because theology is so related to religion that thought and feeling are both involved. And while the attractiveness of feeling is in the local or personal color which it gives to thought, that attraction causes the needle of truth to vary from its accuracy of direction.

But beyond this, it is to be said of Browning that he is not a theologian and therefore has not a theology. He is a deeply religious poet. His entire writings all full of religious thought and feeling. A theologian is a logician. Browning is a poet, a seer. He is comprehensive. He embraces everything in his vision and in his description. There is nothing of the exclusiveness of the theologian in his utterances. As to the artist, so to him, everything is of interest and service. He lays the entire universe under contribution to his page. He seems to see, as it is said in Genesis the creator saw, that all things are good. He believes in everything. The one passport to his favor is that a thing is.

There is no scientific theological statement possible of the system of such a writer. You can prove anything from him. He seems to have learned what Emerson teaches, that the whole truth is not spoken until the opposite has been affirmed. It is impossible for a logical system to hold contradictory statements. Seers always speak contradictions. Hence there are numberless opinions concerning Browning's theology. In that regard, how