And this, though the time has come when love would have them no longer infantile, but capable of standing and walking, "not to speak of trying to climb." Such a short and easy method of dealing with Roman Catholic dogma and ritual cannot be commended for its intelligence; it is quite possible to be on the same side as Browning without being as crude as he in misconception. He does not seriously consider the Catholic idea which regards things of sense as made luminous by the spirit of which they are the envoys and the ministers. It is enough for him to declare his own creed which treats any intermediary between the human soul and the Divine as an obstruction or a veil: My heart does best to receive in meekness That mode of worship, as most to his mind, Where earthly aids being left behind, His All in All appears serene With the thinnest human veil between, Letting the mystic lamps, the seven, The many motions of his spirit, Pass as they list to earth from heaven. This was the creed of Milton and of Bunyan; and yet with both Milton and Bunyan the imagery of the senses is employed as the means not of concealing but revealing the things of the spirit. From the lecture-room of Göttingen, with its destructive and reconstructive criticism, Browning is even farther removed than he is from the ritualisms of the Roman basilica. Yet no caricature can be more amiable than his drawing of the learned Professor, so gentle in his aspect, so formidable in his conclusions, who, gazing into the air with a pure abstracted look, proceeds in a grave sweet voice to exhibit and analyse the sources of the myth of Christ. In the Professor's lecture-room Browning finds intellect indeed but only the shadow of love. He argues that if the "myth" of Christ be dissolved, the authority of Christ as a teacher disappears; Christ is even inferior to other moralists by virtue of the fact that He made personal claims which cannot be sustained. And whatever may be Christ's merit as a teacher of the truth, the motive to action which His life and words supplied must cease to exist if it be shown that the divine sacrifice of God manifest in the flesh is no more than a figment of the devout imagination. At every point the criticism of Browning is as far apart as it is possible to conceive from the criticism set forth in the later writings of Matthew Arnold. The one writer regards the "myth" as no more than the grave-clothes of a risen Christ whose essential virtue lies in his sweet reasonableness and his morality touched with enthusiasm. The other believes that if the wonderful story of love be proved a fable, a profound alteration--and an alteration for the worse--has been made in the religious consciousness of Christendom. And undoubtedly the difference between the supernatural and the natural theories of Christianity is far greater than Arnold represented it to be. But Browning at this date very inadequately conceived the power of Christ as