From the doctoral thesis of Robert A. Reid, University of Edinburgh, 1930: An Appreciation of the Spiritual Order and Other Papers by Thomas Erskine, Edinburgh: Edmonston & Douglas, 1871.
Erskine’s Spiritual Order puts into definite terms a subject which had occupied his mind from the earliest days of his religious studies. That subject was the universal restoration of men. In his various books and letters reference is made to this theme, but Erskine, in the Spiritual Order, makes it no longer tentative but plain and, perhaps, this stand for Universalism is his supreme contribution with which his name in this country will be associated.
The Life of Jesus by M. Renan greatly interested Erskine. In the opening chapter of The Spiritual Order, he points out that Renan’s criticism of the Life of Jesus by Strauss, which errs in being too theological and not sufficiently historical, emphasises the weakness of Renan’s work, which, on the other hand, practically ignores the theological aspect of the work of Jesus. Erskine had no sympathy with preaching neglectful of theology and less with critics who wrote as if theology was an effete system. The central element in the work of the historic Christ was to reveal the Kingdom of God and proclaim the call of God the Father to all men that a refuge from the evil in the world and in the heart was to be found within the Kingdom. Jesus revealed God as Father, as loving and righteous, and to get to the inwardness of that message, the teaching of Jesus must not and can never be, separated from His life. And from the teaching and life of Christ there comes a power, which, given a chance, transforms character and will yet regenerate the world. When Jesus began to teach, those who afterwards became his bitterest enemies found in his message moral and spiritual truth with which they, through tradition and teaching, were familiar. What staggered them was just what Renan ignores, viz. his unique claim to be The Son of God, “who never sought nor found for Himself a place among the sons of men.” To this, the answer of Renan is this was only self-preaching on the part of Jesus, but, as Erskine shows, self-preaching cannot tally with the claim, “I am the Vine, The Bread, The Door, I am the Shepherd.” In all these claims Jesus is not emphasising his claims, but those of The Father who, though He has committed all judgment to the Son, has sent the Son, to whom no one can come unless the Father draw him, and, on the Father, the Son is ever dependent. Erskine shows Renan avoiding the issue, either Christ was an imposter, or what He claimed to be betrays the consciousness that there was a something in Christ which had eluded Him, even although he says Jesus was “the best and wisest and greatest man that ever lived..”
Very subtly Erskine shows that we can learn a lesson from the mistakes of the great, but, though Renan claims his Life of Jesus as “Historic,” he, at the same time, ignores the historic facts behind the great claims of Christ. These surely call for a deeper answer than pretensions or self-preaching. To Renan that inquiry is fruitless, because it is theological. Renan saw the moral beauties of the teaching of Jesus, but he also failed to see that these beauties cannot of themselves grow in human hearts, and therefore it is the duty of the wise historian to examine, whether in the revelation of the character of God and His relations to man, revealed by Christ, there were not the reasons for the transformed lives achieved by the Gospel. Erskine affirms, if this had been done by Renan, the Spiritual Order affirmed by Christianity would have become apparent. Only the self-sacrificing love of God is sufficient to explain Christian character and the supernatural claims of Jesus by which that self-sacrificing love of God is made known. Erskine, like the scientist, appeals to facts. And in Christian experience, he finds facts. Thus he says, if Renan had only considered that man might find in sorrow and suffering something in Christianity which proved suffering and sorrow to be in the nature of duty, and that these experiences were in the loving purpose of a divine Father to a son, and, if with this light or leading, Renan had examined other human experiences he might have concluded that just as a good citizen cannot be such apart from a knowledge of his country’s traditions and his personal relations to these, and just as a member of a family must observe the same rule, so no one can be a member of the Spiritual Order till he knows its history and his relations thereto.
Is there, asks Erskine, a Spiritual Order?
And once more he appeals in his own inimitable way to psychology or the content of consciousness. What is this call in the heart of goodness? Why is man impelled by right feelings? What is the origin of right intentions and actions? Do these facts not imply a Spiritual Order, or Cosmos? A social order does not make such demands as this Spiritual Order, for outwardly we may conform to be at least passable citizens of a social order, but in the Spiritual Order things are more searching, since it is not only outward but also inner conformity of the secret heart that is called for. Christianity, according to Erskine, assumes this Order exists and all men by nature belong to it, and in its precepts and examples of practice it reveals a power capable of transforming all hearts.
