fact, that it was by this that the education was carried on and made effectual He believed that punishment was remedial, and that punishment for sin was involved in the eternal nature of things; and that a due retribution should be awarded to those who had produced mischief and misery on earth he rejoiced to think; while he was convinced that the punishment would be such as was best suited as to severity, while yet healing. He did not think it one of eternal suffering rom which there might be many moral or immoral refuges, but one from which there could be no escape, while one at the same time painful and curative. This he conceived would be accomplished by an increase of tenderness of heart, by the heart. realizing the true nature of the sin and misery it had caused, so that in time it would occur no more. Evil, he held, was to be destroyed, but colud only be so by being overcome of good; and any course, therefore, was inadequate which did not achieve this object, which could only be done by arousing the spiritual nature and allowing it to see, in the light of sorrow, the sufferings of those whom it pierced. "But Mr. Erskine held that Eternal Punishment and its kindred questions while to him they had become all in all so far as their true understanding involved the character of God, and his own confidence in him were not to be approached as postulates, but received as conclusions, not to be derived from logic or the force of intellect, but to be solved in the light of Holy Love. Love, in this, he thought, ruled the conclusion. And, no doubt, as all mankind at large desire that the salvation of all were possible, so most theolo gians agree that it is the will and desire of God that all men should be saved. And this, sure, is a righteous and loving desire on the part of man. Surely, then, it is not credible that the creature could conceive a better desire than its Creator; while, if this be the desire of the Creator, it seems incredible that the Omniscient and Almighty should desire that which is impossible; the desire, therefore, must have its fulfilment, and will be accomplished in due time,' that is, when man's education is completed. Mr. Erskine found no difficulty from revelation in coming to this conclusion. Nay, it will be seen that he found it there. For if he found certain passages of Holy Scripture which seemed to favor one conclusion, he at the same time found others to favor an opposite; and he drew the inference, therefore, from the general laws that the victory would be with Good and not with Evil; or, in the words of St. Paul, that God should be all in all.' "' 1 1 Present Day Papers, Third Series. Principal Shairp of St. Andrews, abating his own ignorance of Universalism which shows itself in the extract, bears the following explicit testimony in regard to the "cherished belief" of Mr. Erskine : Arising, perhaps, out of this tendency in Mr. Erskine to be absorbed in one great truth, which he made to overbear all other truths that opposed it, was his belief in the final restoration of all men. This seemed to him to be the legitimate issue of the Gospel. The conviction that it was so grew on him latterly, and he expressed it freely. He used to dwell much on those passages in St. Paul's epistles, which seemed to him to favor this cherished belief of his. In one thing, however, Mr. Erskine was altogether unlike most of those who hold the tenets of Universalism. No man I ever knew had a deeper feeling of the exceeding evil of sin, and of the divine necessity that sin must always be misery. His Universalistic views did not in any way relax his profound sense of God's abhorrence of sin." The kind of evidence, however, on this point, which will be read with the greatest satisfaction will be Mr. Erskine's own declarations. These are not only interesting and conclusive as indicating the position he occupied on this great question, but as disclosing also the nature of those mental processes by which he reached this happy decision. We quote first from a letter addressed to Prof. Lorimer, Aug. 5, 1858: "This character of God as a teaching Father, who eternally desires and seeks the holiness of his reasonable creatures, seems to me the great revelation of the Bible, and the true meaning of Christianity. I am prepared to hear any criticisms on the book; they do not trouble me in the least. I have found a medicine which heals me; I have found an Omnipotent Friend, whom I may, by following selfish desires, shut out from my spiritual sight, but from whom I can never separate myself a Friend who is the eternal enemy, and will be the conqueror of all evil, and who will neither spare Himself, nor us, any suffering which may be necessary to this result. This is the pearl of great price which, when a man has found, he needs not that any other should tell him its value, he knows it and feels it; he does not need any evidence that this revelation of the character of God is a true revelation, he knows it must be true, or his own existence, his own consciousness is a lie." "2 "I believe as you do, that eternity has nothing to do with duration. I think eternal means essential in opposition to phenomenal. So eternal life is God's own life, it is essential life; and eternal punishment is the misery belonging to the nature of sin, and not coming from outward causes. A man who receives the will of God into his inner being is taking hold of eternal life, for God's life is in His will, or perhaps His will is His life, and thus a participation in His will is a participation in His life. Que ton royaume (regne) vienne, que ta volonte soit faite.' This is salvation when a man uses his individual will merely as the recipient of God's will. All the planets have their separate individual centres of gravitation, but then only there is order, when these are kept in subordination to the sun as the common centre. Salvation is true order in the moral world. It means a deliverance from disorder, not a deliverance from punishment, for punishment is desirable when it corrects disorder." 