BURNS AND BROTHERHOOD.
In the third letter Burns wrote Alison Begbie, the first woman he asked to
marry him, he said: '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 statement of one of the fundamental principles which guided him
during his whole life is a profound interpretation of the teachings of
Christ in regard to the attitude that each individual should have, must
have, in order that brotherhood may be established on the earth. He taught
universal benevolence and vital sympathy _with_--not _for_--humanity; not
merely when sorrows and afflictions bring dark clouds to hearts, but in
times of happiness and rejoicing; affectionate sympathy, unostentatious
sympathy, co-operative sympathy that stimulates helpfulness and
hopefulness; sympathy that produces activity of the divine in the human
heart and mind, and leads to brotherhood.
The amazing fact is, not that Burns wrote such fundamental Christian
philosophy in a love-letter, but that a youth of twenty-one could think it
and express it so perfectly.
To Clarinda he wrote, 1787: 'Lord! why was I born to see misery which I
cannot relieve?'
Again, in 1788, he wrote to her: 'Give me to feel "another's woe," and
continue with me that dear-loved friend that feels with mine.'
To Mrs Walter Riddell he wrote, 1793: 'Of all the qualities we assign to
the Author and Director of Nature, by far the most enviable is to be able
"to wipe away all tears from all eyes." O what insignificant, sordid
wretches are they, however chance may have loaded them with wealth, who go
to their graves, to their magnificent mausoleums, with hardly the
consciousness of having made one poor, honest heart happy.'
In 'A Winter Night,' the great poem of universal sympathy, he says:
Affliction's sons are brothers in distress;
A brother to relieve, how exquisite the bliss.
He closes the poem with four great lines:
But deep this truth impressed my mind--
Thro' all His works abroad,
The heart benevolent and kind
The most resembles God.
In the same poem he paints the characters who lack loving sympathy, and
whose lives and attitudes towards their fellow-men separate men, and break
the ties that should unite all men, and thus prevent the development of
the spirit of brotherhood. After describing the fierceness of the storm
and expressing his heartfelt sympathy for the cattle, the sheep, the
birds, and even with destructive animals such as prey on hen-roosts or
defenceless lambs, his mind was filled with a plaintive strain, as he
thought of the bitterness of man to his brother man, and he proceeds:
Blow, blow, ye winds, with heavier gust!
And freeze, thou bitter-biting frost!
Descend, ye chilly, smothering snows!
Not all your rage, as now united, shows
More hard unkindness, unrelenting,
Vengeful malice unrepenting,
Than heaven-illumined man on brother man bestows.
The depth and universality of his sympathy is shown in 'To a Mouse,' after
he had destroyed its nest while ploughing:
I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor earth-born companion,
An' fellow-mortal!
In his 'Epistle to Davie,' a brother poet, he emphasises the value of true
sympathy, that should bind all hearts, must yet bind all hearts in
universal brotherhood, when he says:
All hail! ye tender feelings dear!
The smile of love, the friendly tear,
The sympathetic glow!
Long since, this world's thorny ways
Had numbered out my weary days,
Had it not been for you.
In his 'Epistle to Robert Graham of Fintry,' after describing the thrifty
but selfishly prudent, 'who feel by reason and who give by rule,' and
expressing regret that 'the friendly e'er should want a friend,' he
writes:
But come ye, who the godlike pleasure know,
Heaven's attribute distinguished--to bestow!
Whose arms of love would grasp the human race.
In the opinion of Burns, they are the ideal men and women who best
understood, and most perfectly practised, the teaching of Christ.
In one of his epistles to his friend Lapraik he says:
For thus the royal mandate ran,
When first the human race began:
The social, friendly, honest man,
Whate'er he be--
'Tis _he_ fulfils great Nature's plan,
And none but he.
The influence of any act on society, on the brotherhood of man as a whole,
was the supreme test of Burns to distinguish between goodness and evil.
To Dr Moore, of London, he said: 'Whatsoever is not detrimental to
society, and is of positive enjoyment, is of God, the giver of all good
things, and ought to be received and enjoyed by His creatures with
thankful delight.'
To Clarinda he wrote: 'Thou Almighty Author of peace, and goodness, and
love! Do thou give me the social heart that kindly tastes of every man's
cup! Is it a draught of joy? Warm and open my heart to share it with
cordial, unenvying rejoicing! Is it the bitter potion of sorrow? Melt my
heart with sincerely sympathetic woe! Above all, do Thou give me the manly
mind, that resolutely exemplifies in life and manners those sentiments
which I would wish to be thought to possess.'
In 'On the Seas and Far Away' he says:
Peace, thy olive wand extend,
And bid wild war his ravage end;
Man with brother man to meet,
And as a brother kindly greet.
In the 'Tree of Liberty' he says, if we had plenty of the trees of Liberty
growing throughout the whole world:
Like brothers in a common cause
We'd on each other smile, man;
And equal rights and equal laws
Wad gladden ev'ry isle, man.
To Clarinda, when he presented a pair of wine-glasses--a perfectly proper
gift to a lady in the opinion of his time--he gave her at the same time a
poem, in which he said:
And fill them high with generous juice,
As generous as your mind;
And pledge them to the generous toast,
'The whole of human kind!'
In his 'Epistle to John Lapraik,' after describing those whose lives do
not help men towards brotherhood, he describes those who are true to the
great ideal:
But ye whom social pleasure charms,
Whose hearts the tide of kindness warms,
Who hold your being on the terms,
'Each aid the others,'
Come to my bowl, come to my arms,
My friends, my brothers.
Burns gives each man the true test of the influence of his life for the
promotion of true brotherhood in the short line, 'Each aid the others.'
That line is the supreme test of duty, and is the highest interpretation
of Christ's commandment to His disciples, and through them to all men,
'Love one another, as I have loved you.' Vital love means vital
helpfulness.
Dickens gives the same great message as Burns when, in describing Little
Dorritt, he says: 'She was something different from the rest, and she was
that something for the rest.' This is probably the shortest sentence ever
written that conveys so clearly the two great revelations of Christ:
Individuality and Brotherhood.
There are some who dislike the expression 'Come to my bowl.' They should
test Burns by the accepted standards of his time, not by the standards of
our time. The bowl was the symbol of true comradeship in castle and cot,
in the manse and in the layman's home, in the time of Burns.
No other writer has interpreted Christ's revelations of Democracy and
Brotherhood so clearly and so fully as Robert Burns. He sums up the whole
matter of man's relationship to man in 'A Man's a Man for a' That,' in the
last verse:
Then let us pray that come it may--
As come it will for a' that--
That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an' a' that. pre-eminence
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's coming yet, for a' that,
That man to man the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that.
He revealed his supreme purpose in 'A Revolutionary Lyric':
In virtue trained, enlightened youth
Will love each fellow-creature;
And future years shall prove the truth--
That man is good by nature.
The golden age will then revive;
Each man will love his brother;
In harmony we all shall live,
And share the earth together.
While the so-called religious teachers of the time of Burns were dividing
men into creeds based on petty theological distinctions, Burns was
interpreting for humanity the highest teachings of Christ: Democracy based
on recognition of the value of the individual soul, and Brotherhood as the
natural fruit of true democracy.