by them; but the infinite is all-inclusive. There exists for it no other
thing to limit or determine it. There is nothing finally alien or
foreign to reason. Freedom and infinitude, self-determination and
absoluteness, imply each other. In so far as man is free, he is lifted
above the finite. It was God's plan to make man on His own image:--

"To create man and then leave him
Able, His own word saith, to grieve Him,
But able to glorify Him too,
As a mere machine could never do,
That prayed or praised, all unaware
Of its fitness for aught but praise or prayer,
Made perfect as a thing of course."[B]

[Footnote B: _Christmas-Eve_.]

Man must find his law within himself, be the source of his own activity,
not passive or receptive, but outgoing and effective.

"Rejoice we are allied
To That which doth provide
And not partake, effect and not receive!
A spark disturbs our clod;
Nearer we hold of God
Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe."[C]

[Footnote C: _Rabbi Ben Ezra_.]

This near affinity between the divine and human is just what Browning
seems to repudiate in his later poems, when he speaks as if the