The Bard and the Church

IN 1959, when I was a student in New York, I was invited by the St Andrews Society there to preach at a thanksgiving service to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns.

The Society had looked around for a minister with an authentic Scottish accent who could burr his r’s, and make them feel homesick! That night in a Manhattan church, a bagpipe band led me down the aisle. The church was packed with clan members, the men in full Highland regalia, the ladies in white dresses and tartan plaids. That night I highlighted Burns’ deep Christian faith, and his significant contribution to the life of the church in Scotland, two aspects of Burns’ life seldom mentioned at Burns Suppers.

At the end of the service, one lady said to me at the door: “Mr Simpson, I don’t believe in God. I only believe in Scotland.” As graciously as I could, I told her that, though I shared her love of Scotland and her admiration for Burns’ poems, central to my thinking, and to Burns’ thinking, was a strong belief in God.

Though Burns was critical of many aspects of the Church of his day, he was a deeply religious person and a regular worshipper. In his Epistle to a young friend he writes:

When ranting round in Pleasure’s ring

Religion may be blinded

Or if she gie a random sting

It may be little minded;

But when on life we’re tempest driv’n

A conscience but a canker

A correspondence fix’d wi’ heaven

Is sure a noble anchor.

He ends this advice by saying: “May ye better attend to the advice, than ever did the Adviser.” Burns here acknowledges his faults and failings. Though, like the writer of many of the Psalms, Burns approved the higher course, he sometimes followed the lower. What Shakespeare said of Caesar could be said of Burns. “The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.” Whereas in the thinking of many, Burns’ many ‘affairs’ have lived on after him, the good he did has too often been forgotten. What a debt in fact, Scotland and the Church owes him.

Like Jesus, Burns sought to expose the hypocrisy of the ‘unco guid’ , those who made a great public show of their piety. In his poem Holy Willie, he launches an assault on the extreme Calvinism which had also pervaded church life. In another poem The Holy Fair, Burns criticises the Rev Moodie, a Bible thumping minister, for mounting the pulpit wi’ ‘tidings of damnation’.

Just as John Knox in the 16th century helped reform the Kirk, so Burns, by his poems and writings, helped reform the Kirk. The more liberal ministers of his day welcomed Burns’ support. Though critical of bad religion, Burns had a high regard for Christianity, which had caring love at its heart. He wrote: “I will deeply imbue every child of mine with religion.” In a letter written in 1790 he ended it by quoting from Paul’s letter to the Philippians:

“Finally Brethren, Farewell! Whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are gentle, whatsoever things are charitable, whatsoever things are kind, think on these things.” When not away on tax business, he often conducted evening family prayers. He also wrote graces to be said before meals. The best known is the Selkirk grace. “Some hae meat and canna eat, and others would eat that want it, but we hae meat and we can eat, sae let the Lord be thankit.” Another reads O Thou in whom we live and move, Who mad’st the sea and shore.

Thy goodness constantly we prove And grateful would adore.

And if it please Thee, Power above Still grant us with such store The friends we trust and fare we love, And we desire no more.

In church services I have occasionally used Burns’ paraphrase of the 90th Psalm, which begins .

Thou the first, the greatest friend Of all the human race!

Whose strong right hand has ever been Their stay and dwelling place! …….

Before the mountains heav’d their heads Beneath Thy forming hand.

Before this ponderous globe itself Arose at Thy command.............

The common idea that Burns was anti-church and anti-clergy, is a terrible distortion of the truth. Burns numbered many ministers among his close friends. One was Dr Lawrie, of Loudon Church.

Burns was so moved by the warmth of the welcome Burns received when he visited the Lawrie family, and by the family’s sincere and deep faith, and their affection for each other, and their love of music and fun, that he left in the manse room in which he slept a beautiful prayer he had written, a prayer for the future well-being of their family. In the prayer, he gives thanks for the peace, joy and love he had experienced in their home. He prays that God might long spare Dr Lawrie ‘to bless his little filial flock, and show what good men are’. For Mrs Lawrie his prayer was that God would ‘bless her with a Mother’s joys, but spare her a Mother’s tears’. For the Lawrie teenage girls, he prays with ‘earnest tears’. ‘Thou knowest the snares on every hand, Guide thou their steps always’.

Then he finishes with a prayer for the whole family. “When soon or late they reach that coast, O’er life’s rough ocean driven, May they rejoice, no wand’rer lost, A family in heaven.”

Burns’ mother Agnes was a wise and lovely woman. It was while Robert tottered at her knee that he first began to absorb not just her deep religious faith but many of the tunes, rhythms and ballads that she sang as she bustled about her housework. Though Burns did not always practise what his parents had taught him, unlike many today he was well aware what these values were.

It’s no in titles nor in rank

It’s no in wealth like Lon’on bank

To purchase peace and rest;

Its no in makin muckle mair

It’s no in books, it’s no in learning

To make us truly blest

If happiness hae not her seat

And centre in the breast,

We may be wise or rich or great

But never can be blest.

…….

The heart’s aye the part aye

That makes us right or wrong.

“Though Burns was critical of many aspects of the Church of his day, he was a deeply religious person and a regular worshipper.“

His “Address to the Unco Guid”, is a commentary on Jesus’ words about the need to remove the log from our own eye before attempting to remove the splinter from our brother’s eye.

Then gently scan your brother man

Still gentler sister woman

Tho’ they may gang a kennin wrang

To step aside is human

One point must still be greatly dark

The moving why they do it

And just as lamely can ye mark

How far perhaps they rue it.

Who made the heart, ‘tis He alone

Decidedly can try us.

Then at the balance let’s be mute,

What’s done we partly may compute,

But know not what’s resisted.

Few poets have had Burns’ ability to express the emotions of ordinary folk, upon whose labours the fabric of society depends. “The rank is but the guinea stamp, the man’s the gowd for a’ that.” Burns said that, not only in one poem, but in many. John Lennon’s song Imagine which was voted the best song of the 20th century, is like a soft-focus remake of Burns’ song A man’s a man for a’ that.

Both are Utopian manifestos. But whereas Lennon’s song tremors with wistfulness, Burns’ poem pulses with passionate anger. Whereas Lennon dreamt of a different kind of world, Burns demanded it – that man to man the world o’er should brothers be for a’ that.

Countless statues have been erected in Burns’ honour. Stamps, tea-towels and plates, and shortbread boxes bear his picture. But of this I am certain, in the world of 2022, a world full of hate, fake news and hypocrisy, the best way to remember Burns would be to seek, by our words and actions, to hasten the day when ‘man to man shall brothers be for a’ that.’