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Browning’s Adventure ’’ with Christ on the dark common, found 
in his poem called ‘Christmas Eve.’ The great lesson of 
“Christmas Eve’”’ is that the essence of Christianity is a self- 
sacrificing and redeeming love. The gods of the ancient world 
were chiefly characterized by the love of power, while the 
Christian Deity displays the power of love. Through all the 
different forms of faith into which Christianity is divided, men 
are groping their way to this sublime truth, which must convert 
their natures and transfigure their lives. The poem is divided 
into five scenes of fascinating interest ; so dramatic is each, 
and so realistic is the localization, that it is difficult not to 
believe that they actually took place. 
Having given a brief synopsis of each of the five scenes :— 
(i.) The Dissenting Chapel, (ii.) a Lunar Rainbow, (iii.) at 
St. Peter’s, Rome, (iv.) with the Agnostic Professor in Germany, 
and (v.) ‘‘ Into the little Chapel again,” all representing different 
aspects of Christianity, Mr. Hill concluded—Tolerance ! Was 
that the only lesson which Browning had learned from Christ’s 
presence in the Chapel, the Cathedral, and the Lecture Room ? 
A lazy indifference—for that is often the ultimate result of 
tolerance—for the sake of respectability called tolerance !—was 
that all he had gained when the supreme truth revealed to him 
was Love? a love all-embracing and self-sacrificing, but only 
just discovered by the poet. In shame and grief he raised him- 
self from his self-complacent mood, and vows to live for others, 
in which we, tco, can discern the redeeming and self-sacrificing 
power of love taught by Robert Brownings’s ‘ Adventure on 
Christmas Eve” (1849), which is shown in the following lines :— 
‘“‘For I, a man, with men am linked 
And not a brute, with brutes; no gain 
That I experience, must remain 
Unshared.”’ 
The truth was borne in upon him that love was everywhere, 
in the heart of the uncouth preacher of ‘ the little Chapel,’ in 
the magnificent Cathedral at Rome, and shared by the worn-out 
Professor in Germany, trying to preserve the ghost of Love by 
reverencing a myth :-— 
‘* From the gift looking to the giver, 
And from the cistern to the river, 
And from the finite to infinity, 
And from man’s dust to God’s divinity.” 
This is the note in the higher key which—among our English 
poets—Browning strikes—the transfiguration of Love, which is 
to beautify the world and to unite the human with the Divina. 
All experience shows what a prominent part love has played in 
the history of the world. We saw the Medieval Castle played 
its part according to the degeneracy of the times. We are drawn 
to the purer flame of Dante’s divine conception which showed 
