"We have said but little hitherto of Burns's religion. Some have denied that he had any religion at all—a rash and cruel denial—made in the face of his genius, his character, and his life. What man in his senses ever lived without religion? "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God"—was Burns an atheist? We do not fear to say that he was religious far beyond the common run of men, even them who may have had a more consistent and better considered creed. The lessons he received in the "auld clay biggin" were not forgotten through life. He speaks—and we believe him—of his "early ingrained piety" having been long remembered to good purpose—what he called his "idiot piety"—not meaning thereby to disparage it, but merely that it was in childhood an instinct. "Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name!" is breathed from the lips of infancy with the same feeling at its heart that beats towards its father on earth, as it kneels in prayer by his side. No one surely will doubt his sincerity when he writes from Irvine to his father—"Honor'd sir—I am quite transported at the thought, that ere long, perhaps soon, I shall bid an eternal adieu to all the pains, and uneasinesses, and disquietudes of this weary life; for I assure you I am heartily tired of it, and, if I do not very much deceive myself, I could contentedly and gladly resign it. It is for this reason I am more pleased with the 15th, 16th, and 17th verses of the 7th chapter of Revelations, than with any ten times as many verses in the whole Bible, and would not exchange the noble enthusiasm with which they inspire me, for all that this world has to offer. '15. Therefore are they before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple; and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. 16. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. 17. For the Lamb that is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters; and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.'" When he gives lessons to a young man for his conduct in life, one of them is, "The great Creator to adore;" when he consoles a friend on the death of a relative, "he points the brimful grief-worn eyes to scenes beyond the grave;" when he expresses benevolence to a distressed family, he beseeches the aid of Him "who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb;" when he feels the need of aid to control his passions, he implores that of the "Great Governor of all below;" when in sickness, he has a prayer for the pardon of all his errors, and an expression of confidence in the goodness of God; when suffering from the ills of life, he asks for the grace of resignation, "because they are thy will;" when he observes the sufferings of the virtuous, he remembers a rectifying futurity;—he is religious not only when surprised by occasions such as these, but also on set occasions; he had regular worship in his family while at Ellisland—we know not how it was at Dumfries, but we do know that there he catechised his children every Saturday evening;—Nay, he does not enter a Druidical circle without a prayer to God.
He viewed the Creator chiefly in his attributes of love, goodness and mercy. "In proportion as we are wrung with grief, or distracted with anxiety, the ideas of a superintending Deity, an Almighty protector, are doubly dear." Him he never lost sight of, or confidence in, even in the depths of his remorse. An avenging God was too seldom in his contemplations—from the little severity in his own character—from a philosophical view of the inscrutable causes of human frailty—and most of all, from a diseased aversion to what was so much the theme of the sour Calvanism around him; but which would have risen up an appalling truth in such a soul as his, had it been habituated to profounder thought on the mysterious corruption of our fallen nature.
Sceptical thoughts as to revealed religion had assailed his mind, while with expanding powers it "communed with the glorious universe;" and in 1787 he writes from Edinburgh to a "Mr. James M'Candlish, student in physic, College, Glasgow," who had favored him with a long argumentative infidel letter, "I, likewise, since you and I were first acquainted, in the pride of despising old women's stories, ventured on 'the daring path Spinoza trod;' but experience of the weakness, not the strength of human powers, made me glad to grasp at revealed religion." When at Ellisland, he writes to Mrs. Dunlop, "My idle reasonings sometimes make me a little sceptical, but the necessities of my heart always give the cold philosophizings the lie. Who looks for the heart weaned from earth; the soul affianced to her God; the correspondence fixed with heaven; the pious supplication and devout thanksgiving, constant as the vicissitudes of even and morn; who thinks to meet with these in the court, the palace, in the glare of public life! No: to find them in their precious importance and divine efficacy, we must search among the obscure recesses of disappointment, affliction, poverty and distress." And again, next year, from the same place to the same correspondent, "That there is an incomprehensibly Great Being, to whom I owe my existence, and that he must be intimately acquainted with the operations and progress of the internal machinery, and consequent outward deportment of this creature he has made—these are, I think, self-evident