ed the revolt of a virile and
imaginative nature against a system of belief and practice which, as he
judged, had degenerated into mere bigotry and pharisaism.... That Burns,
like Carlyle, who at once retained the sentiment and rejected the creed
of his race more decidedly than Burns, could sympathise with the higher
religious sentiments of his class is proved by _The Cotter's Saturday
Night_.'

Principal Shairp, however, has not seen the matter in this broad light.
All he sees is a man of keen insight and vigorous powers of reasoning,
who 'has not only his own quarrel with the parish minister and the
stricter clergy to revenge, but the quarrel also of his friend and
landlord, Gavin Hamilton, a county lawyer who had fallen under church
censure for neglect of church ordinances,'--a question of new potatoes
in fact,--'and had been debarred from the communion.'

It is pleasing to see that the academic spirit is not always so blinding
and blighting. Professor Blackie recognises that the abuses Burns
castigated were real abuses, and admits that the verdict of time has
been in his favour. 'In the case of _Holy Willie_ and _The Holy Fair_,'
he remarks, 'the lash was wisely and effectively wielded'; and on
another occasion he wrote, 'Though a sensitive pious mind will naturally
shrink from the bold exposure of devout abuses in holy things, in _The
Holy Fair_ and other similar satires, on a broad view of the matter we
cannot but think that the castigation was reasonable, and the man who
did it showed an amount of independence, frankness, and moral courage
that amply compensates for the rudeness of the assault.'

Rude, the assault certainly was and overwhelming. Augean stables are not
to be cleansed with a spray of rose-water.

Lockhart, whilst recognising the force and keenness of these satires,
has regretfully pointed out that the very things Burns satirised were
part of the same religious system which produced the scenes described in
_The Cotter's Saturday Night_. But is this not really the explanation of
the whole matter? It was just because Burns had seen the beauty of true
religion at home, that he was fired to fight to the death what was false
and rotten. It was the cause of true religion that he espoused.

'All hail religion! Maid divine,
Pardon a muse so mean as mine,
Who in her rough imperfect line
Thus dares to name thee.
To stigmatise false friends of thine
Can ne'er defame t