But, after all, Browning's great hymns of faith are those in which he faces the future, like
"Prospice," and the prologue of "La Saisiaz," and the epilogue of "Asolando,"—
triumphant songs, in which one of the healthiest-minded of human beings showed
himself:
"One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed though right were worsted wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, sleep to wake!"
It would be a grateful task to make extended record of the service rendered to religion by
the great choir of singers whose names appear upon the pages of this book. To Elizabeth
Barrett Browning our debt is large, though her note is oftenest plaintive and the faith
which she illustrates is that by which suffering is turned to strength. Our own New
England psalmist, also, has been to great multitudes a revealer and a comforter; few in
any age have seen the central truths of Christianity more clearly, or felt them more
deeply, or uttered them more convincingly. In such poems as "My Soul and I," "My
Psalm," "Our Master," "The Eternal Goodness," "The Brewing of Soma," and "Andrew
Ryckman's Prayer," Whittier has made the whole religious world his debtor.
How many more there are—of those whom the world reckons as the greater bards, and of
those whom it assigns to lower places—to whom we have found ourselves indebted for
the clearing of our vision or the quickening of our pulses, in our studies or our
meditations upon the deepest questions of life! How many there are, whose faces we
never saw, but who by some luminous word, some strain vibrant with tenderness, some
flash of insight, have endeared themselves to us forever! They are the friends of our
spirits, ministers to us of the holiest things. They have clothed for us the highest truth in
forms of beauty; they have made it winsome and real and dear and memorable. Is there
anything better than this, that one man can do for another?
Washington Gladden
[Footnote A: "The Great Poets and their Theology."]
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY:
"RELIGION AND POETRY."
By Washington Gladden
POEMS OF THE HIGHER LIFE:
THE DIVINE ELEMENT—(God, Christ, the Holy Spirit)
PRAYER AND ASPIRATION