BURNS WAS A RELIGIOUS MAN.
'Burns a religious man!' scoffers exclaim. 'He was a drunkard.' Burns was
a moderate drinker compared with most of the ministers of his time. If
drinking whisky was a disqualification for religious character in the time
of Burns, a large proportion of the ministers of his time were
disqualified. Burns should not, in all fairness, be judged by the
standards of our time. More than fifty years after Burns died it was
customary for even Methodist ministers in Canada, when visiting the
members of their churches, to accept a little whisky punch as an evidence
of good fellowship and comradeship. This custom persisted in Scotland and
England for more than a century after Burns died, and in many places it
exists still. In a letter to Mr William Cruickshank in 1788 he said: 'I
have fought my way severely through the savage hospitality of this
country--the object of all hosts being to send every guest to bed drunk if
they can.'
Burns was not speaking of hotel-keepers, but of homes of people of high
respectability. He wrote in 1793: 'Taverns I have totally abandoned, but
it is the private parties in the family way among the hard-drinking
gentlemen of the country that do me the mischief.'
He did occasionally go to the Globe Tavern in Dumfries after 1793, when
the guest of visitors who came to Dumfries solely for the purpose of
meeting him and having the honour of entertaining him.
In his short life of Burns, Alexander Smith says: 'If he drank hard, it
was in an age when hard drinking was fashionable. If he sinned in this
respect, he sinned in company with English Prime Ministers, Scotch Lords
of Session, grave dignitaries of the Church in both countries, and
thousands of ordinary blockheads who went to their graves in the odour of
sanctity, and whose epitaphs are a catalogue of all the virtues.'
Burns spoke with all sincerity, in a letter to his friend Samuel Clark of
Dumfries, when he wrote: 'Some of our folks about the Excise office,
Edinburgh, had, and perhaps still have, conceived a prejudice against me
as being a drunken, dissipated character. I might be all this, you know,
and yet be an honest fellow; but you know that _I am an honest fellow_,
and am nothing of this.' His superiors in the Excise department gave him
a high record for accuracy and honesty in his work.
Other objectors say: 'He could not be religious, because he attacked
religion.' This statement is not correct. He attacked the evils that in
his time robbed religion of its vital power, but never religion. Emerson
says: 'Not Luther, not Latimer, struck stronger blows against false
theology than did the poet Burns.'
To Clarinda, Burns wrote: 'I hate the superstition of a fanatic, but I
love the religion of a man.'
In his poem 'The Tree of Liberty' he lays the blame of the terrible
degradation of the French peasantry on
Superstition's wicked brood.
In his 'Epistle to John Goudie' he speaks of
Poor gapin', glowrin' superstition.
He attacked superstition, but not religion.
He attacked hypocrisy, and true men are grateful to him because he did so.
In his 'Epistle to Rev. John M'Math,' the 'New Licht' minister of
Tarbolton, Burns says:
God knows I'm not the thing I should be,
Nor am I ev'n the thing I could be;
But twenty times I rather would be
An atheist clean,
Than under gospel colours hid be
Just for a screen.
He ridiculed hypocrisy, and we are grateful to him for doing so. Nothing
more contemptible than a religious hypocrite can be made of a being
created in the image of God. Hypocrisy is not religion.
He attacked bigotry, one of the most savage monsters that ever tried to
block the way of Christ's highest teaching, the brotherhood of man. No
phenomenal religious absurdity is more incomprehensible than the idea that
Christianity can be promoted by the multiplication of religious
denominations; especially when, as in the time of Burns, and long after
his time, leaders of so-called Christian denominations refused to have
fellowship with each other, or to unite on a common platform in working
for the promotion of Christian ideals. How trivial the formalisms of
theologians seem that kept men apart whom Christ desired to become
co-operative and loving brothers, working harmoniously together for the
achievement of the great visions he revealed!
He wrote to Clarinda, 1788: 'I hate the very idea of a controversial
divinity; and I firmly believe that every upright, honest man, of whatever
sect, will be accepted of the Deity.'
In his 'Epistle to John Goudie' Burns calls bigotry
Sour bigotry on its last legs.
He wrote this in 1785, and much more than a century later bigotry is still
on its legs, but it is tottering to its final overthrow. Burns attacked
bigotry, but not religion.
He attacked the doctrine of predestination, as taught in his time, a most
soul-dwarfing doctrine, calculated to rob humanity of motives to stimulate
it to greater and nobler efforts to achieve for God. He makes Holy Willie
say he deserved damnation five thousand years before he was born. Few
people now regard predestination as an element in vital religion.
