T THE RELIGION OF BURNS. HE problem of Burns's relation to religion, as a man and as a poet, is one that nearly a century of incessant criticism has failed to satisfactorily solve. I cannot hope, in view of what has already been written on the subject, to make any very valuable contribution to the controversy; but in these days, when more practical views of religious precept and principle are displacing the inflexible dogmatism of the past, it seems possible to indicate more correctly than hitherto the lines along which a settlement of the vexed question may and should be sought. For of late years even the professedly orthodox have shown a willingness to allow that Burns deserves to be regarded as in some sense and degree religious. It is becoming more and more evident that it is no hard task to gather from the poet's writings, religious truths and sentiments that indicate a pure and noble faith. Pointing to these we might say, There you have the religion of Burns." But notwithstanding the more favourable popular judgment pronounced upon his teaching from the modern religious standpoint, such a decision would be too perfunctory to be accepted by the judicious critic. It would be within the right of any objector to discredit it by a reference to other passages in Burns's poetry, and to certain incidents of his life, that seem to modify such a high estimate, if not to form the basis of quite a different conclusion. And it cannot be forgotten that objections of this sort are still urged by speakers and writers whose opinions are worthy of respect. The prevalent notion of religion has not yet become so entirely freed from the authority of tradition as to constrain the majority to include the writings of Burns within our generally received religious definitions. Hence, though we put aside thoughtless vituperation as undeserving of notice, we must still, in fairness, face the more intelligent criticism of those who honestly believe that our poet was a misguided man, "the root of whose failure was his lack of religion," and who never "attained to anything better than the poor platitudes of the moderate creed." Now, that such a belief should still be cherished, shows a sad lack of discrimination on the part of both classes of critics. Neither the eulogists nor the detractors of Burns seem to have gone carefully over the historical ground on which they profess to have built their superstructures. They have simplified the problem at the expense of truth, by assuming that all the rancorous and spiteful rumours promulgated while Burns was alive, or shortly after his death, and perpetuated by his earliest biographers, were supported by authentic and trustworthy evidence. This is not the case. His character has become cleared of much calumny in the estimation of those who have done him the justice of going to original sources for information, and the infidelity, profanity, and licentiousness with which it was long the habit to charge him as a writer, are now seen to be virtues rather than vices when the comparative method of criticism is followed. None the less it is admitted that Burns had serious faults and failings; and as some conscientious persons still refuse, because of that fact, to accept him as a religious man or a teacher of religious principle, I shall try briefly to explain all that such an admission in my opinion signifies. Whatever failings Burns exhibited are all adequately explained by the manners of his time, the misfortunes of his lot, and the character of his constitution-factors too seldom duly allowed for in solving the problem of his life. What have been called his irreligion and immorality were but the reflection of his age—a reflection that pales before the lustre of the light that shone forth from the inherent superiority of his individual gifts and virtues. The secret of his strength lies in his genius; the secret of his weakness is to be found in his circumstances. Both must be understood in order to form a just estimate of the religious spirit and influence of his writings. Certainly when the character of those circumstances is fully and fairly considered, the charges which have been advanced against him are by no means so forceful or serious as they at first sight appear. No vice or vicious tendency characterised his conduct in early manhood. Indeed, till his twenty-third year he seems to have been moodily pious, and expressed a strong desire to be rid of life, being, as he said, "heartily tired of it." This melancholy, the result of overwork upon a nervous temperament, never left him, and is the explanation of many of his reckless after-moods. His hours of hilarity illustrated the reaction from the mental gloom that a weakened constitution almost invariably induces in a strong, generous, and aspiring nature. But even were this explanation disallowed, and the whole indictment against Burns assumed to be true (an assumption which the most reliable evidence does not support), it has still to be remembered that the social habits of his time were very different from those of to-day. The standard of morality was inferior to that with which we are now familiar, and Burns cannot be judged as we should judge a contemporary writer. That he was in every respect better than his age is an undeniable fact, and is sufficient atonement for all his faults and follies. When it can be said of a man that his moral sense was. keener, his honour more conspicuous, and his manliness nobler than those of his time, class, and country, we have indicated a stronger claim to praise than most great men possess. This claim can be fearlessly made on our poet's behalf, both in respect of his life and his work, and herein we have a sufficient answer to every charge that bigotry, prejudice, and prudery have preferred against him. His irreligion, however, was most clearly evinced, we are told, by his contemptuously