§ 16
Even in rural Scotland, the vogue of the poetry of Burns told of germinal doubt. To say nothing of his mordant satires on pietistic types—notably Holy Willie’s Prayer, his masterpiece in that line—Burns even in his avowed poems235 shows small regard for orthodox beliefs; and his letters reveal him as substantially a deist, shading into a Unitarian. Such pieces as A Prayer in the prospect of Death, and A Prayer under the pressure of Violent Anguish, are plainly unevangelical;236 and the allusions to Jesus in his letters, even when writing to Mrs. Maclehose, who desired to bring him to confession, exclude orthodox belief,237 though they suggest Unitarianism. He frequently refers to religion in his letters, yet so constantly restricts himself to the affirmation of a belief in a benevolent God and in a future state that he cannot be supposed to have held the further beliefs which his orthodox correspondents would wish him to express. A rationalistic habit is shown even in his professions of belief, as here: “Still I am a very sincere believer in the Bible; but I am drawn by the conviction of a man, not the halter of an ass”;238 and in the passage: “Though I have no objection to what the Christian system tells us of another world, yet I own I am partial to those proofs and ideas of it which we have wrought out of our own heads and hearts.”239 Withal, Burns always claimed to be “religious,” and was so even in a somewhat conventional sense. The lines:
An atheist-laugh’s a poor exchange
For Deity offended240
exhibit a sufficiently commonplace conception of Omnipotence; and there is no sign that the poet ever did any hard thinking on the problem. But, emotionalist of genius as he was, his influence as a satirist and mitigator of the crudities and barbarities of Scots religion has been incalculably great, and underlies all popular culture progress in Scotland since his time. Constantly aspersed in his own day and world as an “infidel,” he yet from the first conquered the devotion of the mass of his countrymen; though he would have been more potent for intellectual liberation if he had been by them more intelligently read. Few of them now, probably, realize that their adored poet was either a deist or a Unitarian—presumably the former.