He attacked one of the most horribly blasphemous doctrines ever preached,
but preached in the time of Burns, and long after:
That God sends ane to heaven and ten to hell
For His ain glory.
He puts this impious doctrine into the mouth of Holy Willie. More than
half a century after the time of Burns, preachers in the presence of
mothers of their dead babies taught that the babes could not go to heaven
because they were too young to be 'believers in Christ;' and being unable
to account for their statements logically, would say, 'God did these
things for His own glory.' Burns attacked such horrible teaching, but in
doing so he was not attacking religion.
Burns did not believe in the use of the fear of hell as a means of
promoting true religion. There is no soul-kindling power in fear. Fear is
one of the most powerful agencies of evil in preventing the conscious
development of the soul, and of the faith that each soul should have in
God as the source of power, in Christ as the revealer of individual power,
and in himself as God's partner. Fear is a negative agency that appeals to
the weaker side of character. Humanity will not be able to make the rapid
progress towards the Divine that it should make until fear ceases to be a
motive in the minds of men, women, and children. In his great 'Epistle to
a Young Friend' Burns says:
The fear o' hell's a hangman's whip
To haud the _wretch_ in order. keep
Burns proved himself to be a philosopher when he attacked the common plan
of using fear o' hell to make men religious. This was not attacking
religion.
The Rev. L. MacLean Watt says: 'While the professional Christians of
Scotland were fighting about Hell, the humble hearts by the lowly
firesides, with the open book before them, were enriched by the knowledge
of heaven; and while the hypocrites in holy places were scourging those
who were in their power with the thorns of Christ, there were cotters in
their kitchens that had found the healing and the balm of the warm blood
of a Redeemer who died on Calvary for _a wider world_ than theologians
seemed to know.'
Speaking further of the theologians of the time of Burns the Rev. Mr Watt
says: 'Their idea of God was shaped in fashion like themselves--merciless,
remorseless, hating, and hateful; His only passion seeming to their narrow
souls to be damnation and torture of the wretched, lost, and wandering.
Their preachers loved to picture the souls of the condemned swathed in
batches lying in eternal anguish of a most real blazing hell as punishment
for some small offence, or as having been outcast from grace through the
wanton exercise of divine prerogatives. To commend such a God for worship
were like praising and complimenting the cruel child who, for sport, spent
a whole day plucking the limbs and wings from the palpitating body of some
poor, helpless insect. It was a false and blasphemous insult to the human
intelligence.'
Burns had the good fortune to be a cotter, trained by a father who was a
remarkably able man, a great teacher, and a reverently religious man of
very advanced ideals; and it took a century or more of theological
evolution to bring the religious teaching of the world up to the standards
of belief of the Ayrshire cotter.
He attacked the doctrine of Faith without Works. In a letter to Gavin
Hamilton, one of the leading men of the town of Mauchline, a warm,
personal friend of the poet, and an advanced thinker among 'New Licht'
laymen, he wrote in a humorous but really profound way: 'I understand you
are in the habit of intimacy with that Boanerges of Gospel powers, Father
Auld. Be earnest with him that he will wrestle in prayer for you that you
may see the vanity of vanities in trusting to, even practising, the carnal
moral works of charity, humanity, and generosity; things which you
practised so flagrantly that it was evident you delighted in them,
neglecting, or perhaps profanely despising, the wholesome doctrine of
_faith without works_, the only hope of salvation.'
Burns did not say a word against faith in Christ, or love for Christ, or
reverence for the teaching of Christ. So true a Christian as Dean Stanley
said Burns was a 'wise religious teacher.' Burns deplored the fact that
the love of Christ--the highest revelation of love ever given to the
world--should be limited to saving the individual believer from eternal
punishment. That was degrading the highest love into selfishness. Burns
pleaded for loving service for humanity, and for Christ's highest
revelation, brotherhood, as evidence of vital Christian-hood; not merely
'sound believing.' This was not attacking religion. He attacked the men
who attacked other men, like Gavin Hamilton among laymen, and Rev. Dr
M'Gill of Ayr among ministers, because they had advanced ideas regarding
religion.
