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, 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 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]