Erskine’s conception of the Spiritual Order as it is developed in the first chapter implies, first, An Eternal God, who is a righteous Father; secondly, a Cosmos ruled by this Eternal One: thirdly, at the apex of this creation is man—Ephesians 2:10—the divine masterpiece, yet, not perfect, but standing in need of discipline and education, mentally and morally. From that Erskine passes to the declaration that from the very nature of these facts, the supreme purpose of God in creation from one point of view is the education of man. And only One like God, whom man can know and to whom man can be drawn and attracted through sympathy and love, is able to accomplish this work of education.
Now, if this be true, then in man there must be a consciousness that these Divine operations in his heart are distinct from the faculties by which these divine elements are known. If not, then there is the fear that philosophy will take the place of religion, which will be a self-raised business. Pride will be begotten in place of reverence. Abstractions will take the place of personal relation with God. Abstractions become dogmas of the schools, whereas what is required is a religion for the race.
There may be objections to such a religion, not only because it is supernatural, but contrary to religion.
There is a physical order in the world as known to us. The world of matter is obedient to law, but that obedience is altogether different in the moral and spiritual order. Man, when crushed by nature, knows it, but nature understands not. It is for this that the physical order is not superior to the moral and spiritual, whilst at the same time, both form a part in the mighty scheme of things.
Christianity, whose centre is the Word made flesh, has its counterpart in man’s spiritual intelligence, for the heart is not completely dependent on outside authority or teaching. To Christianity there cannot be attributed this likeness in man to the facts revealed. Christianity calls attention to this likeness, which is the very substance of man’s spirit though the knowledge and power of this created gift may be a knowledge unused by man. The facts of Christianity fit into the folds of our moral and spiritual nature. The bird for the air, and the fish for the sea, and man for fellowship with God.
Now all this may be accepted as true of God, but not of Christ. Can these relationships between God and man be identified with Christ as Christianity claims? Erskine answers this question, and in doing so displays his wonderful command of dealing with moral and spiritual phenomena. The central fact of Christianity is the revelation by Jesus of the Fatherhood of God.
And no religion is of any importance or theory of religion that leaves out that truth. It is the light which guides Erskine through ignorance and darkness to certainty and hope. The doctrine of the Divine Fatherhood is a fact which harmonises with the divine nature and character as conceived in the mind of man. The revelation of Jesus Christ meets man’s reason. Is there reasonableness in the divinity of Christ? Erskine answers, yes, since he is sure there must be in the nature of the Godhead a fact analogous to the reality of Father and Son without deciding whether Christ be that Son or not.
We say Christ is the Eternal Son of The Father in answer to the question, “What think ye of Christ?” In the days of His flesh the people did not realise the importance of the question, but it is an inquiry that has come as a challenge to every age since the time it was first uttered. The Gospels reveal that Christ preached Himself more than moral duties because He is the power through which all moral and spiritual duties are fulfilled. Now, in self-preaching, as Renan puts it, Jesus made known to men revelations and thoughts in regard to God both profound and original. God was the Fountain of all goodness. None is good save God. Goodness—but what is goodness? It is found in trust and trustworthiness. There is goodness in giving and receiving. Can these facts be postulated of God? Or does the Unity and Sovereignty of God preclude us from saying these are in God? If we so assert, then there is a form of goodness which is not in God. All goodness, according to Erskine, originates and is in God. Every form of goodness then must have a corresponding recipient form. And so, in the divine nature, there must be two personalities representing Giver and Receiver, otherwise for the display of goodness, therefore, there could be no possibility apart from the creature. God could not have sympathy with Himself. God is love, and love seeks sympathy. And, if the divine Unity interposed, then there is no sympathy within the nature of God, and therefore there would be compulsion to create. Relief for all this is found in the Eternal Sonship. Here, again, there may be the criticism that such a God is only human after all. In a striking sentence Erskine answers this. He points out there are two hemispheres in God—Giver and Receiver, Father and Son. Unity is not singleness but completeness, and the reality of Father and Son finds completion in a Common Spirit. Spiritual creation stands also in the Son, which implies it also is included in the fellowship of Love. “I and my Father are one,” said Jesus, and added, “My Father is greater than I,” which means, as God, he was equal with the Father, but, as man, inferior. The uniqueness of the revelation of Jesus is manifestation of God as a Giver and Receiver. God is love, according to John, and, out of the fulness of that love, pours into the Son’s all-embracing capacity love and wisdom, not for himself alone, but, as the Head and First begotten of the whole creation. The Fatherhood of God in the Old Testament is one of creation and sovereignty only, though there are adumbrations of greater things to come. It is in Christ we see the fulness of the divine Fatherhood. This love has come to man through the eternal Sonship in Jesus Christ. And the message of the Son is that the Almighty Father created only for good, and since man has been so created, then man is meant to share and participate in the divine fulness. Now, this participation depends on the indwelling of the Son in the human heart to which the Son communicates the very nature of his own goodness.
