"A vast, unbottom'd, boundless pit, Fill'd fou o' lowin' brunstane, Wha's ragin' flame an' scorchin' heat Wad melt the hardest whun-stane!
The half asleep start up wi' fear, An' think they hear it roarin', When presently it does appear, 'Twas but some neebor snorin'.
Asleep that day."
The dear old doctrine that man is totally depraved, that morality is a snare--a flowery path leading to perdition--excited the indignation of Burns. He put the doctrine in verse:
"Morality, thou deadly bane, Thy tens o' thousands thou hast slain!
Vain is his hope, whose stay and trust is In moral mercy, truth and justice."
He understood the hypocrites of his day: "Hypocrisy, in mercy spare it!
That holy robe, O dinna tear it!
Spare't for their sakes wha aften wear it, The lads in black; But your curst wit, when it comes near it, Rives't aff their back."
"Then orthodoxy yet may prance, And Learning in a woody dance, And that fell cur ca'd Common Sense, That bites sae sair, Be banish'd owre the seas to France; Let him bark there."
"They talk religion in their mouth; They talk o' mercy, grace, an' truth, For what? to gie their malice skouth On some puir wight, An' hunt him down, o'er right an' ruth, To ruin straight."
"Doctor Mac, Doctor Mac, Ye should stretch on a rack, To strike evil doers wi' terror; To join faith and sense Upon any pretence, Was heretic damnable error, Doctor Mac, Was heretic damnable error."
But the greatest, the sharpest, the deadliest, the keenest, the wittiest thing ever said or written against Calvinism is Holy Willie's Prayer:--
"O 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 onie guid or ill They've done afore thee!
"I bless and praise thy matchless might, When thousands thou has left in night, That I am here afore thy sight For gifts an' grace, A burnin' an' a shinin' light, To a' this place.
"What was I, or my generation, That I should get sic exaltation?
I, wha deserve sic just damnation, For broken laws, Five thousand years 'fore my creation, Thro' Adam's cause?
"When frae my mither's womb I fell, Thou might hae plunged me into hell, To gnash my gums, to weep and wail, In burnin' lake, Where damned devils roar and yell, Chained to a stake.
"Yet I am here a chosen sample, To show Thy grace is great and ample; I'm here a pillar in Thy temple, Strong as a rock, A guide, a buckler, an example To a' Thy flock."
In this poem you will find the creed stated just as it is--with fairness and accuracy--and at the same time stated so perfectly that its absurdity fills the mind with inextinguishable laughter.
In this poem Burns nailed Calvinism to the cross, put it on the rack, subjected it to every instrument of torture, flayed it alive, burned it at the stake, and scattered its ashes to the winds.
In 1787 Burns wrote this curious letter to Miss Chalmers:
"I have taken tooth and nail to the Bible, and have got through the five books of Moses and half way in Joshua.
"It is really a glorious book."
This must have been written in the spirit of Voltaire.
Think of Burns, with his loving, tender heart, half way in Joshua, standing in blood to his knees, surrounded by the mangled bodies of old men, women and babes, the swords of the victors dripping with innocent blood, shouting--"This is really a glorious sight."
A letter written on the seventh of March, 1788, contains the clearest, broadest and most philosophical statement of the religion of Burns to be found in his works:
"An honest man has nothing to fear. If we lie down in the grave, the whole man a piece of broken machinery, to moulder with the clods of the valley--be it so; at least there is an end of pain and care, woes and wants. If that part of us called Mind does survive the apparent destruction of the man, away with old-wife prejudices and tales!
"Every age and every nation has a different set of stories; and, as the many are always weak, of consequence they have often, perhaps always, been deceived.
"A man conscious of having acted an honest part among his fellow creatures, even granting that he may have been the sport at times of passions and instincts, he goes to a great Unknown Being, who could have had no other end in giving him existence but to make him happy; who gave him those passions and instincts and well knows their force.
"These, my worthy friend, are my ideas.
