The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-01-02
GUESSES In HIGHER BROWNING.
The Poets Study I'm Orthodoxy, Ritz
uaIism and RatiOnaIism.
Rules for reading Browning;

Rules for reading Browning:
J.. Read only when your mind is at it's
.. Religously mind your pauses
:. Catch, If possible, the emphatic words
4. Read his poetry exactly as if it were
). When you get to a difficulty read rapid
~ and trust the Lord for further light.
christmas Eve is study by Browning
in what he considered the three great
phases of Observation-Disclosures ritualsm
and rationalism-with view to see if in
either any of the Christ spirit can be traced.
Our poets position is that as good Christians
can be found if we only look with suffi-
cient earnestness and patience, among the
sectarian bigots, as we'll as in the sensuous
and dramatic splendors of the Roman and
Episcopal Ritualists, and also, strange to
say, among the dissecting knives of the
German Rationalists. Accordingly one
tempestuous Christmas eve, which in 1S49
was also Sabbath eve, our poet finds him
self in a squalid, dissenting chapel 0he
critics always speak of it as Methodist, al
though there is no occasion for so doing),
on the outskirts of East London. Squalor
could not be more squalid. An ignorant
preacher was pounding his Bible, and
poured forth a torrent of muddy ideas,
clothed in equally muddy language:
''First-The preacher spoke through his
nose.
oecond-IIis gesture was too methodic.
"Third-To even what was pedagogic
the subject matter lacked all logic.
"Fourth-The English was ungrammatic."
The audience was a good deal worse than
the preacher. The details about the fat old
woman who purred with pleasure" of
the wheezy old man ''who twiddled his
thumbs;" of the impudent, staring boy, are
all purposely made disgusting. Each and
all took vulgar and prolonged stare at
our poet, as much as to say, what busi-
ness have you here?" While doing his best
to get edification out of this gospel con-
tanned in these very dirty and very earthen
vessels, Browning fell asleep and dreamed
that he left the chapel in disgust, and while
leaving it the Master appeared in seven
hued double rainbow:
He was there,
He Himself with His human air;
1 remembered He did say
Where two or three should meet and pray,
He should be in the midst, their friend;
Certainly He was there with them"
Browning thereupon thus addressed Him:
'Our best is bad, nor bears Thy test;
Still, it should be our very best.
/ thought it best that Thou, the Spirit,
BE worshiped in spirit and truth,
And in beauty, as even we require it
Not in forms burlesque, uncouth."
And, while thus speaking, poet is
caught up in a cloud from the squalor of
the poverty-stricken chapel and set down
before the door OF st. Peters Church in
Rome Overmastered by its splendors, he
asks:
rs it really of the earth,
This miraculous dome of God?
Has the angels measuring-rod
Which numbered cubits, gem from gem,
'T'wixt the gates of the New Jerusalem,
Melted If Out-anQ what ne m6teu,
Have the sons of men completed?'
The whole Basilica is swarming with
worshipers:
Men in the chanceI, body, and nave,
Men on the pillars archltraVe,
Men on the statues men on the tombs
With popes and kings in their porphyry
All furnishing in expectation
The service proceeds:
Earth breaks up, time drops away,
In flows Heaven, with its new day
OF endless life. when He who trod,
Very Man and very Cod
Became King of kings, and Lord of Lords
Such was the gorgeous ritualistic worship
Of the Roman Church as compared with the
poverty-stricken service in the dissenting
chapel. and yet, to the poets thought, Christ
was in the Basilica as well among the
poverty-stricken people of London:
Though Rome's gross yoke
Drops off, no more TO be endured,
Her teaching is not so obscured
BY errors and perversities,
That no truth shines athwart the lies:
And He whose eye detects spark
Even where, to mans, the whole seems
dark.
May well see flame where each beholder
Acknowledges the embers shoulder.
Do these men praise Him? | will raise
Ny voice up TO their point of praise!
] see the error; but above
The scope OF error, see the love
q love of those first Christian days!
Planned SO soon into a blaze,
From the spark preserved by the trampled
That the antique sovereign Intellect
Which then sat ruling in the world
ike a change IN dreams Was hurleu
From the throne he reigned upon.
In the succeeding lines our poet does full
Justice to the art spirit of the Catholic
Church and to its splendid genius for or
ganizaton What would the civilization of
the twentieth century have been had not
the Church of Rome in the tenth century
preserved the wisdom of antiquity and kept
the savage races at bay2
Our poet is now caught up by the Master
in a cloud and transferred from Rome TO a
German college town and to lecture hall
furnished with scalpeis and instruments for
dissecting religion. A century ago Niebuhr,
the great German historian. destroyed all
the old fables about Rome, its Romulus
and Remus. it's Horatii and Curiatii and its
demigods 50 dear to the hearts of school
boys. He sowed the seed of historic skep-
tcism. and. not to be outdone by the great
German, numerous American essayists have
taken up his cue and shown to admiring
readers that there never was such an In
dian maid as Pocahontas. and that the
sweet old story about her rescuing her
lover. John Smith, from the warclub OF