Man loved, and God would not be above man if He did not also love.

The horrible spectre of a God who has power without love never ceased to lurk in the background of Browning's thought, and he strove with all his resources of dialectic and poetry to exorcise it.

And no wonder.

For a loving God was the very keystone of Browning's scheme of life and of the world, and its withdrawal would have meant for him the collapse of the whole structure.
It is no accident that the _Death in the Desert_ is followed immediately by a theological study in a very different key, _Caliban upon Setebos_.
For in this brilliantly original "dramatic monologue" Caliban--the "savage man"-- appears "mooting the point 'What is God ?'" and constructing his answer frankly from his own nature.

It was quite in Browning's way to take a humorous delight in imagining grotesque parallels to ideas and processes in which he profoundly believed; a proclivity aided by the curious subtle relation between his grotesquerie and his seriousness, which makes _Pacchiarotto_, for instance, closely similar in effect to parts of _Christmas-Eve_.