"It becomes a man of sense to think for himself, particularly in a case where all men are equally interested, and where, indeed, all men are equally in the dark."
"Religious nonsense is the most nonsensical nonsense."
"Why has a religious turn of mind always a tendency to narrow and harden the heart?"
"All my fears and cares are for this world."
We have grown tired of gods and goddesses in art. Milton's heavenly militia excites our laughter. Light-houses have driven sirens from the dangerous coasts. We have found that we do not depend on the imagination for wonders--there are millions of miracles under our feet.
Nothing can be more marvelous than the common and everyday facts of life. The phantoms have been cast aside. Men and women are enough for men and women. In their lives is all the tragedy and all the comedy that they can comprehend.
The painter no longer crowds his canvas with the winged and impossible--he paints life as he sees it, people as he knows them, and in whom he is interested. "The Angelus," the perfection of pathos, is nothing but two peasants bending their heads in thankfulness as they hear the solemn sound of the distant bell--two peasants, who have nothing to be thankful for--nothing but weariness and want, nothing but the crusts that they soften with their tears--nothing. And yet as you look at that picture you feel that they have something besides to be thankful for--that they have life, love, and hope--and so the distant bell makes music in their simple hearts.
Let me give you the difference between culture and nature--between educated talent and real genius.
A little while ago one of the great poets died. I was reading some of his volumes and during the same period was reading a little from Robert Burns. And the difference between these two poets struck me forcibly.
Tennyson was a piece of rare china decorated by the highest art.
Burns was made of honest, human clay, moulded by sympathy and love.
Tennyson dwelt in his fancy, for the most part, with kings and queens, with lords and ladies, with knights and nobles.
Burns lingered by the fireside of the poor and humble, in the thatched cottage of the peasant, with the imprisoned and despised. He loved men and women in spite of their titles, and without regard to the outward.
Through robes and rags he saw and loved the man.
Tennyson was touched by place and power, the insignia given by chance or birth. As he grew old he grew narrower, lost interest in the race, and gave his heart to the class to which he had been lowered as a reward for melodious flattery.
Burns broadened and ripened with the flight of his few years. His sympathies widened and increased to the last.
Tennyson had the art born of intellectual taste, of the sense of mental proportion, knowing the color of adjectives and the gradations of emphasis. His pictures were born in his brain, exquisitely shaded by details, carefully wrought by painful and conscious art.
Burns's brain was the servant of his heart. His melody was a rhythm taught by love. He was touched by the miseries, the injustice, the agony of his time. While Tennyson wrote of the past--of kings long dead, of ladies who had been dust for many centuries, Burns melted with his love the walls of caste--the cruel walls that divide the rich and the poor.
Tennyson celebrated the birth of royal babes, the death of the titled useless; gave wings to degraded dust, wearing the laurels given by those who lived upon the toil of men whom they despised. Burns poured poems from his heart, filled with tears and sobs for the suffering poor; poems that helped to break the chains of millions; poems that the enfranchised love to repeat; poems that liberty loves to hear.
Tennyson was the poet of the past, of the twilight, of the sunset, of decorous regret, of the vanished glories of barbarous times, of the age of chivalry in which great nobles clad in steel smote to death with battle axe and sword the unarmed peasants of the field.
Burns was the poet of the dawn, glad that the night was fading from the east. He kept his face toward the sunrise, caring nothing for the midnight of the past, but loved with all the depth and sincerity of his nature the few great souls--the lustrous stars--that darkness cannot quench.
Tennyson was surrounded with what gold can give, touched with the selfishness of wealth. He was educated at Oxford, and had what are called the advantages of his time, and in maturer years was somewhat swayed by the spirit of caste, by the descendants of the ancient Pharisees, and at last became a lord.
Burns had but little knowledge of the world. What he knew was taught him by his sympathies. Being a genius, he absorbed the good and noble of which he heard or dreamed, and thus he happily outgrew the smaller things with which he came in contact, and journeyed toward the great--the wider world, until he reached the end.