The Spiritual Side of Burns

SPIRITUAL SIDE OF BURNS. BY C. W. NIBLEY.

Why is the poet, Robert Burns, so universally honored? Here is a man dead more than a hundred years, and yet on each recurring 25th of January, throughout the English-speaking world, there are gathered together men and women who celebrate the day of his birth and who delight to do him honor. Surely he must be a remarkable man who has so long kept love in the hearts of the children of men. There is a secret here, if we might only find it. So — many phases of his life, too, against him his dissipation, his wrong associations! He is not loved and honored for these failings, but in spite of them. At this point of the world's history, the object all the world seems most to honor is wealth. The man who is the possessor of many dollars — and we do not much care how he got the dollars— is the man to whom the world now takes off its hat. I suppose in Burns' time, too, there was a similar feeling.

The richest man in Edinburgh —how much above Burns was he ? Doubtless he could scarcely afford to notice Burns. And yet now we ask, who was the richest man in Edinburgh? Who among the wealthy, was the wealthiest? Alas! we do not know; they are all long ago decently forgotten, as they should be. The temporal is ever the thing that perishes; it is the spiritual only that giveth life and lives.Even in the great field of politics, we can not remember who was Premier in Burns' time; or whether it was "Willie Pitt or Charley Fox," or both. Burns had a deep spiritual nature, and it is to that more than to all else to which I attribute the lasting quality of his work. He was not a mocker and scoffer, as he is often thought to have been,

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but he had no patience with the cant and hypocrisy of his day. Neither could he accept the narrow creeds of the churches. Especially hateful to him was that Calvanistic idea of predestination which destroyed the free agency of man. Hear how he satirized that doctrine in Holy Willie's Prayer:

Thou, wha in the heavens dost dwell, Wha, as it pleases best thysel', Sends ane to heaven, and ten to hell, A' for thy glory, And no for ony gude or ill They've done afore thee'.

On the other hand, we have in his Cotter's Saturday Night such a portrayal of the true spirit of religion as has been seldom

given to this world. After he had written his Holy Willie's Prayer he was persecuted by the local clergy, some of whom Burns considered were themselves guilty of evil. He justifies his course in a letter to a friend, in these lines:

I own 'twas rash, an' rather hardy, That I, a simple, kintra bardie, Should meddle wi' a pack sae sturdy, Wha, if they ken me, Can easy, wi' a single wordie, Lowse h-11 upon me.

But I gae mad at their grimaces, Their sighan, cantan, grace-prood faces, Their three mile prayers, an' hauf-mile graces, Their raxan conscience, Whase greed, revenge, an' pride disgraces Waur nor their nonsense. But lest he should be considered as ridiculing religion itself,, he adds these lines which show forth the true spirit of the man:

All hail, Eeligion! maid divine! Pardon a muse sae mean as mine, Who in her rough imperfect line Thus daurs to name thee; To stigmatize false friends of thine Can ne'er defame thee.

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Then we have such glimpses of love, tenderness, pathos, pity for the little hopping bird, when the cold winter storm is raging:

Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing, That, in the merry months o' spring, Delighted me to hear thee sing, What comes o' thee? Whare wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing, An' close thy e'e?

The spirit of forgiveness, too, is not wanting; listen to this:

Then gently scan your brother man, Still gentler sister woman:

Tho' they may gang a kennin wrang, To step aside is human: One point must still be greatly dark, The moving why they do it: And just as lamely can ye mark, How far perhaps they rue it.

Who made the heart, 'tis He alone Decidedly can try us; He knows each chord — 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.

Burns has an eye to see through all sham and show. In an age when the nobility of Scotland were all but worshiped by the poorer classes, Burns refuses such homage unless the titled one is worthy thereof:

Ye see yon Birkie ca'd a lord Wha struts and stares and 'a that, Tho' thousands worship at his word He's but a coof for a' that.

