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Browning continually denies in his poems that physical science 
has explored the secret of existence ; he tells us that physical or 
material force is the lowest revelation that nature brings. He 
dethrones power, and makes love supreme. Accordingly, if the 
omnipotent Creator be incapable of love, then man is the diviner 
being, because he is capable of spiritual energy that transends 
mere power. And when Browning beholds the supreme love in 
a vision of divine sacrifice, he declares that, before God’s trans- 
cendant act of mercy, 
Even the creation fades 
Into a puny exercise of power. 
Some people may object to all this, and say this teaching is 
very beautiful and very poetic. It is hard to believe, in such a 
world as this, that love is the deepest, strongest force. It often 
looks as though strength, cleverness, and cunning ruled des- 
potically the course of history. And so to show us how love may 
be the secret of many of the crises that make history, Browning 
wrote his most perfect poem, called ‘‘ Pippa passes.”’ 
All service ranks the same with God, 
If now, as formerly, he trod 
Paradise. His presence fills 
Our earth. Each only as God wills 
Can work, God’s puppets, best and worst, 
Are we; there is no first and last. 
Browning was steeped to the lips with radiant hope. Indeed, 
to him immortality is not a hope, it is a certainty bound up with 
man’s progressive nature. We have to go on to perfection. As 
that goal cannot be reached here, it must be in another world. 
Mr. Hill dealt with this aspect of Browning’s poetry at consider- 
able length, and in conclusion said: His message was the most 
inspiring optimism to the men of his time, and for many gener- 
ations to come. He lived every hour of his life for good, and 
against wrong. He said, with justice, of himself : 
I looked beyond this world for truth and beauty, 
Sought, found, and did my duty. 
He kept, in the midst of a fretful, wailing world, the temper and 
spirit of his own teaching, where prophets like Carlyle and 
Ruskin were as impatient and bewildered, as lamenting and 
despondent as the decadents they despised. He left us that 
temper and teaching as his last legacy, and he could not have left 
us a better thing. Nor in the very grasp of death did his faith 
fail him, but he was 
One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward, 
Never doubted clouds would break, 
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph ; 
Held, we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, 
Sleep to wake, 
