What follows in the poem is only the awe, the solemnity of this discovery which has come not through any processes of reasoning but by a passionate interpretation of the enthusiasm of love and self-sacrifice in David’s own heart; only this awe, and the seeming extension of his throbbing emotion and pent knowledge over the face of external nature, until night passes and with the dawn earth and heaven resume their wonted ways.  The case of Lazarus as studied by Karshish the Arabian physician results not in a rapturous prophecy like that of David, but in a stupendous conjecture of the heart which all the scepticism of the brain of a man of science cannot banish or reduce to insignificance.  The unaccountable fascination of this case of mania, subinduced by epilepsy, is not to be resisted; Karshish would write, if he could, of more important matters than the madman of Bethany; he would record his discoveries in scalp-disease, describe the peculiar qualities of Judea’s gum-tragacanth, and disclose the secret of those virtues derived from the mottled spiders of the tombs.  But the face of Lazarus, patient or joyous, the strange remoteness in his gaze, his singular valuations of objects and events, his great ardour, his great calm, his possession of some secret which gives new meanings to all things, the perfect logic of his irrationality, his unexampled gentleness and love—­these are memories which the keen-sighted Arabian physician is unable to put by, so curious, so attaching a potency lies in the person of this man who holds that he was dead and rose again, Karshish has a certain sense of shame that he, a man learned in all the wisdom of his day, should be so deeply moved.  And yet how the thought of the secret possessed by this Judean maniac—­it is the secret of Jesus—­fills and expands the soul!

    The very God! think, Abib:  dost thou think? 
    So, the All-Great were the All-Loving too—­
    So through the thunder comes a human voice
    Saying “O heart I made, a heart beats here! 
    Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself! 
    Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine,
    But love I gave thee, with myself to love,
    And thou must love me who have died for thee!”

Science has at least something to consider in a thought so strangely potent.

A nineteenth-century sceptic’s exposition of his Christian faith is the paradoxical subject of Bishop Blougram’s Apology, and it is one which admirably suited that side of Browning’s genius which leaned towards intellectual casuistry.  But the poem is not only skilful casuistry—­and casuistry, let it be remembered, is not properly the art of defending falsehood but of determining truth,—­it is also a character-study chosen from the age of doubt; a dramatic monologue with an appropriate mise en scene; a display of fence and thrust which as a piece of art and wit rewards an intelligent spectator.  That Cardinal Wiseman sat for the Bishop’s portrait