Mrs. Sutherland Orr admits that Browning "was no less, in his way, a Christian when he wrote _La Saisiaz_ than when he published _A Death in the Desert_ and _Christmas Eve and Easter Day_, or at any period subsequent to that in which he accepted without questioning what he had learned at his mother's knee. He has repeatedly written or declared in the words of Charles Lamb: 'If Christ entered the room I should fall on my knees'; and again in those of Napoleon: 'I am an understander of men, and _He_ was no man.' He has even added: 'If he had been, he would have been an imposter.'" But she has already remarked of the poem that "It is conclusive both in form and matter as to his heterodox attitude towards Christianity." And she continues: "The arguments, in great part negative, set forth in _La Saisiaz_ for the immortality of the soul, leave no place for the idea, however indefinite, of a Christian revelation on the subject."[96] We may indeed regret that such criticism should result from a study of the poem; but, after all, do the truths discussed in _La Saisiaz_ involve any immediate question either of the acceptance or rejection of a Christian revelation on this or on any subject? Do they not go deeper, if we may so say, than Christianity itself? Until faith in these fundamental truths has been unassailably established, no basis for Christianity has been secured. To him who is not yet "sure of God," the revelation of God in Christ can have little meaning. For whilst far more than the belief necessarily implied in the confession on La Salève must be held essential to the fulness of life, without it no superstructure of faith is possible. Its very strength would seem to lie in the fact that, avoiding the limitations of strictly defined dogma, it "leaves place" for all subsequent revelations of spiritual truth. And what _is_ "the Christian revelation" on these matters? The questions concerning death, immortality, and future recognition and reunion, ever suggesting themselves in new form to the human heart and intellect, are yet unanswered. Even that "acknowledgment of God in Christ" to which the dying Evangelist points as to the solution of "all questions in the earth and out of it,"[97] implies the acceptance of a creed not necessarily involving a revelation of the future life. The teaching of the Gospel serves as _present_ inspiration of a faith content to leave the future in the confidence Our times are in His hand Who saith "A whole I planned."[98]