Hence it is that Christian morality finds its roots in Christian theology. Do we receive this doctrine on authority only? Erskine confesses he is amazed at the general belief in such a doctrine, and, whilst not basing the doctrine on authority, affirms there is in humanity a craving for such a Daysman as Jesus claims to be. Further, it is his belief that those who have held the doctrine have seen in it some light, which, though they could not describe or explain, yet the light has brought them into hallowed relations with the divine Father.
Men are not disorganised units. And just as a living mind for its thoughts demands a nexus, so there is in the heart of humanity a craving for unity and order, which Erskine’s mind sees in the Fatherhood of God communicating of his fulness to the Son, the Head of the race, which, in turn, receives from the Son of the fulness of God.
It was easier for the Gentile world to receive the notion implied in the term of God than even the Israelite. But it was fitting the truth should be manifested first in Israel.
Erskine has been criticised for his neglect of the historic Christ just as Paul was accused, but, like the apostle to the Gentiles, Erskine excels when he gives in his own words his synthesis of the historic Christ. In the last paragraph on page 45 there is a description of Jesus of Nazareth which compares with the words of Paul in Philippians Chapter 2, verse 7.
Erskine believed he had more of the presence of God when he wrote The Brazen Serpent, than he had in his other compositions, but to this statement there can be added the experience of most of his readers—wonder at Erskine’s power in a word, a phrase, or a sentence, to bring light to a truth, and set in motion a train of thought.
The Purpose of God.
Behind the Spiritual Order, as conceived by Erskine, there was the working mind and heart of the divine Father. What was the purpose of the Eternal in regard to Man? Erskine sets himself to examine this question in his own characteristic way. And in doing so he makes very definite what hitherto had been coming up in his mind as set forth in letters and conversations with friends. Again, in his arguments, he reveals the mysticism of his mind and also his great genius in dealing with the contents of the human mind and heart. What is a true religion? And where shall an answer be found? He turns to conscience and his own life; and a religion, in which he would have confidence, must explain both conscience and life. It is through conscience or the spiritual sense that we know of the higher world, and it is on the battleground of the heart that man wages the fight either for goodness or evil. Conscience reveals in the heart a purpose not self-originated, for we fight against it, yet this purpose dominates man and makes itself felt. It is at the very root of being. This purpose is not of education, which can draw out, but is not able to implant. What is this that is urged on man in conscience? It is God’s purpose with us. And what is that? It is to make man a good man, says Erskine. This is religious footing for the next advance, that a purpose must have a Purposer. That purposer is the Creator, and his purpose indicates what he himself is. “There is no one good but God,” said Christ, and He is this God who calls man to goodness in life and character.
And just because God is good, man can trust himself, indeed, everything, into his hands. This, Erskine affirms, is his first true conception of God. Natural Religion reveals the infinite power of God, but does not draw man near to God, for it gives only one aspect of the divine nature. It is different when the soul apprehends the fact that God is insisting on us the need to be like Himself. In that message and in man’s endeavour to fulfill it the individuality or personality of the man is discovered. Man is distinct from the other works of God. No other creature can fill, in the same way, the place of another. God understands man. He is ever sustaining man. When this is understood and accepted, then God is “My Father” as well as “Our Father.” The purpose of God is to train men in His own righteousness. The purpose of God then is to educate. Our moral and mental qualities seem to suggest this. When men are judged from this standard of judgment, there seems little to show for this education. Can it be possible that the divine hand is at work? What of the slums? These are the products of minds crushed by want and urged by sensual gratification. Yet even in the hearts of such there is the call of God and a knowledge of that call. Erskine then turns the arguments thus, think of man’s potentialities and capacities, for from these we may infer that we are, and the world is, under a discipline and educative purpose. The process seems long drawn out and the results poor, but will God be less patient with man than he is with the red sandstone fossil? God is calling men to righteousness, or, as Erskine puts it, into sympathy with Himself—the Eternal One. And the reason for the call is God is love. It is to know the love as an experience, and to return it is to show righteousness. We may thwart this love, but God never ceases urging it on us for our good. He marks and condemns error. That the divine heart never ceases to love is man’s hope. Then Erskine definitely gives to the world his thought in regard to the final restoration of all. God will persevere until this is accomplished.
