'Tis he fulfils great Nature's plan, And none but he!" Oh mandate glorious and divine! While sordid sons o' Mammon's line Are dark as night. Though here they scrape, and squeeze, and growl, Their worthless nievefu' of a soul May in some future carcass howl, Or in some day-detestin' owl May shun the light. Then may Lapraik and Burns arise, Still closer knit in friendship's ties, Each passing year! handful EPISTLE TO JOHN GOUDIE OF ON THE PUBLICATION OF HIS ESSAYS. The west of Scotland was at this time, theolog. ically, in a very different state from what it was a century before, when it gave so many martyrs to the sternest principles of Presbyterianism. There was, indeed, all over Scotland a reaction in the eighteenth century from the fervor of the seventeenth. It was generally believed, and there now can be little doubt of the fact, that an Arminianism, verging towards the dogmas of Socinus, had taken possession of many pulpits. The work of John Taylor of Norwich, entitled the Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin, had been extensively read in Ayrshire among the clergy as well as laity, and given rise to a pretty definite form of rationalism, which was recognized by the cant term of the New Light. As usual, minds of an active and restless character, especially when accompanied by philanthropic dispositions, had embraced this New Light, while the mass of the vulgar, and a section of the clergy, remained steadfast under the faith as it had been among their fathers. These were called 'the Whigs,' as representing the ancient religious party of that name, or were spoken of as adherents of the Auld Light. It affords a striking idea of the length which the new doctrines had gone, that a busy-brained old tradesman in Kilmarnock, by name John Goldie or Goudie, published a book freely discussing the authority of the Scriptures, first in 1780, and in a new edition in 1785, without incurring an inconvenient degree of public odium. It is stated by Dr. Currie that William Burness had composed a little manual of religious belief for the use of his children, "in which the benevolence of his heart seems to have led him to soften the rigid Calvinism of the Scottish Church into something approaching to Arminianism." He was, in short, tinctured with the New Light, though modesty and prudence induced him to say very little on the subject. The poet, besides deriving a tendency that way from his father, had conversed with men of still more decided views at Irvine. While probably retaining, or thinking he retained, a hold of the main doctrines of Christianity, his vigorous and benevolent mind, and, as he has himself confessed, "a desire of shining in conversation-parties"- possibly, besides all this, an enjoyment in saying things calculated to startle comman minds led him into a by no means subdued demonstration of New-Light principles. It would be difficult to say how much of his heterodoxy was unreal, how much only temporary,- a passing gust of opinion, but certainly he appeared to some at this time as entirely Socinian. He seems to have believed that the religious mind of the country was undergoing a revolution which must result in the 1 He himself, in a letter to Mr. Candlish, March 1787, speaks of his having, "in the pride of despising old women's stories, ventured in the daring path Spinoza trod;" but, he adds, "experience of the weakness, not the strength, of human powers, made me glad to grasp at revealed religion." abandonment of Calvinism. Such is the spirit of a short epistle in rhyme to Goudie on the publication of the second edition of his Essays. Он, Goudie! terror of the Whigs, Sour Bigotry, on her last legs, Girnin', looks back, Wishin' the ten Egyptian plagues Grinning Poor gapin', glowrin' Superstition, Alas! there's ground o' great suspicion Auld Orthodoxy lang did grapple, Nigh unto death; shake See, how she fetches at the thrapple, windpipe Enthusiasm's past redemption, Gane in a galloping consumption. Not a' the quacks, wi' a' their gumption, cleverness That is, give in her name at church, to be prayed for Will ever mend her. Her feeble pulse gies strong presumption "Tis you and Taylor are the chief And twa red peats wad send relief, empty THE TWA HERDS; OR, THE HOLY The person called Black Jock in the preceding Epistle was the Rev. John Russell, one of the ministers of the town where Goudie resided. He was a huge, dark-complexioned, stern-looking man, of tremendous energy in the pulpit, of harsh and unloving nature, and a powerful defender of the strongholds of Calvinism. There was much room for his zeal in Kilmarnock, for so long ago as 1764, a New-Light clergyman named Lindsay had been introduced there, and had of course given a certain amount of currency to what Burns called rommon-sense (that is, rationalistic) views. There was another zealous partisan of the Auld Lighta Mr Alexander Moodie - in the adjacent parish of Ric 1 Braw, |