propositions. That there is a real and eternal distinction between vice and virtue, and consequently, that I am an accountable creature; that from the seeming nature of the human mind, as well as from the evident imperfection, nay positive injustice, in the administration of affairs, both in the natural and moral worlds, there must be a retributive scene of existence beyond the grave, must, I think, be allowed by every one who will give himself a moment's reflection. I will go farther and affirm, that from the sublimity, excellence, and purity of his doctrine and precepts, unparalleled, by all the aggregated wisdom and learning of many preceding ages, though to appearance he was himself the obscurest and most illiterate of our species: therefore Jesus was from God." Indeed, all his best letters to Mrs. Dunlop are full of the expression of religious feeling and religious faith; though it must be confessed with pain, that he speaks with more confidence in the truth of natural than of revealed religion, and too often lets sentiments inadvertently escape him, that, taken by themselves, would imply that his religious belief was but a Christianized Theism. Of the immortality of the soul, he never expresses any serious doubt, though now and then, his expressions, though beautiful, want their usual force, as if he felt the inadequacy of the human mind to the magnitude of the theme. "Ye venerable sages, and holy flamens, is there probability in your conjectures, truth in your stories, of another world beyond death; or are they all alike baseless visions and fabricated fables? If there is another life, it must be only for the just, the amiable, and the humane. What a flattering idea this of the world to come! Would to God I as firmly believed it as I ardently wish it."
How, then, could honored Thomas Carlyle bring himself to affirm, "that Burns had no religion?" His religion was in much imperfect—but its incompleteness you discern only on a survey of all his effusions, and by inference; for his particular expressions of a religious kind are genuine, and as acknowledgments of the superabundant goodness and greatness of God, they are in unison with the sentiments of the devoutest Christian. But remorse never suggests to him the inevitable corruption of man; Christian humility he too seldom dwells on, though without it there cannot be Christian faith: and he is silent on the need of reconcilement between the divine attributes of Justice and Mercy. The absence of all this might pass unnoticed, were not the religious sentiment so prevalent in his confidential communications with his friends in his most serious and solemn moods. In them there is frequent, habitual recognition of the Creator; and who that finds joy and beauty in nature has not the same? It may be well supposed that if common men are more ideal in religion than in other things, so would be Burns. He who has lent the colors of his fancy to common things, would not withhold them from divine. Something—he knew not what—he would exact of man—more impressively reverential than anything he is wont to offer to God, or perhaps can offer in the way of institution—in temples made with hands. The heartfelt adoration always has a grace for him—in the silent bosom—in the lonely cottage—in any place where circumstances are a pledge of its reality; but the moment it ceases to be heartfelt, and visibly so, it loses his respect, it seems as profanation. "Mine is the religion of the breast;" and if it be not, what is it worth? But it must also revive a right spirit within us; and there may be gratitude for goodness, without such change as is required of us in the gospel. He was too buoyant with immortal spirit within him not to credit its immortal destination; he was too thoughtful in his human love not to feel how different must be our affections if they are towards flowers which the blast of death may wither, or towards spirits which are but beginning to live in our sight, and are gathering good and evil here for an eternal life. Burns believed that by his own unassisted understanding, and his own unassisted heart, he saw and felt those great truths, forgetful of this great truth, that he had been taught them in the Written Word. Had all he learned in the "auld clay biggin" become a blank—all the knowledge inspired into his heart during the evenings, when "the sire turned o'er wi' patriarchal air, the big ha'-bible, ance his father's pride," how little or how much would he then have known of God and Immortality? In that delusion he shared more or less with one and all—whether poets or philosophers—who have put their trust in natural Theology. As to the glooms in which his sceptical reason had been involved, they do not seem to have been so thick—so dense—as in the case of men without number, who have, by the blessing of God, become true Christians. Of his levities on certain celebrations of religious rites, we before ventured an explanation; and while it is to be lamented that he did not more frequently dedicate the genius that shed so holy a lustre over "The Cotter's Saturday Night," to the service of religion, let it be remembered how few poets have done so—alas! too few—that he, like his tuneful brethren, must often have been deterred by a sense of his own unworthiness from approaching its awful mysteries—and above all, that he was called to his account before he had attained his thoughtful prime."
