Browning as a Moralist and Religious Teacher

Abstract

Abstract

As a moralist and religious teacher, Browning held a very distinct place among the writers of Victorian Age. He preached God and Immortality as the central truths of his philosophy of life and he preached them as one absolutely assured of their reality. His poetry was throughout a protest against the pessimistic mood engendered by those negations. The melancholy, hesitating spirit so often expressed by Tennyson, finds no place in his verse. ?Hope hard in the subtle thing that is spirit ?was the note of his message to his generation. Browning thought that man could look within himself for evidences of God’s plan andGod’s nature. Man, for example, can and does love with an overwhelming and passion. The feeling is wholly irrational and is as puzzling to philosophy as the problem of evil. But if man can love, he can also hate. If man can believe, he can also doubt. Browning observes in Christmas- Eve that a scientific faith is absurd. A clear cut miracle would destroy faith by substituting certainty. Doubt, therefore, is an ingredient of faith. He is simply aware that in coldly rational moments, man doubts but man does not settle back comfortably into this state of negative certainty