In ‘Winter: a Dirge’ he says, in reverent submission to God’s will:
Thou Power supreme, whose mighty scheme
Those woes of mine fulfil,
Here firm I rest, they must be best,
Because they are Thy Will.
In a poem to Clarinda he wrote, recognising the blessing of Gods universal presence, not in awe so much as in joy:
God is ever present, ever felt,
In the void waste, as in the city full;
And where He vital breathes, there must be joy!
In the ‘Cotter’s Saturday Night’ he teaches absolute faith in God, and indicates man’s true relationship to the Divine Father:
Lest in temptation’s path ye gang astray,
Implore His counsel and assisting might:
They never sought in vain, that sought the Lord aright.
Writing in condemnation of a miserably selfish miser, he said:
See these hands, ne’er stretched to save,
Hands that took, but never gave;
Keeper of Mammon’s iron chest,
Lo, there she goes, unpitied and unblest;
She goes, but not to realms of everlasting rest.
And are they of no more avail,
Ten thousand glittering pounds a year?
In other worlds can Mammon fail,
Omnipotent as he is here?
O, bitter mockery of the pompous bier,
While down the wretched Vital Part is driven!
The cave-lodged beggar, with a conscience clear,
Expires in rags, unknown, and goes to heaven.
The philosophy of his mind, and the affectionate sympathy of his heart made Burns believe that unselfish service for our fellow-men should be one of the manifestations of true religion.
In the fine poem he wrote to Mrs Dunlop on New Year’s Day, 1790, he says: