While some would claim for Burns a niche among Scotland's saints, others would give him rank as one of her religious teachers. This claim, if not so absurd as the other, is hardly more tenable. The religion described by Burns in _The Cotter's Saturday Night_ is, it should be remembered, his father's faith, not his own. The fundamental truths of natural religion, faith in God and in immortality, amid (p. 190) sore trials of heart, he no doubt clung to, and has forcibly expressed. But there is nothing in his poems or in his letters which goes beyond sincere deism--nothing which is in any way distinctively Christian. Even were his teaching of religion much fuller than it is, one essential thing is still wanting. Before men can accept any one as a religious teacher, they not unreasonably expect that his practice should in some measure bear out his teaching. It was not as an authority on such matters that Burns ever regarded himself. In his _Bard's Epitaph_, composed ten years before his death, he took a far truer and humbler measure of himself than any of his critics or panegyrists have done:--- The poor inhabitant below Was quick to learn and wise to know, And keenly felt the friendly glow And softer flame; But thoughtless folly laid him low, And stained his name. Reader, attend!--whether thy soul Soars fancy's flight beyond the pole, Or darkling grubs this earthly hole, In low pursuit; Know, prudent, cautious self-control Is wisdom's root. "A confession," says Wordsworth, "at once devout, poetical, and human--a history in the shape of a prophecy." Leaving the details of his personal story, and-- Each unquiet theme, Where gentlest judgments may misdeem, it is a great relief to turn to the bequest that he has left to (p. 191) the world in his poetry. How often has one been tempted to wish that we had known as little of the actual career of Burns as we do of the life of Shakespeare, or even of Homer, and had been left to read his mind and character only by the light of his works! That poetry, though a fragmentary, is still a faithful transcript of what was best in the man; and though his stream of song contains some sediment we could wish away, yet as a whole, how vividly, clearly, sunnily it flows, how far the good preponderates over the evil.