BOOKS.

MR. BROWNING'S THEOLOGY.* To Ferishtah's Fancies are prefixed two mottoes, one of which is from an article on ",Shakespeare" in Jeremy Collier's Historical

• Perishtah's Fancies. By Robert Browning. London: Smith, Elder, and Co.

Dictionary, and the other is a sentence from the third act of King Lear. They are as follows :—

-" His genius was jocular, but when disposed, he could be very -serious."

"Yon, Sir, I entertain you for one of my Hundred ; only, I do not like the fashion of your garments : you will say, they are Persian ; but let them be changed."

The two together contain a pretty clear hint of Mr. Browning's drift. He means to make his imaginary dervish talk familiarly and even laughingly of the principles and practice of life, and yet to lay bare his deepest convictions ; and he means the Persian dress of the whole to be a merely superficial one, adopted for the sake of facilitating the familiar discus- sion of topics otherwise held too sacred for familiarity of any kind. In truth, in Ferishtah's Fancies we have, as we suppose, a familiar sketch of Mr. Browning's theology, with its hearing on the morality of our actual life. In a very lively prologue, Mr. Browning gives us an account of the way in which the Italian cooks cook ortolans. It seems that after roasting the ortolans, the cooks separate one ortolan from another on the skewer on which they are spitted by a crisp bit of brown toast and a sage-leaf. The flavour, he says, is thus made up of the brown toast, the sage-leaf, and the plump ortolan, and is a combination of the flavour of each. This he takes as an illustration of his own method in art, which is to " Lyre with Spit ally,"—in other words, we suppose, to com- bine plain-sense, piquancy, and song by spitting them to- gether on the same skewer. The plain-sense and the piquancy, for the most part, are contained in the so-called dervish's lessons to his disciples ; the flights of song follow in the little lyrics with which each "fancy" of Ferishtah's ,closes. This is, we suppose, Mr. Browning's equivalent in poetry for Wagner's method in music, of giving discords to heighten the sense of harmony. Certainly Mr. Browning's " Lyre" is less prominent in many of these fancies than its ally the " Spit," of which he makes a very free and humorous use. Even in the tights of song with which each " fancy " closes, the Spit is sometimes seen to thrust itself into a prominence at least as -conspicuous as the Lyre. For example, after a "fancy " the drift of which is that men ought to be heartily thankful for the little obvious blessings which are best suited to their little nature, -and ought not to reserve their gratitude till they can find out something which they regard as great enough to be worthy of gratitude, he gives us this little song on the wisdom of -doing what you can to honour God's gifts, instead of waiting till you can do what you would think adequate to the measure -of God's goodness :—

" Verse-making was least of my virtues : I viewed with despair

Wealth that never yet was but might be—all that verse-making were If the life would but lengthen to wish, let the mind be laid bare.

So I said ' To do little is bad, to do nothing is worse '— And mails, verse.

Love-making,—bow simple a matter ! No depths to explore,

No heights in a life to ascend ! No disheartening Before,

No affrighting Hereafter,—love now will be love evermore.

So I felt To keep silence were folly :'—all language above, I made love."

That has a memorable rhythm in it, as well as a fine lesson, and it is one of the passages in which Mr. Browning's " Lyre " is heard resonant enough, but the sharp little note of the two refrains sounds to us a good deal like the ring of the Spit against the Lyre ; and, indeed, Mr. Browning does not often give us a poem in which these sharpnesses are not so audible as to remain prominent in the memory even after the melody has vanished from it.

However, let us pass to the real subject of this striking little book,—Mr. Browning's own theology. In the first of these

-"fancies " he teaches ris that though God may work miracles when miracles are needed for sustaining the life he gives, he will not work miracles to save man from exerting himself in the natural and manly way,—that no man is to expect a miracle to save

him from doing for his fellow-creatures what be has been given the means of doing without any miracle to help him. Next he insists that those who have enjoyed a wealth of blessings -of which they have justly been deprived, ought rather to feast themselves in memory on the undeserved blessings they had received, than to fret over the deserved loss of those undeserved blessings. In other words, we suppose he wants to remind us that nothing that we receive is in any true sense deserved ; that all is, as the theologians say, of grace, and not of- merit ; and that the loss, even by our own default, of God's blessings, is of more use if it fills

us with a deeper gratitude for that which we have lost, than it is if it only fills us with-self-reproach for the unworthiness through

which we lost it. After these elementary warnings against the misuse of God's gifts, whether supernatural or natural, Mr. Browning plunges into the great question of whether faith is or is not included in love, and whether you can be saved by love without faith, or by faith without love. This is discussed by the dervish in a conversation with his disciple, couched iu the usual familiar style of Mr. Browning's colloquies, and results, as we understand it, in this conclusion,—that a revelation beau- tiful enough to fill the heart may be wisely and safely accepted as evidence of its own truth, but that nevertheless it is far better to love without believing 11,—to desire it to be true with- out being convinced that it is true,—than it is to believe without loving it, to believe it true without rejoicing in, and acting on, its truth. Believe the Gospel, Mr. Browning seems to say, if you will, on the ground that it is so absolutely worthy of your highest love ; but then act as if you loved it and rejoiced in it. It would be far better to yearn to believe it true, and to do all in your power to act as if it were true, without being convinced, than it would be to be convinced without joy and without self-surrender.

Next we have the question of prayer discussed in a slightly veiled form, and the answer given that what it is natural to desire man ought to ask for, even though it be to ask God for what God in his mercy will deny, since God can allow perfectly for what is short-sighted in man, but man cannot allow perfectly for what may or may not be the larger purposes of God. The freest and most natural relation between man and God is the best, even though it often leads us to ask for what cannot be given, or to confess frankly how different our desires are from God's purposes. Then comes a very striking discussion, which is really one on the possibility of God manifesting himself iu a human nature to man, though, of course, the Persian dress given to the whole renders it necessary to keep the question of the Incarnation very much in the background. Mr. Browning con- siders that a human incarnation is really the only conceivable manifestation of the divine to man that we could regard as perfect, though he leaves it uncertain whether he thinks that adequate evidence of so transcendental a revelation could be received and grasped by us. Then comes the question of the purpose of suffering, which Mr. Browning declares to be that it is the only awakener of human sympathy. Without the sight of suffering no one could really go out of himself to pity and help his neighbour. A human world without pain would be a human world without pity and love. Suffering is essential to generate gratitude for what we enjoy and love towards those who are unhappy :—

" Put pain from out the world, what room were left For thanks to God, for love to man ?"

Then comes the question of future punishment for sin, a sub- ject on which Mr. Browning's teaching is not quite so fully ex-

pounded and adequate, as it is ou most others. But we understand his teaching to be, that all punishment consists in the clearer knowledge of what we have lost by our own sin, folly, or ignorance; that hell means nothing but the clear un- derstanding of what you might have been, and by your own default did not become.

Then comes the question of asceticism, on which Mr. Browning passes a very short and sharp condemnation. Asceticism, he

declares, is nothing but despising, in the pride of very petty wisdom, what God has given us, in order that we may do our duty better and more heartily ; and he asserts that it only paralyses the power which it is supposed to strengthen.

Analogous teaching is enforced in the two next pieces; while the subordination of knowledge to love is the subject of a

separate piece, the outcome whereof is this :-

"Knowledge means Ever-renewed assurance by defeat That victory is somehow still to reach ; But love is victory, the prize itself : Love trust to ! Be rewarded for the trust In trust's mere act."

And then, finally, we have the question discussed whether life is worth living, whether evil or good predominates in the world, which, again, resolves itself into the question whether God is or is not unknowable, whether our deepest love and gratitude can be reserved for those who are our visible companions and bene- factors here, on all which questions Mr. Browning answers as we should expect him to answer, that in spite of the mystery and the doubt into which the spirit sometimes falls when it asks itself if it b3 not mistaking the light of affection for the light of truth, it cannot but pass beyond all the manifestations of earthly goodness and love, to the goodness and love of the primal cause of all human goodness and human love.

Such is a very bare sketch of Mr. Browning's veiled teaching in these "fancies " of Ferishtah's. As for the art, there is un- doubtedly much very vigorous writing in it, and some verse which charms as well as bites. But, to use Mr. Browning's own metaphor, unquestionably there is more brown toast and sage- leaf than there is ortolan; more sagacious teaching and telling sarcasm than there is of the poet's melody. Still, this is a book worthy of Mr. Browning, and which no thoughtful man can read without keen interest, as well as occasional glimpses of delight.