believers, since scarcely one man in ten thousand could master these processes, much less originate them; but the objection would equally apply in the case of any profound and subtle thinker and his doctrines in any department of thought. For us ordinary men the cardinal fact is, that such and such a theory or doctrine was found probable, tenable, reasonable, or irresistible, by such and such a profound and subtle and dauntless and sincere thinker. The wise and the simple, nay, the various wise and the various simple, never tread the same path to the same goal; but for common purposes we must class together all those who do reach the same goal; and each goal, be it Christianity, or Copernicanism, or Comtism, is entitled to respect in proportion to the aggregate worth (not number) of those who have reached and rested in it.
In Browning we find reverence and audacity co-equal and co-efficient; and doubtless many timid Christians have been shocked by his free handling of their religion in the "Christmas Eve" and the "Easter-Day;" but candid Non-Christians (among whom I am fain to be classed) cannot but recognise and esteem the fearless and fervent Christianity of those poems, cannot but thoroughly admit the great poet's burning sincerity when he cries at the close of the former: —
Thinking that merely to touch in brevity
The topics I dwell on were unlawful,—
Or worse, that I trench, with undue levity,
On the bounds of the holy and the awful,—
I praise the hearty and pity the head of him,