Erskine is not so much interested in race development as in the education of the individual. Each individual is immortal and apart from that there can be no religion for man. Erskine will not have it said that balancing the good and evil the former has predomination or, at least, is on the balance side and, therefore, though man’s life really ends at death, he has nothing of which he may complain. That we can discern the excellency of goodness is a promise, on God’s part, that under His guidance, we shall be fitted to fill the place which God has provided for each individual in His Spiritual Order. Life then is not probation, but education, for God is not a Judge, but a divine Father. We are indeed tested and tried, for, according to Erskine, “no education can go on without trial; but we are tried that we may be educated, not educated that we may be tried.”
The two ideas of God as Judge and Father lead to different results. A judge acts according to laws; the love of a father is inextinguishable. But is there no law in the Gospel? Why did Jesus suffer outside the camp? Why is it said, “He bore the sins of many?” To these questions Erskine gives the reply that probation is not of the spirit of the Gospel. What about believing? Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. The answer is the love of God is free, and death, as a propitiation to justice, instead of resting on the fact that these are a manifestation of the righteousness of God, the outcome of love, which, whilst never ceasing to condemn our errors, yet at the same time can never cease to seek the deliverance of the soul from evil. All our thoughts of God and our relations to Him must take their colour from this divine purpose of educating man into His own likeness. At the same time the man who regards God simply as one whose righteousness we can understand and approve, but not one who loves, and one whom we can love, since love is the only completeness, only called forth by one to whom we can approach and know and love, has no assured hope. Love cannot fasten on an abstraction. Neither can we love a being, whom we cannot apprehend and trust. Pantheism had no place in the faith of Erskine; “I am persuaded,” he says, (page 24), “that the whole spirit and power of Christianity are contained in the thing, which is meant by the word.”
Knowability and accessibility lead us to love God. Then, because of this love, duty becomes not simply the desire to be right, but a joy; and it is through the abiding joy we have in God, whose nature is both knowable and accessible, that we are able to resist the seductions of life and feel ourselves safe against them. Out of the divine love there must come power to us, enabling us to love the unlovable, and to ever turn to the divine love as to a living fountain. How is this brought about? We are not worthy, yet the love of God is our portion for He loves us. He is not driven away by unloveliness, either in us or in our brother. The desire of God is to make all men worthy; it is the nature of righteous love to communicate itself. We are to co-operate with the love of God.
But the power is from God to me in order that I may experience the love of God. And through that same power I love my brother. The Greek spoke of righteousness, but the Hebrew of the righteous One, and that to Erskine is the truest philosophy as well as the only religion.
In a social order, as we have seen, it is possible to be a recluse. Not so in family life, for here relationships are most intimate and close; but this is more so in the Spiritual Order, for here we are entirely dependent on God the Father, who sustains us, without whom we could not think or act. —How do we know this? Our conscious moral nature is furnishing that testimony, says Erskine. We can be in several orders, indeed, so much taken up with the social order that we put out of our mind the spiritual, but the Spiritual Order exists and our happiness or ill is bound up with it.
Our reason, affirms Erskine, is only satisfied with theological assertions when these manifest themselves in practice. Now, if we see verification of the words, “Ye are the salt of the earth,” and “Ye are the light of the world,” then in the theology of these facts there must be a power behind them calling forth the practice. Coherence of practice and theory, and the dynamic of practice in obedience and faithfulness, love and grace form the greatest proof for Christianity. There is manifested in this Spiritual Order the counterpart of what we see in the law of gravitation by which order is maintained in the world of nature.
Erskine here interposes a note of warning. Christianity, he says, imposes no beliefs on us, just that for believing’s sake we may get good, without any reference to the character of God and moral relations to Him.
Creeds, set down without a nexus or explanation, do not help but hinder the acceptance of truth and may even propagate error, as in the Athanasian Creed, where merit is given in exchange for belief.
We may, says Erskine, translate into acts some of the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount, but a little experience will manifest the inability of the unassisted heart to fulfill the supreme demands of these New Testament laws and principles. It is outwith our power to make midnight to become midday, so it is not in human ability to achieve the precepts of Jesus in practice. Only the power of love can accomplish such a task, but human love is not sufficient. Where is the power to be obtained? It is in God through His righteous love abiding and energising in us.
