He did not talk of the union of opposites, but of "infinitude wreaking itself upon the finite." God himself would have been less divine, and so, as God, less real, had he remained aloof in lonely infinity instead of uniting himself with all creation in that love which "moves the world and the other stars"; the "loving worm," to quote his pregnant saying once more, were diviner than a loveless God.
We saw how his theology is double-faced between the pantheistic yearning to find God everywhere and the individualist's resolute maintenance of the autonomy of man.

God's Love, poured through the world, inextricably blended with all its power and beauty, thrilled with answering rapture by all its joy, and striving to clasp every human soul, provided the nearest approach to a solution of that conflict which Browning's mechanical metaphysics permitted.

One comprehends, then, the profound significance for him of the actual solution apparently presented by Christian theology.

In one supreme, crucial example the union of God with man in consummate love had actually, according to Christian belief, taken place, and Browning probably uttered his own faith when he made St John declare that "The acknowledgment of God in Christ Acknowledged by thy reason solves for thee All questions in the earth and out of it."[139] [Footnote 139: _Death in the Desert_.

These lines, however "dramatic," mark with precision the extent, and the limits, of Browning's Christian faith.