Burns and hypocrisy
The Very Rev Dr John Chalmers , in his contribution to the February edition of Life and Work [The beginning of wisdom], writes of the time when preachers made much of references to hellfire and brimstone in endeavours to instil fear in their congregations, also a time of ‘three-mile prayers, an’ hauf mile graces’. Dr Chalmers made mention of the poem of Robert Burns ‘The Holy Fair’, in which the poet satirised that form of preaching, and the fact that the Rev John Russell, minister at Kilmarnock and later in Stirling, was one of its well-known exponents. Mention was also made in the same poem of the Rev Alexander Moodie, minister of Riccarton: