"a ghastly smooth life, dead at heart." *2* The essential nature
of Christianity is contrary to special prescription, do this or do that,
believe this or believe that. Christ gave no recipes.
Christianity is with Browning, and this he sets forth again and again,
a LIFE, quickened and motived and nourished by the Personality of Christ.
And all that he says of this Personality can be accepted
by every Christian, whatever theological view he may entertain of Christ.
Christ's teachings he regards but as INCIDENTS of that Personality,
and the records we have of his sayings and doings, but a fragment,
a somewhat distorted one, it may be, out of which we must,
by a mystic and plastic sympathy, {*} aided by the Christ spirit
which is immanent in the Christian world, mould the Personality,
and do fealty to it. The Christian must endeavor to be able to say,
with the dying John, in Browning's `Death in the Desert',
"To me that story, -- ay, that Life and Death of which I wrote `it was' --
to me, it is."

--
*1* `Christmas Eve'.
*2* `Easter Day'.
{*} `plastic' in the 1800's sense of `pliable', not `fake'. -- A.L.
--

The poem entitled `Christmas Eve' contains the fullest
and most explicit expression, in Browning, of his idea
of the personality of Christ, as being the all-in-all of Christianity.

"The truth in God's breast
Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed:
Though He is so bright and we so dim,