Our hearts condemn us, says Erskine, when we commit faults and display defects as natural to us as the colour of our hair. Is there justice in such natural phenomena? Yes, if these are meant to teach us that we are, and ever must be, dependent of God, not in an arbitrary sense, or that we may render to Him homage; no, but only because this dependence on God is a great reality, proving the Divine love on which the heart must live and thrive. Now this dependence is no defect. In a note, Erskine points out that in one of the prayers of the Genevese Liturgy, there is an expression which seems to indicate that men would have thought themselves in a better condition, if they had been capable of themselves to do at least some worthy, good thing. As we breathe by the will of God, so the life of the soul depends on our perpetual acceptance of the influence of spiritual gravitation. The planets, if for the moment we think of them with the power of choice, cannot emancipate themselves from the law of gravitation, and yet maintain “sweet order,” no more can man, who has the power of choice, expect peace and order in his life, if conscience ignores the guiding Light of God and expects to find his true guidance in self-will. The planet must have a centre of gravity and gravitation to keep its proper course, so man has a centre, which, unlike the planet, he is free to choose or reject, and the centre for man is the will of God. If the planet does not require a chart, man does, in order to know whether self or God is guiding, and also to know if he had chosen the true centre and is in truth following the law of God. It is not by effort of the will, led by self, that we reach the purpose of life, but as we make our will, which is indeed ours, the divine will. That is in Erskine’s opinion the purpose of Christianity. In a lecture on Progress in Philosophy by the late Viscount Haldane (Birkbeck College Centenary Lectures, 1825-1925, University of London Press, 1924) we have these words, “There is truth in that view, in the outlook of those who say, ‘Never mind the supposed necessity of discovering some particular system which is to represent the truth.’ There is no such system. It is the study of the whole. It is the striving after truth that is the reality, and that truth is something fixed and final, and beyond it is a delusion. All our systems, and our mode of viewing things are, after all, partial, and there was much in what Tennyson said, though he ended up with a metaphor which looks more theological than I should like to commit myself to:
“Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And Thou, O Lord, are more than they.”
To Erskine, on the other hand,
“Our wills are ours to make them Thine.”
Another thinker, R.H. Button, in his study of George Eliot as an author writes, “George Eliot, with a faith like that of her own Dinah, would to my mind have had one of the most effective intellects the world had ever seen. Her imagination would have gained that vivacity and spring, the absence of which is its only artistic defect; her noble ethical conceptions would have gained certainty and grandeur; her singularly just and impartial judgment would have lost the tinge of gloom, which seems always to pervade it; and her poetic feelings would have been no longer weighed down by the super-incumbent mass of a body of skeptical thought with which they struggled for the mastery in vain. Few minds, at once so speculative and so creative, have ever put their mark on literature. With a quicker pulse of life, with a richer, happier faith, I could hardly conceive the limit to her power.”
How are we to learn to make a right choice? We must learn to know God that we may fully trust Him and love Him, not as the righteous Judge; but he who strives continually after righteousness is on a higher plane morally than the man with the educative idea as the basis of his faith, who yet allows God’s fatherly love to lower the holiness of God, and the divine abhorrence of evil. On the other hand, the futility of effort may open a door to the free love of God as Father.
The evil in the world, and in the heart of the individual may appall us, but God condemns this evil and calls on men to work for righteousness and will never cease so doing till all are fellow workers with Him. Atheism denies this which is the basis of theism. Obliteration of the sinner is not victory, but defeat for God. It is in correction and education that the victorious will of God is displayed. In God, mercy and justice, asserts Erskine, are the same thing. All these points are advocated with a zeal and enthusiasm only possible in one, who himself was pure in heart, and therefore saw more clearly the tenderness in the heart of the Eternal Father.
The Bible in Relation to Faith.
Erskine was not greatly interested in Biblical criticism as a necessary corollary of the scientific spirit of the 19th. century. His age and lack of equipment were hindrances, but if, from that point of view, he was not interested, he was very doubtful of the influence which this new spirit of inquiry would have on uneducated minds. And so we find Erskine is timorous in face of the new forces. He did not think the ordinary mind was ready for such conclusions as Colenso had reached, and so we find Erskine expostulating with the Bishop and asking if it was wise to disturb the feelings and minds of good and earnest people. This tenderness for the prejudices and ignorance of the faithful was very characteristic of Erskine.