Speaking of Burns's last sickness, Professor Wilson says: "But he had his Bible with him in his lodgings, and he read it almost continually—often when seated on a bank, from which he had difficulty in rising without assistance, for his weakness was extreme, and in his emaciation he was like a ghost. The fire of his eye was not dimmed—indeed fever had lighted it up beyond even its natural brightness; and though his voice, once so various, was now hollow, his discourse was still that of a Poet. To the last he loved the sunshine, the grass, and the flowers; to the last he had a kind look and word for the passers-by, who all knew it was Burns. Laboring men, on their way from work, would step aside to the two or three houses called the Brow, to know if there was any hope of his life; and it is not to be doubted that devout people remembered him, who had written the Cotter's Saturday Night, in their prayers. His sceptical doubts no longer troubled him; they had never been more than shadows; and he had at last the faith of a confiding Christian."
Leaving Burns's Monument, we ascend the hill, in the opposite direction, pass the unfinished Parthenon, consisting only of a few elegant columns, and intended to commemorate the battle of Waterloo, the Observatory, and the Monument of Professor Playfair, the celebrated mathematician and astronomer, and reach the elegant though not imposing monument of Professor Dugald Stewart, not the most acute, but certainly the most finished and instructive of all the writers of the Scottish metaphysical school. Let us linger here, a few moments, for the name of Professor Stewart is peculiarly dear to Scotland. No man was ever more enthusiastically regarded by his pupils, or more generally loved and revered by the community. Dr. Reid of Glasgow University, the immediate predecessor and preceptor of Stewart, was a man of an acute and original mind, though not possessed of half the grace and fluency of his illustrious pupil. It was Reid however that first gave clearness and method to the metaphysics of Scotland. His writings on first principles, or, as he called them, principles of Common Sense, gave a death-blow, at least in Scotland, to the ideal theory of Berkeley and Hume, and greatly affected the course of philosophical investigation not only in England but in France. In fact, his philosophy supplanted, for a time, the infidel metaphysics of Hume and the French rationalists. It cut the roots equally of idealism and sensualism, and was eagerly received by thoughtful men in Europe and in this country. It can be seen running like a sunbeam, through the speculations of Royer Collard, Constant, Jouffroy and even of Cousin. Based on the Baconian method, it proceeded, modestly and unostentatiously, to ascertain, and then to classify the facts of mind; and, because it projected no splendid theories, or blazing fancies, it has been rejected by superficial and visionary thinkers, with some degree of contempt. After all, it may yet be recognized, by all genuine philosophers, as the only true scientific method. In the hands of Stewart and of Brown, his colleague and successor, it began to assume a lofty and attractive position; but alas! it has remained stationary for the want of strong and true-hearted defenders. Stigmatized by the Germans as "pallid and insular—timid and cold," it has been forsaken, of late, by the more popular metaphysical writers, for the brilliant and astounding, but ever varying visions of the Transcendental School. Smitten with the love of Ontology, or the doctrine of "the absolute and the essential," scorning the methods of Bacon and Newton as empirical and shallow, and setting their foot on the modest, perhaps timid speculations of Reid and Stewart, metaphysicians have plunged one after another into the abyss of an absolute Spiritualism, where, amid the glimmerings of a half-dark and lurid radiance, may be seen the disciples of Kant and Fichte, Hegel and Schelling, floundering in the gloom, changing places continually, now rising towards the light of heaven, and then sinking in the "abysmal dark."
The writings of Reid, Stewart and Brown have exerted a great influence on the thinking of Scotland, which, even among the common people, has a somewhat metaphysical turn. Combining with religion and poetry, it has given to both a peculiar depth and earnestness of tone. In some it is deeply practical, in others speculative and visionary.
Thomas Carlyle, the product chiefly of Scotland, but partly also of Germany—or perhaps, rather, a magnificent "lusus naturæ," has a large amount of Scottish shrewdness, enthusiasm and speculation, overlaid and burnished with German spiritualism and romance. A native of Annandale, and imbued with the religion of the Covenant, and the poetry of the hills, he has wandered off into the fields of metaphysical speculation, where, amid dreams of gorgeous and beautiful enchantment, he is evermore uttering his burning oracular words, of half pagan, and half Christian, wisdom. A genuine Teufelsdröckh,—he is yet a genuine Scot, and cannot therefore forget the holy wisdom of his venerable mother, and his Annandale home.[16]