was not of patronage at all, but of moral and
religious freedom; while the democracy of those ministers was a terribly
one-sided democracy. The lairds may have dubbed them democrats, but they
were aristocratic enough, despotic even, to their herds. But Principal
Shairp has been led altogether wrong by imagining that 'Burns, smarting
under the strict church discipline, naturally threw himself into the
arms of the opposite or New Light party, who were more easy in their
life and in their doctrine.' More charitable also, and Christ-like in
their judgments, I should fain hope; less blinded by a superstitious awe
of the Church. 'Nothing could have been more unfortunate,' he continues,
'than that in this crisis of his career he should have fallen into
intimacy with those hard-headed but coarse-minded men.' Surely this zeal
for the Church has carried him too far. Were these men all coarse
minded? Nobody believes it. The coarse-minded Dr. Dalrymple of Ayr, and
the coarse-minded Mr. Lawrie of Loudon! This is not argument. Besides,
it is perfectly gratuitous. The question, again, is not one of men--that
ecclesiastical discipline has been an offence and a
stumbling-block--either coarse minded or otherwise. It is a question of
principle, and Burns fought for it with keen-edged weapons.

It would be altogether a mistake to identify Burns with the New Light
party, or with any other sect. He was a law unto himself in religion,
and would bind himself by no creed. Because he attacked rigid orthodoxy
as upheld by Auld Light doctrine, that does not at all mean that he was
espousing, through thick and thin, the cause of the New Light party. He
fought in his own name, with his own weapons, and for humanity. It ought
to be clearly understood that in his series of satires he was not
attacking the orthodoxy of the Auld Lights from the bulwarks of any
other creed. His criticism was altogether destructive. From his own
conception of a wise and loving God he satirised what he conceived to be
their irrational and inhuman conception of Deity, whose attitude towards
mankind was assuredly not that of a father to his children. Burns's God
was a God of love; the god they worshipped was the creation of their
creed, a god of election. It is quite true that Burns made many friends
amongst the New Lights, but we are certain he did not hold by all their
tenets or subscribe to their doctrine. In the _Dictionary of National
Biography_ we read: 'Burns represent