(5) The arguments of this and the Section following are of special importance, since on them are based the charges of a too great asceticism which have been urged against the poem. Here, too, the dramatic element is more pronounced than elsewhere. The life of ease, physical and spiritual, to the second speaker a source of supreme gratification and happiness, to the man of sterner mould presents itself as an impossibility. "The all-stupendous tale" of the Gospel leaves him "pale and heartstruck." The belief that the sufferings there recorded were undergone for the purpose of intensifying the joys of life and affording consolation for its ills, is to him an explanation so inadequate as to approach the verge of profanity. This being so he would demand of the advocate of the life of ease, How do you counsel in the case? The answer is characteristic: I'd take, by all means, in your place, The _safe_ side, since it so appears: Deny myself, a few brief years, The natural pleasure. (ll. 267-271.) That the eternal reward will outweigh the temporal suffering to the exclusion even of recollection, the testimony of the martyr of the catacombs affords ample proof. For me, I have forgot it all. (l. 288.) (6) _If_ this be so, then indeed there remains a direct and certain means of escape from sin, of fulfilment of the purposes of life--self-denial, renunciation. But, as the reply of Section X points out, the argument has been conducted in a circle, and the starting-point on the circumference has now been reached. The original statement has never been satisfactorily controverted. "How hard it is to be a Christian"; hard on account of the uncertainty bound to be attendant on all matters in which faith is requisite. It is hard to be a Christian since the difficulty but shifts its ground and is not actually removed by any venture of faith. After all argument, all reasoning, the possibility remains that the Christian's hope is a mistaken one; that death is not the gateway to fuller life but the annihilation of life; in short that the Christian has renounced life For the sake Of death and nothing else. (ll. 296-297.) In which case his gain is less than that of the worldling, since he has, at least, temporarily possessed the object towards the acquisition of which his self-denial was directed. Beetles and snuff-boxes may be but small gains, but gains they are to whomso desires them: and "gain is gain, however small." Nevertheless, in the spirit of Browning, the wrestler with his doubts would rather risk all for the vaguest spiritual hope, than rest satisfied with a life limited to material gratification: rather be the grasshopper That spends itself in leaps all day To reach the sun, (ll. 310-311.)