He attacked the gloom and awful Sunday solemnity of those who professed to
be religious. The world owes him a debt of gratitude for helping to remove
the shadows of religious gloom from human lives. In his poem 'A
Dedication,' addressed to Gavin Hamilton, he advises him ironically, in
order that he may be acceptable to Daddy Auld and others of the 'Auld
Licht' creed, to
Learn three-mile pray'rs an' half-mile graces,
Wi' weel-spread looves, an' lang, wry faces; palms
Grunt up a solemn, lengthened groan,
And damn a' parties [religious] but your own;
I'll warrant then you're nae deceiver,
A steady, sturdy, staunch believer.
If true religion means anything vitally hopeful to a man, it should mean
what Burns said it meant to him in a letter to Mrs Dunlop: 'My dearest
enjoyment.'
In his wise poem, 'Epistle to a Young Friend,' he says:
But still the preaching cant forbear,
And ev'n the rigid feature.
He attacked the 'unco guid,' who delighted to tell how good they were
themselves, and how many were the weaknesses and evil-doings of their
neighbours. He had no more respect for the self-righteous than Christ had.
The fact that he attacked and exposed them, and spoke kindly and
reasonably to them, in his great 'Address to the Unco Guid,' is an
evidence that in this respect at any rate he was a true Christian. One of
the most comprehensively Christian doctrines ever written is the verse:
Who made the heart, 'tis He alone
Decidedly can try us;
He knows each heart--its various tone,
Each spring--its various bias.
Then at the balance let's be mute,
We never can adjust it;
What's done we partly may compute,
But know not what's resisted.
There is sound philosophy in the first verse of the poem addressed to the
unco guid:
The rigid righteous is a fool,
The rigid wise another.
He often advised the 'douce folks' to be considerate of those who had
greater temptations than they knew; and advised them to try to help them
to overcome their temptations, and with Christian comradeship win their
admiration and sympathetic co-operation in some department of achieving
good.
In the time of Burns nothing would have surprised a wayward man or woman
more than to have received genuine sympathy and respectful comradeship
from members of the Church, the institution that claimed to represent
Christ, who told the story of the one stray lamb, and the story of the
prodigal son; the Great Teacher who said, 'Let him that is without sin
cast the first stone.'
Burns attacked superstition, hypocrisy, bigotry, predestination (taught in
its most repellent form in the time of Burns), the equally repellent
doctrine that 'God sends men to hell for His own glory;' fear of hell as a
basis of religious life; faith without works; religious gloom; and the
spirit of the unco guid. He helped to free religion from these evils more
than any other man of his time did; but that was just the opposite to
attacking religion.
In the 'Holy Fair' and 'The Twa Herds' he criticised with biting sarcasm
certain things connected with religion in his time, from which it is now
happily free. But he did not attack religion. The Rev. L. MacLean Watt,
when summing up the great work Burns did for true religion, especially in
'The Holy Fair,' 'The Twa Herds,' and 'Holy Willie's Prayer,' says: 'It
was in consequence of this ecclesiastical contact that he was, ere long,
involved in a bitter and incessant warfare with the mediaeval shadows of
ultra-Calvinism, which laid upon the people the bondage of a rigid
predestinarianism, the terrible result of which in parochial religion was,
that it became a commonplace in the matter of conduct that it did not
matter what you did so long as you believed certain hard and fast tenets
dealing with the purpose of God and the future of the human soul. This
could not but inevitably lead to the observation of grave discrepancies
between creed and conduct; and the setting up of the greatest hypocrisies,
veiled in the cloak of religiousness, that yet, with searching eye of
judgment, sat testing the conduct of better men. Burns was one of the
better men.'
His own attitude towards true religion is shown in his 'Epistle to the
Rev. John M'Math,' a progressive Presbyterian minister in Tarbolton. In it
he says:
All hail, Religion! maid divine!
Pardon a muse sae mean as mine,
Who in her rough, imperfect line
Thus daurs to name thee;
To stigmatise _false friends_ of thine
Can ne'er defame thee.
He stigmatised false friends of religion, but not religion itself.
There are some who yet say 'Burns could not have been a religious man,
because he was a sceptic.' Burns was an independent thinker. His mind did
not accept dogmas or creeds without investigation. In his father's fine
school he was not trained to think he was thinking, when he was merely
allowing the ideas of others to run through his head on the path of
memory. Burns was not trained to believe that he believed, but to think
till he believed; and to accept in the realm beyond his power to reason
great fundamental principles that supplied the conscious needs of his own
heart, as those principles are revealed in the Bible.
In a letter to Mrs Dunlop he wrote: 'I am a very sincere believer in the
Bible; but I am drawn by the conviction of a man, not by the halter of an
ass.'