satirical treatment of the beliefs, ordinances, and teachers of the Christian Church of his day. This is a charge that can be refuted only, we fear, at the expense of the prejudices of many respectable religionists of our own day. For it is based on a misconception of what religion really is. In truth we are even now only slowly advancing to the position which Burns intelligently occupied a century ago. To him, religion was not a matter of theological creeds and ecclesiastical observances, but rather a divine reality, native to the human heart, and raised far above all differences of sect or belief. He recognised the absurdity of men trying to become religious by renouncing reason, and consigning conscience to the keeping of priests. Hence his ridicule, in the most cutting and brilliant satire, of the Old Light party in the Church, the adherents of which went to the extreme of orthodoxy and unreason. This satire was not prompted by a desire for personal revenge, as has frequently been insinuated. While he was a mere youth he had come to be regarded as a heretic. Speaking of his boyhood he says:-" Polemical divinity about this time was putting the country half-mad, and I, ambitious of shining in conversation parties on Sundays between sermons, at funerals, etc., used a few years afterwards to puzzle Calvinism with so much heat and indiscretion that I raised a hue-and-cry of heresy against me which has not ceased to this hour." On his own authority, also, we learn that "The Twa Herds" and "Holy Willie's Prayer' were both written and in circulation before he had any reason to fear the censure of the courts of the kirk. Indeed, it seems indisputable that Burns's antagonism to the ultra-evangelicals of his day was the result of his own force of mind, keenness of conscience, and ingenuousness of disposition. His religious lampoons were the expression of his contempt for the shows of religion which were in his day, as they are still, too often put in the place of its realities. Profession of piety degenerated into cant and hypocrisy, and these were ever the objects of his withering scorn. In short, in this matter, Burns's so-called irreligion was more reasonably and reverently religious than the orthodoxy he despised and denounced. To him the Church system of his day seemed in many of its aspects false and rotten ; and he was indirectly serving the cause of religious truth and purity by exposing its errors and corruptions. In this respect the issue has completely justified his action, and from every true friend of Christian principle he deserves almost unstinted praise. Let his poems be read from beginning to end; more particularly, let examination be made of every line and phrase of those in which he satirises the beliefs and customs of conventional religiosity, and it will be found that no virtue is attacked, no moral principle is defamed, nothing really sacred violated or ridiculed. He is never, in the true sense of the word, irreligious. His purpose rather is to separate the false from the true, unchristian opinion from Christian obligation; and hypocritical practices from virtuous principles. In his deep sincerity of soul he was ever faithful in his religious reverence. He could not be the enemy of religion. He had too strong a faith in the divinity of man's nature to speak slightingly of the highest truths of conscience. But his whole being recoiled from what he felt to be false conceptions of God, and degrading notions of human duty and destiny. Hence his unsparing treatment of those who upheld those conceptions and notions. These were the "fause friends" of religion, to stigmatise whom could ne'er defame religion itself. His polemics have been "damned with faint praise," and called unworthy of his genius. In one sense, perhaps they are; but they afford indisputable proof, on the negative side, of his honest adherence to religious principle, and have helped more, probably, than all the religious books of the century, to broaden and modify the soulless, narrow, and ungenerous theology that once prevailed in Scotland. As a positive religious teacher, Burns holds a place peculiarly his own. His religion is, in the simplest and most literal meaning of the phrase, "the religion of humanity." He is, for instance, as truly a poet of nature as Wordsworth. He loved nature as intensely, depicted and dwelt upon her beauties as faithfully, and with as much delight as ever the great English singer did in his most rapturous moods. But scarcely one of his poems or songs is Wordsworthian in the sense of singing material phenomena for their own sake. His exquisite descriptions are called forth by a love of a different kind that surged ceaselessly through his heart. The world to him was full of light and of deity," because his worship was given to human beings, who lived in it with himself. Even when he pourtrays, with inimitable fidelity, the mountain daisy, it is not of it alone that he thinks. 66 "Such fate to suffering worth is given, Who long with wants and woes has striven, To misery's brink, Till wrenched from every stay but Heaven, When he laments the ruin of the nest of the field mouse, his thoughts instinctively turn to similar calamities in human experience. And so is it in all his poems and songs. The motif is always found in some form of social affection. This is that which fires his imagination and gives him wealth of words for descriptive, satirical, elegaic, or lyric verse. In this sense he claims the title of a poet of religion, and illustrates the indissoluble connection between the truly religious and the truly poetic. The subject of both religion and poetry is harmony; and of harmony, love is the one creative cause. Beyond all others, Burns was the singer of honest, generous human affection as the unifying, joy-bringing, peace-giving, virtue-producing power of man's life; and thus he strikes the |