strongest proof of the life to come; and "Crossing the Bar" has borne
many a spirit in peace out to the boundless sea.

Robert Browning's robust faith helps us in a different way. His daring
and triumphant optimism makes us ashamed of doubt. In "Abt Vogler," in
"Rabbi Ben Ezra," in "Pompilia," in "Christmas Eve," we are caught up
and carried onward by an unflinching and overcoming faith. Perhaps the
most convincing arguments for religious reality in Browning's poems
are those of "An Epistle" and of "Cleon," where the cry of the human
soul for the assurance which the Christian faith supplies is given
such a penetrating voice. And there is no reasoning about the
Incarnation, in any theological book that I have ever read, which
seems to me so cogent as that great passage in "Saul," where David
cries:

"Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to enrich,
To fill up his life, starve my own out. I would--knowing which,
I know that my service is perfect. Oh, speak through me now!
Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst thou--so wilt thou!"

But, after all, Browning's great hymns of faith are those in which he
faces the future, like "Prospice," and the prologue of "La Saisiaz,"
and the epilogue of "Asolando,"--triumphant songs, in which one of the
healthiest-minded of human beings showed himself:

"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!"