To Mrs Dunlop he wrote, 1788: 'My idle reasonings sometimes made me a
little sceptical, but the necessities of my own heart always gave the cold
philosophisings the lie.'
To Mr Peter Stuart he wrote, referring to the poet Fergusson, 1789: 'Poor
Fergusson! If there be a life beyond the grave, which I trust there is;
and if there be a good God presiding over all Nature, which I am sure
there is--thou art now enjoying existence in a glorious world, where worth
of the heart alone is the distinction of man.'
To Mrs Dunlop, to whom more than to any other person he revealed the
depths of his heart, he wrote again, 1789: 'In vain would we reason and
pretend to doubt. I have myself done so to a very daring pitch; but when I
reflected that I was opposing the most ardent wishes, and the most darling
hopes of good men, and flying in the face of all human belief, in all
ages, I was shocked at my own conduct.'
To Robert Aiken he wrote, 1786: 'Though sceptical in some points of our
current belief, yet I think I have every evidence for the reality of a
life beyond the stinted bourne of our present existence.'
To Dr Candlish, of Edinburgh, he wrote, 1787: 'Despising old women's
stories, I ventured into the daring path Spinoza trod, but my experience
with the weakness, not the strength, of human power _made me glad to grasp
revealed religion_.'
To Clarinda he wrote, 1788: 'The Supreme Being has put the immediate
administration of all this for wise and good ends known to Himself into
the hands of Jesus Christ, a great personage whose relation to Him we
cannot comprehend, but whose relation to us is that of a Guide and
Saviour.'
In his epistle to his young friend Andrew Aiken, he sums up in two lines
his attitude to scepticism:
An atheist's laugh's a poor exchange
For Deity offended.
The men who believe most profoundly are those who honestly doubted in
early life, but who naturally loved truth, and sought it with hopeful
minds till they found it. Burns was not a sceptic. He was a reverently
religious man. No man could have written 'The Cotter's Saturday Night' who
was not a reverently religious man. His father, from the earliest years,
when his children were old enough to understand them, began to teach them
fundamental religious principles. They took root deeply in Robert's mind.
William Burns preferred not to use the 'Shorter Catechism,' so he wrote a
special catechism for his own family. It is a remarkable production for a
man in his position in life. It deals with vitally fundamental principles,
and shows a clear understanding of the Bible.
Burns wrote several short religious poems in his early young manhood,
probably his twenty-second and twenty-third years, showing that his mind
was deeply impressed by the majesty, justice, and love of God. Two of
these poems are paraphrases of the Psalms.
The fact that religion was one of the most important elements of his
thought and life is amply proved by the five letters he wrote to Alison
Begbie in his twenty-first and twenty-second years--even before he wrote
his early religious poems. Love-letters though they were, they related
nearly as much to religion as to love. Some people have tried to say
irreverently smart things about the absurdity of writing about religion in
letters to his loved one. Both the religion and the love of his letters to
the first woman he ever asked to marry him are too sacred to provoke
ridicule in the minds of men with proper reverence for either religion or
love. No one can carefully read these five letters without having a
deeper respect for Burns, the young gentleman who loved so deeply that he
regarded love worthy to be placed in association with religion. Religion
was the subject that had been given first place in his life and thought by
the teaching and the life of his father, who had meant infinitely more to
him than most fathers ever mean to their sons.
In his epistle to Andrew Aiken he recommends, in the last verse but one,
two things of vast importance 'when on life we're tempest-driv'n': first,
A conscience but a canker. without
Second,
A correspondence fixed wi' Heaven
Is sure a noble anchor.
Many people read the last couplet without consciously thinking what a
correspondence fixed with Heaven means. Clearly it may have three
meanings: prayer, communion in spirit with the Divine, and similarity to
or harmony with the divine spirit.
Burns had family worship in his home every day to the end of his life when
he was not absent, and though some scoffers may smile, he was earnest and
sincere in trying to conduct for himself and for his family a
'correspondence fixed with heaven' in a spirit of communion with the
Divine Father. He had other altars for communion with God in addition to
his home. He composed his poems in the gloaming after his day's work, in
favourite spots in the deep woods, where he was 'hid with God' alone. God
revealed Himself to Burns in the woods and by the sides of his sacred
rivers more fully than in any other places. One of the most sacred shrines
in Scotland is the great root under one of the mighty beeches of the fine
park on Ballochmyle estate, on which Burns sat so often to compose his
poems in the long Scottish twilights, and later on in the moonlight, when
he lived on Mossgiel farm. Then next night, at his desk over the stable at
Mossgiel, he would rewrite them and improve their form.
