Robert Browning as a Religious Teacher. By Arthur Cecil Pigou,
B.A. (C. T. Clay and Sons. 2s. 63.)—Mr. Pigou has published here the Burney Prize Essay for 1900. It is a very careful study of a difficult subject. Browning has been claimed as an adherent by. various schools of religious and even non- religious thought. The difficulty in adjudicating on these claims lies, of course, in the dramatic character of his poetry ; even when he is speaking in his own person, he does not always seem to be speaking his own thoughts. He may be putting a case. But there are some things which may be described as root conceptions in Browning's philosophy. "The doctrine of the never-ending self-sacrifice of a loving God appears as one of those deeper truths which set aside speech, act, time, place, indeed, but bring nakedly forward the principle of things.' " In historic Christianity Browning seems to have believed, though he cer- tainly cannot be claimed as the adherent of a dogmatic system. His Theism is not a logical or self-cohering theory—possibly it may be said that no Theism is—but that he was a Theist to the bottom of his heart can hardly be doubted. Mr. Pigou's essay may be studied with much profit.
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