The Real Robert Burns Part 4

'In the year 1809 I resided for a short time in Ayrshire, in the hospitable house of my father's friend Reid, and surveyed with a strong interest such visitors as had known Burns. I soon learned how to antic.i.p.ate their representations of his character. The men of strong minds and strong feelings were invariable in their expressions of admiration; but the _prosy_, consequential _bodies_ all disliked him as exceedingly dictatorial. The men whose religion was based on intellect and high moral sentiment all thought well of him; but the mere professors [of religion]

"with their three-mile prayers and half-mile graces" denounced him as worse than an infidel.'

The progress of religious reformers has always been a th.o.r.n.y one. The Master, Christ Himself, was crucified by the 'Auld Lichts' of His time, and they stoned Stephen to death. So, through the centuries unprogressive theologians have persecuted and often murdered the religious reformers, who saw the evils in theology, and wished to remove them from the creeds that blighted men's souls. They burned Latimer in England; and Luther in Germany was saved by the action of his friends by shutting him in Wartburg Castle for protection. Religious reformers in the time of Burns were not burned or stoned to death, but they were persecuted and prosecuted before the Church Courts by men who did not approve of their higher visions of truth. Burns himself was regarded as unorthodox, but his creed is much more in harmony with the religious thought of to-day than it was with the creed of the 'Auld Licht' preachers. One of the marvels of human development through the ages has been that the bigoted theologians of each succeeding century resented the attempts of men with clearer vision to reform their creeds.

Men who truly believe in G.o.d cannot believe that any creed made by men can be infallible; they should know that from generation to generation humanity consciously grows towards the Divine, and that as they climb they see in the clearer spiritual air new visions of higher meaning in regard to life and to vital religion, revealing to each man new conceptions of his duty to G.o.d and to his fellow-men.

Lovers of Burns reverence his memory because he was so great and so wise a reformer, and did so much to make men truly free, and to make religion a more vitally uplifting agency in the hearts of men.

CHAPTER IV.

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 sanct.i.ty, 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 superst.i.tion 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

Superst.i.tion's wicked brood.

In his 'Epistle to John Goudie' he speaks of

Poor gapin', glowrin' superst.i.tion.

He attacked superst.i.tion, 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:

G.o.d 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 G.o.d. 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 n.o.bler efforts to achieve for G.o.d. He makes Holy Willie say he deserved d.a.m.nation 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 G.o.d sends ane to heaven and ten to h.e.l.l 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, 'G.o.d 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 h.e.l.l 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 G.o.d as the source of power, in Christ as the revealer of individual power, and in himself as G.o.d'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' h.e.l.l'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' h.e.l.l to make men religious. This was not attacking religion.

The Rev. L. MacLean Watt says: 'While the professional Christians of Scotland were fighting about h.e.l.l, 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 G.o.d was shaped in fashion like themselves--merciless, remorseless, hating, and hateful; His only pa.s.sion seeming to their narrow souls to be d.a.m.nation 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 h.e.l.l as punishment for some small offence, or as having been outcast from grace through the wanton exercise of divine prerogatives. To commend such a G.o.d 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 grat.i.tude 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 d.a.m.n a' parties [religious] but your own; I'll warrant then you're nae deceiver, A steady, st.u.r.dy, 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.