I am told that in one of the text-books on mojral philosophy, in use in the public schools of some of the states, the following

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lines of our poet on "moral duty" are printed in one of the lessons:

The great Creator to revere, Must sure become the creature, But still the preaching cant forbear, And ev'n the rigid feature: Yet ne'er with wits profane to range, Be complaisance extended; An Atheist's laugh's a poor exchange For Deity offended!

"When ranting round in pleasure's ring, Religion may be blinded; Or if she gie a random sting, It may be little minded; But when on life we're tempest-driv'n, A conscience but a canker A correspondence fixed wi' Heav'n, Is sure a noble anchor I

In the inequalities of Fortune's favors, his great, just soul, with true spiritual insight, gives forth its lamentation in this wise':

See yonder poor, o'erlabor'd wight, "So abject, mean, and vile, Who begs a brother of the earth To give him leave to toil; And see his lordly fellow-worm The poor petition spurn, Unmindful, tho' a weeping wife And helpless offspring mourn. My comments must be exceedingly brief, to bring out in one short article so many selections to show that it is because of their deep spiritual nature that his verses are so loved and his name so honored. The Scriptures prophesy of a time when the enmity that exists between man and beast shall be taken away -when peace shall reign, and the Spirit of God shall be in every heart. Even the beasts shall not harm nor destroy. The lion and the lamb shall lie down together. This beautiful spiritual thought occurs to Burns as his plough-

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share turns up the nest of the little field-mouse, and when the mouse, panic-stricken, runs in terror away. To man was given dominion, it is true, but why this abuse of power? Listen to these lines on that subject:

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 !

Again, what better or truer gospel could be preached than this:

To make a happy fire-side clime To weans and wife, That's the true pathos and sublime Of human life.

Thoughts of what we understand to be the united order, or brotherhood of man, occur to him, too, as witness the following:

Lord help me thro' this warld o' care! I'm weary sick o't late and air! Not but I hae a richer share Than mony ithers; But why should ae man better fare, And a' men brithers?

Why indeed should one man fare so much better than another, if all are equally good, willing and obedient unto the extent of the ability that God has endowed us with? And yet he cannot be made to believe that such unjust conditions will always continue. Nay, on the contrary, he knows they cannot last forever, and with true poetic insight, almost with the voice of a prophet and seer, he breaks forth into prophetic song:

Then let us pray, that come it may, For come it will for 'a that,

When man to man the world o'er, Shall brothers be and a' that.

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Surely the millennium were here, if man to man the world over would brothers be, and all which that implies. This, then, can be accepted as certain, that any book will last in proportion to its true spiritual Byron rhymes most worth. beatifully — is a cultured poet, but how many read Byron now? Alas! he is of the earth earthy, too much of the world, the flesh and the devil. There is nothing or next to nothing, of the spiritual in Byron. Carlyle's Sartor Resartus and his Oliver Cromwell will be read with great and increasing interest for many years yet, but his Frederick the Great, although its author bestowed great pains upon it, will sooner lose its interest. The reason is that Cromwell fought for his Puritan religion, and Sartor is full of beautiful spiritual thought, while Frederick fought for dominion and glory. Notwithstanding the spiritual side of Burns, we must however sorrowfully confess that he made of life a failure. The chief reason therefor is not hard to find. His aim, his purpose in life, was not single. It is written, "no man can serve God and mammon." Burns unfortunately vacillated in his course. He knew his duty but could not resist temptation. The wedge, if it has one edge, will split the log, if you keep hammering. But if it is turned part one way and part the other, you may hammer it to little purpose except to batter and destroy it. "If thine eye be single, thy whole body will be filled with light." Burns failed as many of us may fail, in trying to serve two masters. It can never successfully be done.

But for the beautiful songs he gave us, for his fund of mirth and humor, and, above all, for the spiritual truths that he taught us, we will revere his memory, and for many ages yet to come, there will be celebrations of his birthday when many other more blameless poets are decently forgotten.