But, if we follow Browning’s thoughts in his later and more reflective poems, such as Ferishtah’s Fancies for instance, it will not be possible to hold that the poet altogether realized the importance for both morality and religion alike, of the idea of the actual immanence of God in man.  In these poems he seems to have abandoned it in favour of the hypotheses of a more timid philosophy.  But, if his religious faith had not been embarrassed by certain dogmatic presuppositions of which he could not free himself, he might have met more successfully some of the difficulties which later reflection revealed to him, and might have been able to set a true value on that “philosophy,” which betrayed his faith while appearing to support it.

But, before trying to criticize the principle by means of which Browning sought to reconcile the moral and religious elements of human life, it may be well to give it a more explicit and careful statement.

What, then, is that principle of unity between the divine and the human?  How can we interpret the life of man as God’s life in man, so that man, in attaining the moral ideal proper to his own nature, is at the same time fulfilling ends which may justly be called divine?

The poet, in early life and in late life alike, has one answer to this question—­an answer given with the confidence of complete conviction.  The meeting-point of God and man is love.  Love, in other words, is, for the poet, the supreme principle both of morality and religion.  Love, once for all, solves that contradiction between them which, both in theory and in practice, has embarrassed the world for so many ages.  Love is the sublimest conception attainable by man; a life inspired by it is the most perfect form of goodness he can conceive; therefore, love is, at the same moment, man’s moral ideal, and the very essence of Godhood.  A life actuated by love is divine, whatever other limitations it may have.  Such is the perfection and glory of this emotion, when it has been translated into a self-conscious motive, and become the energy of an intelligent will, that it lifts him who owns it to the sublimest height of being.

  “For the loving worm within its clod,
  Were diviner than a loveless God
  Amid his worlds, I will dare to say."[A]

[Footnote A:  Christmas Eve.]

So excellent is this emotion that, if man, who has this power to love, did not find the same power in God, then man would excel Him, and the creature and Creator change parts.

  “Do I find love so full in my nature, God’s ultimate gift,
  That I doubt His own love can compete with it?  Here, the parts shift? 
  Here, the creature surpass the Creator,—­the end what Began?"[B]

[Footnote B:  Saul.]

Not so, says David, and with him no doubt the poet himself.  God is Himself the source and fulness of love.

        “Tis Thou, God, that givest, ’tis I who receive: 
  In the first is the last, in Thy will is my power to believe. 
  All’s one gift.”