No man but a religious man would have written, in his 'Epistle to a Young
Friend,' as Burns did to Andrew Aiken:
The great Creator to revere
Must sure become the creature.
When in Irvine, in his twenty-third year, he wrote a letter to his father.
As usual, he wrote not of trivial matters, but of the great realities of
time and eternity. Among other serious things he wrote: 'My principal,
and, indeed, my only pleasurable, employment is looking backwards and
forwards in a moral and religious way.' In the same letter he wrote:
The soul, uneasy and confined, at home
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.[3]
Burns follows this quotation by saying to his father: 'It is for this
reason that I am more pleased with the 15th, 16th, and 17th verses of the
7th Chapter of Revelation than with any ten times as many verses in the
whole Bible, and would not exchange the noble enthusiasm with which they
inspire me for all that the world has to offer.'
His imagination enabled him to see clearly the glories of joy, and
service, and association, and reward, in the heavenly paradise, as
revealed in those triumphant verses.
To Mrs Dunlop he wrote, 1788: 'Religion, my honoured Madam, has not only
been all my life my chief dependence, but my dearest enjoyment.... An
irreligious poet would be a monster.'
In his 'Grace before Eating' he reveals his gratitude and conscious
dependence on God:
O Thou, who kindly dost provide
For every creature's want!
We bless Thee, God of Nature wide,
For all Thy goodness lent.
In 'Winter: a Dirge' he says, in reverent submission to God's will:
Thou Power supreme, whose mighty scheme
Those woes of mine fulfil,
Here firm I rest, they must be best,
Because they are Thy Will.
In a poem to Clarinda he wrote, recognising the blessing of Gods universal
presence, not in awe so much as in joy:
God is ever present, ever felt,
In the void waste, as in the city full;
And where He vital breathes, there must be joy!
In the 'Cotter's Saturday Night' he teaches absolute faith in God, and
indicates man's true relationship to the Divine Father:
Lest in temptation's path ye gang astray,
Implore His counsel and assisting might:
They never sought in vain, that sought the Lord aright.
Writing in condemnation of a miserably selfish miser, he said:
See these hands, ne'er stretched to save,
Hands that took, but never gave;
Keeper of Mammon's iron chest,
Lo, there she goes, unpitied and unblest;
She goes, but not to realms of everlasting rest.
And are they of no more avail,
Ten thousand glittering pounds a year?
In other worlds can Mammon fail,
Omnipotent as he is here?
O, bitter mockery of the pompous bier,
While down the wretched Vital Part is driven!
The cave-lodged beggar, with a conscience clear,
Expires in rags, unknown, and goes to heaven.
The philosophy of his mind, and the affectionate sympathy of his heart
made Burns believe that unselfish service for our fellow-men should be one
of the manifestations of true religion.
In the fine poem he wrote to Mrs Dunlop on New Year's Day, 1790, he says:
A few days may, a few years must,
Repose us in the silent dust.
Then is it wise to damp our bliss?
Yes--all such reasonings are amiss!
The voice of Nature loudly cries,
And many a message from the skies,
That something in us never dies;
That on this frail, uncertain state
Hang matters of eternal weight;
That future life in worlds unknown
Must take its hue from this alone;
Whether as heavenly glory bright,
Or dark as Misery's woeful night.
Let us the important Now employ,
And live as those who never die.
Since, then, my honoured first of friends,
On this poor living all depends.
Any honest man who reads those lines must admit that Burns was a man of
deep religious thought and feeling.
Mrs Dunlop, to whom he wrote so many letters, was one of the leading women
of Scotland in her time. She was a woman of great wisdom and deep
religious character. Like the other great people who knew Burns, she was
his friend. Many of his clearest expressions of his religious opinions are
contained in his letters to her. In a letter to her on New Year's morning,
1789, he said: 'I have some favourite flowers in Spring, among which are
the mountain-daisy, the hare-bell, the foxglove, the wild brier-rose, the
budding birk [birch], and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang over
with particular delight. I never hear the loud, solitary whistle of the
curlew in the Summer noon, or the wild, mixing cadence of a troop of
grey-plover in an Autumnal morning, without feeling an elevation of soul
like the enthusiasm of Devotion or Poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to
what can this be owing? Are we a piece of machinery that, like the AEolian
harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing accident? Or do these
workings argue something within us above the trodden clod? I own myself
partial to these proofs of those awful and important realities--a God that
made all things--man's immaterial and immortal nature--and a world of weal
or woe beyond death and the grave--these proofs that we deduct by dint of
our own powers of observation. However respectable Individuals in all ages
have been, I have ever looked on Mankind in the lump to be nothing better
than a foolish, head-strong, credulous, unthinking Mob; and their
universal belief has ever had extremely little weight with me. Still, I am
a very sincere believer in the Bible.'
