endured willingly. But a generation was springing up--stiff-necked they
might have been called, in that they fretted under the yoke of their
fathers--that sought to be delivered from the tyranny of their pastors
and the fossilised formalism of their creed. To the people in their
bondage a prophet was born, and that prophet was Robert Burns.

It was natural that a man of Burns's temperament and clearness of
perception should be on the side of the 'common-sense' party. In one of
his letters to Mr. James Burness, Montrose, wherein he describes the
strange doings of a strange sect called the Buchanites,--surely in
itself a convincing proof of the degeneracy of the times in the matter
of religion,--we have an interesting reflection which gives us some
insight into the poet's mind. 'This, my dear Sir, is one of the many
instances of the folly in leaving the guidance of sound reason and
common sense in matters of religion. Whenever we neglect or despise
those sacred monitors, the whimsical notions of a perturbed brain are
taken for the immediate influences of the Deity, and the wildest
fanaticism and the most inconsistent absurdities will meet with abettors
and converts. Nay, I have often thought that the more out of the way and
ridiculous their fancies are, if once they are sanctified under the name
of religion, the unhappy, mistaken votaries are the more firmly glued to
them.'

The man who wrote that was certainly not the man, when the day of battle
came, to join himself with the orthodox party, the party that stuck to
the pure, undiluted Puritanism of Covenanting times. Yet many
biographers have not seen the bearing that such a letter has on Burns's
attitude to the Church. Principal Shairp seems to say that Burns, had it
not been for the accident of ecclesiastical discipline to which he had
been subjected, would have joined the orthodox party. The notion is
absurd. Burns had attacked orthodox Calvinism even in his boyhood, and
was already tainted with heresy. 'These men,' the worthy Principal
informs us, 'were democratic in their ecclesiastical views, and stout
protesters against patronage. All Burns's instincts would naturally have
been on the side of those who wished to resist patronage and "cowe the
lairds" had not this, his natural tendency, been counteracted by a
stronger bias drawing him in an opposite direction.' This is a
narrowing--if not even a positive misconception--of the case with a
vengeance. The question