“Through turbidity all between,
    From the known to the unknown here,
  Heaven’s ‘Shall be,’ from earth’s ‘Has been.’"[C]

[Footnote C:  Ibid.]

It grasps a fact beyond the reach of knowledge, namely, the possibility, or even the certainty, that “power is love.”  At present there is no substantiating by knowledge the testimony of the heart; and man has no better anchorage for his optimism than faith.  But the closer view will come, when even our life on earth will be seen to have within it the working of love, no less manifest than that of power.

  “When see?  When there dawns a day,
    If not on the homely earth,
  Then, yonder, worlds away,
    Where the strange and new have birth,
  And Power comes full in play."[D]

[Footnote D:  Ibid.]

Now, what is this evidence of the heart, which is sufficiently cogent and valid to counterpoise that of the mind; and which gives to “faith,” or “hope,” a firm foothold in the very face of the opposing “resistless” testimony of knowledge?

Within our experience, to which the poet knows we are entirely confined, there is a fact, the significance of which we have not as yet examined.  For, plain and irresistible as is the evidence of evil, so plain and constant is man’s recognition of it as evil, and his desire to annul it.  If man’s mind is made to acknowledge evil, his moral nature is made so as to revolt against it.

  “Man’s heart is made to judge

Pain deserved nowhere by the common flesh
Our birth-right—­bad and good deserve alike
No pain, to human apprehension."[A]

[Footnote A:  Mihrab Shah—­Ferishtah’s Fancies.]

Owing to the limitation of our intelligence, we cannot deny but that

            “In the eye of God
  Pain may have purpose and be justified.”

But whether it has its purpose for the supreme intelligence or not,

“Man’s sense avails to only see, in pain,
A hateful chance no man but would avert
Or, failing, needs must pity."[B]

[Footnote B:  Ibid.]

Man must condemn evil, he cannot acquiesce in its permanence, but is, spite of his consciousness of ignorance and powerlessness, roused into constant revolt against it.

  “True, he makes nothing, understands no whit: 
  Had the initiator-spasm seen fit
  Thus doubly to endow him, none the worse
  And much the better were the universe. 
  What does Man see or feel or apprehend
  Here, there, and everywhere, but faults to mend,
  Omissions to supply,—­one wide disease
  Of things that are, which Man at once would ease
  Had will but power and knowledge?"[A]

[Footnote A:  Francis Furini.]

But the moral worth of man does not suffer the least detraction from his inability to effect his benevolent purpose.  “Things must take will for deed,” as Browning tells us.  David is not at all distressed by the consciousness of his weakness.