But it may be said in answer, that, at least for man, this is the only point of view that is accessible. 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 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 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,