The evidence of his writings altogether confirms Mrs Orr's express statement that Christ was for him, from first to last, "a manifestation of divine love," by human form accessible to human love; but not the Redeemer of the orthodox creed.] For to acknowledge this was to recognise that love was divine, and that mankind at large, in virtue of their gift of love, shared in God's nature, finite as they were; that whatever clouds of intellectual illusion they walked in, they were lifted to a hold upon reality as unassailable as God's own by the least glimmer of love.

Whatever else is obscure or elusive in Browning, he never falters in proclaiming the absolute and flawless worth of love.

The lover cannot, like the scientific investigator, miss his mark, he cannot be baffled or misled; the object of his love may be unworthy, or unresponsive, but in the mere act of loving he has his reward.
"Knowledge means Ever renewed assurance by defeat That victory is somehow still to reach; But love is victory, the prize itself."[140] [Footnote 140: _Pillar of Sebzevir_.] This aspect of Browning's doctrine of love, though it inspired some of his most exalted lyrics, throws into naked relief the dearth of social consciousness in Browning's psychology.

Yet it is easy to see that the absolute self-sufficiency into which he lifted the bare fact of love was one of the mainsprings of his indomitable optimism.

In Love was concentrated all that emancipates man from the stubborn continuities of Nature.