It might seem at first as if it were unfair to attempt any estimate of the philosophic and religious teaching of a poet like Browning, whose method we have already recognized as dramatic. Can we ascribe to the poet himself the opinions which he puts into the mouths of his characters? Can we hold him responsible for the sentiments which are expressed by the actors on his stage?
Certainly this objection must be admitted as a restraint in the interpretation of his poetry. We are not to take all that his characters say, literally and directly, as his own belief, any more than we are to read the speeches of Satan, and Eliphaz, and Bildad, and Zophar, in the Book of Job, as utterances of the spirit of inspiration. But just as that great dramatic Scripture, dealing with the problems
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 of evil and suffering and sovereignty, does contain a doctrine and convey a lesson, so the poetry of Browning, taken as a whole, utters a distinct and positive prophetic message.
In the first place, many of the poems are evidently subjective, written without disguise in the first person. Among these we may consider My Star; By the Fireside; One Word More; the Epilogues to Dramatis Personæ and Pachiarrotto and Ferishtah’s Fancies; the introduction and the close of The Ring and the Book; Christmas Eve and Easter Day; the ending of the poem called Gold Hair, and of A Death in the Desert, and of Bishop Blougram’s Apology; Prospice and Reverie. In the second place we must remember Goethe’s dictum: “Every author in some degree, pourtrays himself in his works, even be it against his will.” Even when Browning is writing dramatically, he cannot conceal his sympathy. The masks are thin. His eyes shine through. “His own personality,” says Mr. Stedman, “is manifest in the speech and movement of almost every character of each piece. His spirit is infused as if by metempsychosis, within them all,
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 and forces each to assume a strange Pentecostal tone, which we discover to be that of the poet himself.” Thus it is not impossible, nor even difficult, to reach a fair estimate of his ethical and religious teaching and discover its principal elements.
1. First among these I would put a great confidence in God. Browning is the most theological of modern poets. The epithet which was applied to Spinoza might well be transferred to him. He is a “God-intoxicated” man. But in a very different sense, for whereas the philosopher felt God as an idea, the poet feels Him intensely as a person. The song which he puts into the lips of the unconscious heroine in Pippa Passes,—
“God’s in his heaven
All’s right with the world,——”
is the recurrent theme of his poetry. He cries with Paracelsus,
“God thou art Love, I build my faith on that.”
Even when his music is broken and interrupted by discords, when it seems to dissolve and fade away as all human work, in its outward form, dissolves
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 and fades, he turns, as Abt Vogler turns from his silent organ, to God;
“Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffable Name?
Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands!
What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same?
Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power expands?”
In Rabbi Ben Ezra he takes up the ancient figure of the potter and the clay and uses it to express his boundless trust in God.
The characteristic mark of Browning’s view of God is that it is always taken from the side of humanity. The Perfect Glory is the correlative of the glory of the imperfect. The Divine Love is the answer to the human longing. God is, because man needs Him. From this point of view it almost seems, as a brilliant essayist has said, as if “In Browning, God is adjective to man.”[18]
But it may be said in answer, that, at least for man, this is the only point of view that is accessible.
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 We can never leave our own needs behind us, however high we may try to climb. Certainly if we succeed in forgetting them for a moment, in that very moment we have passed out of the region of poetry, which is the impassioned interpretation of man’s heart.
2. The second element of power in Browning’s poetry is that he sees in the personal Christ the very revelation of God that man’s heart most needs and welcomes. Nowhere else in all the range of modern poetry has this vision been expressed with such spiritual ardour, with such poignant joy. We must turn back to the pages of Isaiah to find anything to equal the Messianic rapture of the minstrel in Saul.
“He who did most shall bear most: the strongest shall stand the most weak.
’Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for! my flesh that I seek
In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be,
A Face like my face that receives thee; a man like to me,
Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever: a Hand like this hand
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Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! see the Christ stand!”
We must look into the Christ-filled letters of St. Paul to find the attractions of the Crucified One uttered as powerfully as they are in the Epistle of Karshish.
“The very God! think Abib; dost thou think?
So, the All-great, were the All-Loving too—
So, through the thunder comes a human voice
Saying, ‘O heart I made, a heart beats here!
Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!
Thou hast no power, nor mayest conceive of mine,
But love I gave thee, with myself to love,
And thou must love me who have died for thee!’”
It is idle to assert that these are only dramatic presentations of the Christian faith. No poet could have imagined such utterances without feeling their significance; and the piercing splendour of their expression discloses his sympathy. He reveals it yet more unmistakably in Christmas Eve, (strophe XVII) and in Easter Day, (strophe XXX.) In the Epilogue to Dramatis Personæ it flashes out clearly. The second speaker, as Renan, has bewailed the vanishing of the face of Christ from the sorrowful
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 vision of the race. The third speaker, the poet himself, answers:
“That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows,
Or decomposes but to recompose
Become my universe that feels and knows!”
“That face,” said Browning to a friend, “that face is the face of Christ: that is how I feel Him.”
Surely this is the religious message that the world most needs to-day. More and more everything in Christianity hangs upon the truth of the Incarnation. The alternative declares itself. Either no God whom we can know and love at all, or God personally manifest in Christ!
3. The third religious element in Browning’s poetry is his faith that this life is a probation, a discipline for the future. He says, again and again,
“I count life just a stuff
To try the soul’s strength on, educe the man.”
The glory of the imperfect lies in the power of progress, “man’s dist............