Burns was the warm, personal friend of the best people in every district in or near which he lived. He must have been a good man who could count among his friends such men and women as the following: Lord Glencairn, Mrs Dunlop, the Earl of Eglintoun, Dr Moore, Dr M’Kenzie, Gavin Hamilton, Hon. Henry Erskine, the Duchess of Gordon, Right Rev. Bishop Geddes, Robert Graham of Fintry, Robert Riddell, Robert Aiken, the Earl of Buchan, Prof. Dugald Stewart, Dr Candlish, Sir John Whitefoord, John Murdoch, Dr Blacklock, Dr Hugh Blair, Alex. Cunningham, Rev. Archibald Alison, Sir John Sinclair, Rev. John M’Math, and the best ministers of the ‘New Licht,’ or progressive class; the leading professors in Edinburgh University, and the leading schoolmasters in his neighbourhood. In fact, he was loved and respected by leaders of all classes except the ‘Auld Licht’ preachers. He lives on and becomes more popular as he becomes better known.
His one characteristic that would most fully represent him and his work for God and humanity is his propelling tendency to be a reformer of conditions. He accepted no existing conditions as good enough. He saw quickly and clearly the defects of conditions as they existed, and he never hesitated to attack any evil that he could help to overthrow. He saw that individual freedom and pure religion were vital and essential elements of human progress and happiness. He saw with unerring vision the lack of freedom and of vital religion in the lives of the people; so to make all men free, to give all children equal opportunity to develop the best in their souls, and to purify religion from superstition, hypocrisy, bigotry, and kindred evils that were blighting it, became his highest purposes.
What was the character of Burns in the estimation of the leading people of his own time? On replying to a request that he would use his influence in favour of Burns for an appointment Sir John Whitefoord wrote: ‘Your character as a man, as well as a poet, entitles you, I think, to the assistance of every inhabitant of Ayrshire.’
Sir John owned the Ballochmyle estate near Mauchline, and was one of the leading country gentlemen of Ayrshire in his time.
Mr Archibald Prentice, editor of the Manchester Times, was the son of a prominent man who lived about half-way between Mauchline and Edinburgh, at Covington, in Lanarkshire. Mr Prentice, senior, was a great admirer of Burns, as were leaders everywhere. Mr Archibald Prentice, writing about his father’s affectionate respect for Burns, said; ‘My father, though a strictly moral and religious man himself, always maintained that the virtues of the poet greatly predominated over his faults. I once heard him exclaim with hot wrath, when somebody was quoting from an apologist, “What! do they apologise for him! One half of his good, and all his bad divided among a score of them, would make them a’ better men!”
‘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 anticipate 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 thorny 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 God 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 God 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.