THE BANKS OF NITH

THE Thames flows proudly to the sea,
Where royal cities stately stand;
But sweeter flows the Nith to me,

Where Comyns ance had high command.
When shall I see that honor'd land,
That winding stream I love so dear!
Must wayward Fortune's adverse hand
For ever, ever keep me here?

How lovely, Nith, thy fruitful vales,

Where bounding hawthorns gayly bloom;
And sweetly spread thy sloping dales,
Where lambkins wanton through the broom.
Tho' wandering now must be my doom,
Far from thy bonie banks and braes,
May there my latest hours consume,
Amang the friends of early days!

Note: The Nith, in his last seven years, took the place of the beautiful Ayr in the heart of Burns; it flowed a few feet from his home on Ellisland Farm near Dumfries. He composed his poems on its banks, or, later in Dumfries, sitting in the gloaming in Lincluden Abbey ruins, close to his beloved river.

PART TWO: RELIGIOUS AND ETHICAL POEMS

PART TWO

RELIGIOUS AND ETHICAL POEMS

Not Latimer, not Luther, struck more telling blows against false theology than did this brave singer. He is so substantially a reformer that I find his grand plain sense in close chain with the greatest masters-Rabelais, Shakespeare (in Comedy), Cervantes, Butler, Burns. EMERSON.

Burns was a wise religious teacher.

DEAN STANLEY.

The "Auld licht" preachers regarded Burns as an irreligious man, and many still believe that he attacked religion. He did not attack religion; he did attack the many evils that blighted the religious teaching of his time.

1. He attacked superstition. In a letter to Clarinda he said, "I hate the superstition of a fanatic, but I love the religion of a man."

In the "Tree of Liberty" he attributes the degradation of the French peasantry to

"Superstition's wicked brood."

In his "Epistle to John Gowdie" he speaks of "Poor gapin', glow'rin superstition."

2. He despised hypocrisy. In his Epistle to Rev. John McMath, a progressive "new light" preacher, he said:

"God knows I'm no' the thing I should be;

Nor am I even what I could be;

But twenty times I rather would be

An atheist clean,

Than under gospel colors hid be

Just for a screen."

3. He attacked bigotry. In his Epistle to John Gowdie he speaks of "Sour bigotry on its last legs." 4. He attacked the doctrine of predestination so earnestly preached during his time. He ridiculed it in Holy Willie's prayer, making Holy Willie say he "deserved damnation five thousand years before he was born."

5. He also made Holy Willie proclaim the awful doctrine that "God sends ain to heaven and ten to hell for his ain glory," a doctrine preached freely in his time, and long since.

6. He attacked the wicked practice of using the fear of hell as a basis of genuine religion. Fear never kindled a human soul. In his Epistle to a Young Friend (Andrew Aiken) he says: "The fear of hell's a hangman's whip

To haud the wretch in order."

7. He attacked the fearful solemnity of those who claimed to be Christians. When Gavin Hamilton