In September 1789 he wrote to Mrs Dunlop: 'Religion, my dear friend, is
true comfort! A strong persuasion in a future state of existence; a
proposition so obviously probable, that, setting revelation aside, every
nation and people, so far as investigation has reached, for at least four
thousand years, have, in some mode or other, firmly believed it.'
To Mrs Dunlop, in 1792, he wrote: 'I am so convinced that an unshaken
faith in the doctrines of religion is not only necessary by making us
better men, but also by making us happier men, that I shall take every
care that your little god-son [his son], and every creature that shall
call me father, shall be taught them.'
One of his most beautiful religious letters was written to Alexander
Cunningham, of Edinburgh, in 1794: 'Still there are two pillars that bear
us up amid the wreck of misfortune and misery. The _one_ is composed of
the different modifications of a certain noble, stubborn something in man,
known by the names of courage, fortitude, magnanimity. The _other_ is made
up of those feelings and sentiments which, however the sceptic may deny
them, or the enthusiast may disfigure them, are yet, I am convinced,
original and component parts of the human soul; those _senses of the
mind_, if I may be allowed the expression, which connect us with and link
us to, those awful, obscure realities--an all-powerful and equally
beneficent God, and a world to come, beyond death and the grave. The first
gives the nerve of combat, while a ray of hope beams on the field; the
last pours the balm of comfort into the wounds which time can never cure.
'I do not remember, my dear Cunningham, that you and I ever talked on the
subject of religion at all. I know some who laugh at it, as the trick of
the crafty FEW, to lead the undiscerning MANY; or at most as an uncertain
obscurity, which mankind can never know anything of, and with which they
are fools if they give themselves much to do. Nor would I quarrel with a
man for his irreligion, any more than I would for his want of a musical
ear. I would regret that he was shut out from what, to me and to others,
were such superlative sources of enjoyment. It is in this point of view,
and for this reason, that I will deeply imbue the mind of every child of
mine with religion. If my son should happen to be a man of feeling,
sentiment, and taste, I shall thus add largely to his enjoyments. Let me
flatter myself that this sweet little fellow, who is just now running
about my desk, will be a man of a melting, ardent, glowing heart; and an
imagination, delighted with the painter and rapt with the poet. Let me
figure him wandering out in a sweet evening, to inhale the balmy gales,
and enjoy the glowing luxuriance of the spring; himself the while in the
blooming youth of life. He looks abroad on all Nature, and thro' Nature up
to Nature's God; his soul, by swift delighting degrees, is rapt above this
sublunary sphere, until he can be silent no longer, and bursts out into
the glorious enthusiasm of Thomson:
'"These, as they change, Almighty Father--these
Are but the varied God; the rolling year
Is full of thee."
'and so on, in all the spirit and ardour of that charming hymn.
'These are no ideal pleasures; they are real delights; and I ask what of
the delights among the sons of men are superior, not to say equal, to
them? And they have this precious, vast addition, that conscious Virtue
stamps them for her own, and lays hold on them to bring herself into the
presence of a witnessing, judging, and approving God.'
In 1788 he wrote to Clarinda: 'My definition of worth is short: truth and
humanity respecting our fellow-creatures; reverence and humility in the
presence of that Being, my Creator and Preserver, and who, I have every
reason to believe, will be my judge.'
Again to Clarinda he wrote in 1788: 'He who is our Author and Preserver,
and will one day be our Judge, must be--not for His sake in the way of
duty, but from the natural impulse of our hearts--the object of our
reverential awe and grateful adoration. He is almighty and all-bounteous;
we are weak and dependent; hence prayer and every other sort of devotion.
"He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to
everlasting life;" consequently it must be in every one's power to embrace
His offer of everlasting life; otherwise He could not in justice condemn
those who did not.'
Again in 1788 he wrote to Clarinda: 'In proportion as we are wrung with
grief, or distracted with anxiety, the ideas of a Compassionate Deity, an
Almighty Protector, are doubly dear.'
