And fill them high with generous juice,
As generous as your mind;
And pledge them to the generous toast,
‘The whole of human kind!’
In his ‘Epistle to John Lapraik,’ after describing those whose lives do not help men towards brotherhood, he describes those who are true to the great ideal:
But ye whom social pleasure charms,
Whose hearts the tide of kindness warms,
Who hold your being on the terms,
‘Each aid the others,’
Come to my bowl, come to my arms,
My friends, my brothers.
Burns gives each man the true test of the influence of his life for the promotion of true brotherhood in the short line, ‘Each aid the others.’ That line is the supreme test of duty, and is the highest interpretation of Christ’s commandment to His disciples, and through them to all men, ‘Love one another, as I have loved you.’ Vital love means vital helpfulness.
Dickens gives the same great message as Burns when, in describing Little Dorritt, he says: ‘She was something different from the rest, and she was that something for the rest.’ This is probably the shortest sentence ever written that conveys so clearly the two great revelations of Christ: Individuality and Brotherhood.
There are some who dislike the expression ‘Come to my bowl.’ They should test Burns by the accepted standards of his time, not by the standards of our time. The bowl was the symbol of true comradeship in castle and cot, in the manse and in the layman’s home, in the time of Burns.
No other writer has interpreted Christ’s revelations of Democracy and Brotherhood so clearly and so fully as Robert Burns. He sums up the whole matter of man’s relationship to man in ‘A Man’s a Man for a’ That,’ in the last verse:
Then let us pray that come it may—
As come it will for a’ that—
That sense and worth, o’er a’ the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an’ a’ that. pre-eminence
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
It’s coming yet, for a’ that,
That man to man the world o’er,
Shall brothers be for a’ that.
He revealed his supreme purpose in ‘A Revolutionary Lyric’:
In virtue trained, enlightened youth
Will love each fellow-creature;
And future years shall prove the truth—
That man is good by nature.
The golden age will then revive;
Each man will love his brother;
In harmony we all shall live,
And share the earth together.