he did indeed profoundly believe. He felt, with Joubert,
that "it is not difficult to believe in God, if one does not worry oneself
to define Him."*

--
* "Browning's `orthodoxy' brought him into many a combat
with his rationalistic friends, some of whom could hardly believe
that he took his doctrine seriously. Such was the fact, however;
indeed, I have heard that he once stopped near an open-air assembly
which an atheist was haranguing, and, in the freedom of his `incognito',
gave strenuous battle to the opinions uttered. To one who had spoken
of an expected `Judgment Day' as a superstition, I heard him say:
`I don't see that. Why should there not be a settling day in the universe,
as when a master settles with his workmen at the end of the week?'
There was something in his tone and manner which suggested his
dramatic conception of religious ideas and ideals." -- Moncure D. Conway.
--

"How should externals satisfy my soul?" was his cry in "Sordello",
and it was the fundamental strain of all his poetry,
as the fundamental motive is expressible in

"-- a loving worm within its sod
Were diviner than a loveless god
Amid his worlds" --

love being with him the golden key wherewith to unlock the world
of the universe, of the soul, of all nature. He is as convinced
of the two absolute facts of God and Soul as Cardinal Newman
in writing of "Two and two only, supreme and luminously self-evident beings,