In 1864 under somewhat altered conditions, and from a ground somewhat shifted, Browning in A Death in the Desert and the Epilogue to “Dramatis Personae” continued his apology for the Christian faith.  The apologetics are, however, in the first instance poems, and they remain poems at the last.  The imaginary scene of the death of the Evangelist John is rendered with the finest art; its dignity is that of a certain noble bareness; in the dim-lighted grotto are the aged disciple and the little group of witnesses to whom he utters his legacy of words; at the cave’s edge is the Bactrian crying from time to time his bird-like cry of assurance: 

    Outside was all noon and the burning blue.

The slow return of the dying man to consciousness of his surroundings is as true as if it were studied from a death-bed; his sudden awakening at the words “I am the Resurrection and the Life” arrives not as a dramatic surprise but as the simplest surprise of nature—­light breaking forth before sunset.  The chief speaker of the poem is chosen because the argument is one concerning faith that comes through love, and St John was the disciple who had learnt love’s deepest secrets.  The dialectic proceeds along large lines, which have only the subtlety of simplicity.  The verse moves gravely, tenderly, often weighted with monosyllables; a pondering, dwelling verse; and great single lines arise so naturally that while they fill the mind with a peculiar power, they are felt to be of one texture with the whole:  this, for example,—­

     We would not lose
    The last of what might happen on his face;

and this:—­

    When there was mid sea and the mighty things;

and this:—­

    Lie bare to the universal prick of light;

and these:—­

    The Bactrian was but a wild childish man,
    And could not write nor speak, but only loved.

Such lines, however, are made to be read in situ.

The faith of these latter days is the same as that of the first century, and is not the same.  The story and the teaching of Christ had alike one end—­to plant in the human consciousness the assurance of Divine Love, and to make us, in our degree, conscious partakers of that love.  Where love is, there is Christ.  Our conceptions of God are relative to our own understanding; but God as power, God as a communicating intelligence, God as love—­Father, Son and Spirit—­is the utmost that we can conceive of things above us.  Let us now put that knowledge—­imperfect though it may be—­to use.  Power, intelligence, love—­these surround us everywhere; they are not mere projections from our own brain or hand or heart; and by us they are inconceivable otherwise than as personal attributes.  The historical story of Christ is not lost, for it has grown into a larger assurance of faith.  We are not concerned with the linen clothes and napkins of the empty sepulchre;