What is Erskine’s attitude towards the Bible? In some respects, it was as revolutionary as the view of Colenso. It must be borne in mind that to most people in the Scottish Church verbal inspiration was an established fact. To think otherwise was not far short of blasphemy. Now, Erskine, even as Colenso from another point of view, takes for granted many commonsense views of the Bible, which were assuredly not part of the common stock of beliefs. The doctrine of the Bible according to Erskine must satisfy reason and judgment as this is directed by conscience. And yet reason is suspect, inasmuch as it savors of presumption, and is contrary also to faith, which some think is opposed to knowledge. To Erskine the Bible was necessary as an outward communication apart from which man could not have been able to arrive at the truths communicated. Yet he also sees this truth must satisfy the mind, which calls for coherency and reasonableness. These he finds in the Bible. The theories, or guesses, concerning the natural world are supported by the deductions of the science of mathematics, so the Bible fits in to all those facts which tally with the ideas of a Spiritual Order. We are not to believe because the church affirms this is the faith once delivered to the saints or because certain writers two thousand years ago wrote a life of Jesus of Nazareth. Each man must find in the facts a light, or moral power, which satisfies reason and conscience. This, Erskine experienced in his spiritual life. And why should it not be so? —for Erskine is very explicit in affirming the Bible assumes this must be the natural attitude in which man should read the word. The authority of the Bible furnishes facts to which the Christian consciousness assents. If our faith only rests on authority apart from a knowledge of God revealed in Christ and our personal relations to God in Christ, then we are in a hopeless position in face of criticism. To insist on rightness and reasonableness in revelation does not detract from the Honour of God. On the contrary it is giving God the glory out of hearts created by Him to allow not only authority, but also judgment, reasonableness and conscience to have their proper place. A faith apart from such a spirit is no faith at all. It may, however, be asked, do circumstances not modify the value of conscience? Is it an infallible guide? But how apart from conscience can we know the infallibility of any guidance? We are responsible. Any guidance which fails to bring the heart nearer God is false. A guide who does not help me in this is failing in duty. Authority and spiritual experience must go together. Christianity is a revelation of moral and spiritual facts as real as physical facts and this reality we can perceive and experience. The Bible is not given to man to believe apart from the testimony of his inner conscience and common sense. To what Erskine has said he finds also reason for the claims of the Bible as the Word of God in the genius of the Jewish race for righteousness, as the Greeks had the genius of Art. There are gleams of light in the writings of individuals such as Socrates, but the light of the Bible is that which comes from a people to whom the greatest thing in the world was righteousness. This, says Erskine, was the direct choice of God, that in Israel all mankind should be blessed. The uniqueness of the fact is a proof of divine interposition. The Gentile always applied to God, or the gods, power, whereas Israel emphasises righteousness which, according to Erskine, is certainly moulding the whole life of society.
These positions held by Erskine are similar to the thoughts of Coleridge on the same theme. Naturally we ask what influence Coleridge had on the formation of Erskine’s opinions. We have asserted already that nearly all the positions taken up by Erskine in his first book form the groundwork for what he afterwards develops. There can be no doubt in the mind of anyone who compares the Aids to Reflection by Coleridge with what is found in the writings of Erskine that there is a striking similarity in the sententious style of the one author with the other. In the part of the Aids, “Aphorisms on Spiritual Religion,” we must be struck with a certain likeness of expression. The reader of Erskine is familiar with the idea—Christianity is not a theory, or a speculation, but a life. Not a philosophy of life, but life and a living process. A moral evil is an evil that has its origin in the will. An evil common to all must have a ground common to all. Now this evil ground cannot originate in the Divine Will; it must, therefore, be referred to the will of man. “Evidence of Christianity” I am weary of the word. Make a man feel the want of it; rouse him, if you can, to the self-knowledge of his need of it; and you may safely trust it to his own evidence—remembering only the express declaration of Christ himself, “No man cometh to Me, unless the Father leadeth him.” “I deem it impious and absurd to hold that the Creator would have given us the faculty of reason or that the Redeemer would, in so many varied forms of argument and persuasion, have appealed to it, if it had been useless or impotent.” Erskine was evidently a reader of Coleridge as he was of Foster and Law, but if it is true that Erskine’s thoughts in his later books were in embryo in his first, then all we can say is Coleridge influences the style of Erskine but did not give him the thought. Both writers are difficult to read. What reason have we for this conclusion. The evidence is this. The Internal Evidence and Essay on Faith were published respectively in 1820, 1822, and the Aids to Reflection in 1825.
The closing chapter in The Spiritual Order is devoted to the Epistle to the Romans, which formed so large a part in the Doctrine of Election. The one new element, though indeed not new but emphasised, is the declaration on the part of Erskine that his mature belief, founded on Paul’s words in regard to Final Restoration, is that all shall be saved. There shall not be one lost good.