The priest knows, or says he does, where the departed has gone, what kind of a life he leads there, what will be his lot in eternity, and whether we shall meet again. He speaks of these things with the assurance of a schoolboy reciting a page which he has learned by heart. But he is only pretending to possess information which, as a matter of fact, no one possesses. He knows no more of a personal God, or of another life, than anybody else. If we cannot predict what will happen in the next hour, how can we talk with assurance of the secrets of the unending future? If we do not quite understand ourselves, or the world which we daily see, how can we boast of any certain knowledge of a Being who is said to be infinitely and absolutely and incomprehensibly different from us? Silence is more religious than the gossip one hears about such a Being. Modesty is more reverent than dogmatism, and the agnostic is more honest and more eloquent than the garrulous preacher. If men wish to know where the Eternal is, who he is, what he does, what his intentions are, how he should be praised, what humors or provokes him, how many manifestations or persons there are in his godhead, and when he first began his operations, etc., they must not come to a Rationalist for such information. To acquaint man with himself, to show him the way to develop and use his own resources, and in time of sorrow and bereavement, to depend upon the thoughts of the wise and the brave, which heal and sooth and bless, is the consolation Rationalism offers. It is modest, but it is real. Rationalists cannot count on the creeds for consolation. A doll may amuse a baby, but is a grown-up man miserable because he cannot play with a toy? The Rationalist is willing to see Nature in its true light. He prefers reality to illusions, and would rather be awake than dreaming the most seductive dreams which "poppy or mandragora, or all the drowsy syrups of the world" can medicine the mind into.
But the greatest consolation of the Rationalist is in this, that he is not under obligation to distort his intellect and twist his affections out of joint in order to justify God's way to man. No sooner a disaster is announced than the clergy begin to concoct excuses for this seeming neglect of Providence. God meant to punish human carelessness; he was angry with the present generation for its unbelief; he wished to speak in tones loud enough to be heard the world over, he was trying to make us more careful in the future, he wished to demonstrate that all human devices and inventions are futile unless "the Lord protect" the ship, the house or the city; and finally, that we do not understand God, for "he moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform," though we know he does everything for the best. Is it not a welcome relief that the Rationalist can bear his great sorrow without resorting to commonplace sophistries of this nature? Not taxed with the burden of vindicating Providence, the Rationalist devotes his energies to the fruitful work of developing his resources against the fortuitous elements at play about him.
Only a moment's reflection will prove the futility of all attempts to establish a relation of some kind between God and the world's life.
God's in His Heaven,
All's right with the World!
is Browning's creed in his Pippa Passes.
The verse in which the lines occur is, no doubt, excellent poetry, but what about its philosophy?
"The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in His Heaven-