3 "I believe that love and righteousness, and justice in God mean exactly the same thing, viz., a desire to bring His whole moral creation into a participation of His own character and His own blessedness. He has made us capable of this, and He will not cease from using the best means for accomplishing it in us all. When I think of God making a creature of such capacities, it seems to me almost blasphemous to suppose that He will throw it from Him into everlasting darkness, because it has resisted His gracious purposes towards it for the natural period of human life. No; He who waited so long for the formation of a piece of old red sandstone, will surely wait with much long suffering for the perfecting of a human spirit." "I cannot believe that any human being can be beyond the reach of God's grace, and the sanctifying power of His Spirit. And if all are within His reach, is it possible that He will allow any to remain unsanctified? Is not the love revealed in Jesus Christ, a love unlimited, unbounded, which will not leave undone anything which love could desire? It was surely nothing else than the complete and universal triumph of that love which Paul was contemplating when he cried out, 'Oh, 2 Letter to Prof. Lorimer: Erskine's Letters by Dr. Hanna. Third Edition. 3 Letter to Madame Forel: Erskine's Letters. the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God.' " 4 "My Dear Sir:- My hope for the salvation of all men rests, in the first place, on the ground in which I know you believe as I do, namely, the desire of God that all men should be righteous; in the second place, on the assurance that God sees the end from the beginning, and will never bring into existence any spirit which he foresees will finally resist his desire." 5 The following will probably remind our readers of a passage in Murray's Life, where the young lady fronted him with the same argument: "Unless all were loved, the world could not be charged with the sin of unbelief, for if there existed a man for whom Christ did not die, there could be no sin in that man disbelieving it. If he did believe that Christ died for him, when he did not, he would be believing a lie."6 The death of Mr. Erskine occurred on March 20, 1870, at his home in Linlathen, in the 87th year of his age. Next morning after his death the physician who attended him in his last sickness, wrote: "Our dear, sweet-hearted friend is away. He died very gently last night at a quarter to ten, laid his pathetic, weary head on a pillow like a child, and his last words were Lord Jesus."" His mortal form was laid beside his mother and the brother he so revered, in the Monifirth churchyard, situated on the estuary of Tay where it broadens out to meet the ocean a spot that will ever be held in sacred remembrance by all who honor nobility of soul and saintliness of character. Soon after his death, those who had been his personal associates in literary and religious circles, uttered many touching tributes of love and esteem to his memory through the pulpit and press. Says Dr. Hanna: "Few men have ever passed away from 4 Letters to Mr. Craig, author of "Final Salvation." 6 To Rev. John Young: Erskine's Letters. 6 Letter to Madame de Stael, daughter of Madame Vernet, and daughter-in-law to the celebrated Madame de Stael: Erskine's Letters. among their fellows, of whom so large a number of those who knew him best, and were most competent to judge, would have said as they did of Mr. Erskine, that he was the best, the holiest man they ever knew, the man most human yet most divine, with least of the stains of earth, with most of the spirit of heaven; the man in whom the ideal of his own favorite poet stood in every feature realized: Our readers will be pleased to know the estimate of Mr. Erskine's character, as held by Dean Stanley, whose intellectual acquirements, catholic spirit and high position in the English Church and world-wide celebrity give no small weight to his words, on such a subject: "The mention of Carlyle and Irving suggests another, a venerable spirit lately removed from us, dear to each of them, dear to many a Scottish heart, Thomas Erskine of Linlathen. There are not a few to whom that attenuated form and furrowed visage seemed a more direct link with the unseen world than any other that had crossed their path in life. Always on the highest summits at once of intellectual cultivation and of religious speculation, he seemed to breathe the refined atmosphere, "Where the immortal shapes Of bright aerial spirits live unsphered Other loving hands may describe his goings out and comings in amongst you. But it may be permitted to an English stranger, who knew him only during his later years, to bear this humble testimony to the gift which the Scottish Church, in all its branches, received in that aged servant of the Lord. I have heard it said that once meeting a shepherd in the Highlands, he said to him, in that tone which combined in so peculiar a manner sweetness and command, and with that penetrating emphasis which drew out of every word that he used the whole depth of its meaning: Do you know the Father?' and years afterwards, on those same hills, he encountered that same shephere, who recognized him, and said, 'I know the Father now.' |