To Mrs Dunlop, in 1795, a year and a half before he died, he wrote: 'I
have nothing to say to any one as to which sect he belongs to, or what
creed he believes; but I look on the man who is firmly persuaded of
Infinite Wisdom and Goodness superintending and directing every
circumstance that can happen in his lot--I felicitate such a man as having
a solid foundation for his mental enjoyment; a firm prop and stay in the
hour of difficulty, trouble, and distress; and a never-failing anchor of
hope when he looks beyond the grave.'
This quotation emphasises his lifelong faith in God, and his belief in his
own immortality. It also shows his perfect freedom from bigotry, and the
broadness of his creed.
In his first 'Commonplace Book' he wrote: 'The grand end of Human being is
to cultivate an intercourse with that Being to whom we owe life, with
every enjoyment that renders life delightful; and to maintain an
integritive conduct towards our fellow-creatures; that by so forming Piety
and Virtue into habit, we may be fit members for that society of the
Pious, and the Good, which reason and revelation teach us to expect beyond
the grave.'
There are no truly good men who will yield to the temptation to speak
sneeringly of any man who fails in his life to reach his highest ideals.
The little-minded men who may sneer at Burns, when they read this
quotation written in his youth, should read his 'Address to the Unco Guid'
over and over, till they get a glimmering comprehension of its meaning.
Whatever the puny minds may be focussed on in the life of Burns, they
should be 'mute at the balance.' They should remember that Burns did more
than any man of his time for true religion, and that to the end of his
life his mind and heart overflowed with the same faith and gratitude to
God that he almost continuously expressed throughout his life.
A final quotation from the letters of Burns about religion may fittingly
be taken from a letter to Robert Aiken, written in 1786: 'O thou unknown
Power! Thou Almighty God who hast lighted up Reason in my breast, and
blessed me with immortality! I have frequently wandered from that order
and regularity necessary for the perfection of Thy works, yet Thou hast
never left me nor forsaken me.'
Burns was a reverently religious man. Dean Stanley said: 'Burns was a wise
religious teacher.' Principal Rainy objected to Dean Stanley's view
because 'Burns had never become a member of a church on profession of
Faith in Christ.' Professor Rainy either did not remember, or had never
realised, that Burns had done more to reveal Christ's highest
teachings--the value of the individual soul, and brotherhood--than any
other man in the church, or out of it, in Scotland in his time; and also
did more to make religion free from false theology and dwarfing practices,
than any other man of his time, or of any other time in Scotland.
Rev. L. MacLean Watt, of Edinburgh, in his most admirable book on Burns,
answers Principal Rainy's objections with supreme ability, as the
following quotations amply prove: 'Because a man does not categorically
declare his belief in Christ, as that belief is formulated in existing
dogmatic statements of theological authority, it does not mean that he
abhors that belief; nor even though he withhold himself from explicitly
uttering that confession of the Christian faith, does it preclude him from
being a religious teacher. A man may have an enormous influence as a
religious teacher, and yet never have made a formal statement of
Christianity, nor signed a Christian creed.'--'The measure of a man's
faithfulness to the better side of his nature is not to be gauged by the
depth of his fall, but the height to which he rises.... Burns was,
unfortunately, confronted by a narrow and self-righteous set, who were
enslaved to doctrine and dogma, rather than to the practice of the
Christian life with charity and humanity of spirit, part and parcel of a
system of petty tyrannies and mean oppressions, the exercise of which made
for exile from the fold, because of the spiritual conceit and sectarian
humbug which created such characters as "Holy Willie," and the "Unco
Guid," with the superior airs of religious security from which they looked
down on all besides.'
We should test neither the terrible theologians of his time--those men who
attacked Burns and called him irreligious, because he had a clear vision
of a higher, holier religion than the one they preached--nor Burns himself
by the conditions of our own time. It is unjust both to Burns and to his
enemies to do so.
A comparison of the religious principles of the best Christians in the
world nearly a century and a half after his time will show, however, that
the creed of the present is more--much more--like the creed of Burns than
the creed of the dreadful theologians of his time. The creed of the
religious leaders a century hence will be still more like the creed of
Robert Burns than is the creed of to-day.
The following creed is taken from the letters of Burns, expressed in his
own language, except the last article, which is found in longer form in
many of his letters, and more nearly in 'The Hermit,' in which he says:
Let me, O Lord! from life retire,
Unknown each guilty, worldly fire,
Remorse's throb, or loose desire;
And when I die
Let me in this belief expire--
To God I fly.
THE CREED OF ROBERT BURNS.
1. Religion should be a simple business, as it equally concerns the
ignorant and the learned, the poor and the rich.
2. There is a great and incomprehensible Being to whom I owe my
existence.
3. The Creator perfectly understands the being He has made.
4. There is a real and eternal distinction between vice and virtue.
5. There must be a retributive scene of existence beyond the grave.
6. From the sublimity, the excellence, and the purity of His
doctrines and precepts, I believe Jesus Christ came from God.
7. Whatever is done to mitigate the woes, or increase the happiness
of humanity, is goodness.
8. Whatever injures society or any member of it is iniquity.
9. I believe in the immaterial and immortal nature of man.
10. I believe in eternal life with God.
Carlyle expressed regret that 'Burns became involved in the religious
quarrels of his district.' This statement proves that Carlyle failed fully
to comprehend the religious character of Burns. His chivalrous nature was
partly responsible for his entering the battle waged by the 'Auld Lichts'
against his dear friend the Rev. Dr M'Gill of Ayr and Gavin Hamilton of
Mauchline; but his chief reason was his innate determination to free
religion from the evils taught and practised in the name of religion in
his time. He had the soul of a reformer, and the two leading elements in
his soul were Religion and Liberty for the individual. It would have
robbed the world of one of the greatest steps in human progress towards
the Divine made in the eighteenth century, if Burns had failed to be true
to the greatest things in his mind and heart.
Carlyle had clearly not studied the religious elements in either the poems
or the letters of Burns, or he could not have written his comparison
between Burns and Locke, Milton, and Cervantes, who did in poverty and
unusual difficulties grand work. He asks: 'What, then, had these men which
Burns wanted? Two things; both which, it seems to us, are indispensable
for such men. They had a true religious principle of morals, and a single,
not a double, aim in their activity. They were not self-seekers and
self-worshippers; but seekers and worshippers of something far better than
self. Not personal enjoyment was their object; but a high heroic idea of
Religion, of Patriotism, of Heavenly Wisdom in one form or the other form
ever hovered before them.
It passes understanding to comprehend how Carlyle could regard Burns as a
'selfish' man, or a man with 'a double aim'--that is, two conflicting and
opposing aims that he wasted his power in trying to harmonise.
Burns had three great aims: Purer Religion, a just Democracy, and closer
Brotherhood; but these aims are in perfect harmony.
Carlyle ends the contrast between Burns and his model trio--Locke, Milton,
and Cervantes--by saying of Burns: 'He has no religion; in the shallow
age, where his days were cast, Religion was not discriminated from the New
and Old Light _forms_ of Religion; and was, with these, becoming obsolete
in the minds of men.'
'The heart not of a mere hot-blooded, popular verse-monger, or poetical
_Restaurateur_, but of a true poet and singer, worthy of the old religions
heroic, had been given him, and he fell in an age, not of heroism and
religion, but of scepticism, selfishness, and triviality, when true
nobleness was little understood, and its place supplied by a hollow,
dissocial, altogether barren and unfruitful principle of Pride.'
In a just comparison between Burns and the three named by Carlyle, Burns
will need no apologists. Burns, directly in opposition to the statement
of Carlyle, was more vitally religious and less selfish than any of them.
When twenty-one years of age he said, in one of his beautiful love-letters
to Alison Begbie: 'I grasp every creature in the arms of universal
benevolence, and equally participate in the pleasures of the happy, and
sympathise with the miseries of the unfortunate.' This alone proves that
Burns was one of the least selfish men who ever lived.
As an heroic teacher of vital religion Burns was infinitely greater than
any other man of his time, and has been much more influential since his
time in promoting Christ's ideals than the men named by Carlyle. He was a
fearless hero, and so meets the requirements specified by Carlyle,
because, when he recognised the evils connected with religion in his time,
when true religion was, to use Carlyle's words, 'becoming obsolete,' he
valiantly attacked them, hoping to enable his fellow-men to see the vision
of true religion which his father had given him by his life and teaching.
There was absolutely no justification for calling Burns a mere
verse-monger. To write such a wild nightmare dream about Scotland's
greatest and most self-less poet was unworthy of one of Scotland's leading
prose-writers.
It seems almost ludicrous to take notice of the assertion that Burns had
not a high ideal of patriotism, as compared with the three ideal men of
Carlyle--Burns, whose love for Scotland was a sacred feeling, a holy fire
that never ceased to burn. This criticism needs no answer now.