LESS than a century ago the Gospel Sonnets of Ralph Erskine were more familiar to the religious people of Scotland than they are to-day. Judged by the critical taste of the twentieth century, the poetical works of Ralph Erskine must be considered very poor poetry indeed. The rhyme is halting, the sentiment in many places extremely commonplace, and the poetic imagination is very tame.* Yet it must be acknowledged that there are passages of rare beauty where the poetic instincts of the writer reveal themselves. Take, for instance, a few verses from the poem entitled “Earth Despicable—Heaven Desirable”—
There’s nothing round the spacious earth
To suit my vast desires;
To more refined and solid mirth
My boundless thought aspires.
I long to share the happiness
Of that triumphant throng,
That swim in seas of boundless bliss
Eternity along.
But it was not to excel as a poet that Ralph Erskine wrote his Sonnets, for he writes:—
And though in words I seem to show
The fawning poet’s style;
Yet is my plaint no feigned woe,
I languish in exile.
The end he had in view was certainly attained, if we are to judge by the remarkable popularity enjoyed by the Sonnets for over a century. The rich gospel truths which the Erskines proclaimed with such remarkable power were embodied in these poems, and were learned by heart by men and women who fed on the satisfying fare of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Even that prince of pulpit orators, George Whitefield, acknowledged his indebtedness to the Sonnets.* James Hervey,† the author of Theron and Aspasio, whose own style had much of that luxuriance of diction associated with poetic minds, bears testimony to the high esteem in which he held the Gospel Sonnets. The sonnets were published under the title: “Gospel Sonnets; or Spiritual Songs. In Six Parts—The Believer’s Espousals; Jointment, Riddle; Soliloquy; and Principles concerning Creation and Redemption, Law and Gospel, Justification and Sanctification, Faith and Sense, Heaven and Earth.” The poems were evidently written in the earlier part of his ministry. The first edition was published anonymously. The author makes the following reference to it:—”The first edition of the first five parts of this little book came forth under the title of Gospel Canticles, and though I own a copy was got out of my hand under that name, and so was carried to the press by another hand, yet upon the publication thereof, I was sometimes uneasy at its going abroad under that title, seeing one of the books of Holy Scripture is ordinarily designed by the name of Canticles. And though the name, in itself, is much of the same significance with that which is now assigned to this book, yet, lest it should not be reckoned so sober and becoming as were needful, I have embraced the first opportunity of altering the same, only allowing the other part of the title, which is but an adjunct, to stand; because the main design of the book being to hold forth some evangelical truths, I thought I might presume to allow it to pass under the title of Gospel Sonnets” (Preface to the Reader). It was afterwards enlarged and greatly improved by the author about ten years before his death. This edition was published at London, and had the author’s name. In his diary Ralph Erskine frequently refers to the work:—”Dec. 31, 1733. I had another letter from Mr. John Oswald at the Rose and Crown, London, earnestly desiring the Gospel Sonnets, which I was preparing for a new edition.”—”Jan. 23, 1734. I was helped to look for His blessing to attend my work in framing the Sonnets, that they might be for His glory and the good of many souls.”—”Sabbath, March 3, 1734. This evening, after family worship, I was strengthened mightily in secret prayer—I was made to look to the Lord, that the Sonnets might be made useful even when I was in the dust, and was led to seek I might be made to glorify the Lord Jesus. Here I thought with deep humiliation of my unworthiness, and what a wonder it would be if by the like of me His truth might be spread, and His name celebrated; and I thought none in the world had so good reason to glorify Him and magnify His name as I. My heart was poured out and humbled.”—”June 1, 1734. I wrote a preface for the Gospel Sonnets.”* In this preface he makes known his purpose in writing the Sonnets. “It never promised much,” he says, “to them that seek nothing but pleasure and satisfaction to their fancy; but I have heard that it has done some service, and I hope, through the blessing of heaven, it may yet do more to them that seek profit and edification to their souls.” As for the style in which it is composed, he says:—”I can offer no other apology for my rudeness of expression besides the want of a cultivated poetical genius than this, that most of the lines are set down in the very first unrefined dress wherein they were presented to my mind, when I thought and wrote upon these subjects; nor could the vacant minutes borrowed from my other weighty work allow me leisure to study that politeness and elegance of phrase, which more time, leisure, and pains might have hammered out.” The Preface, which is interesting reading, concludes with the prayer, “May the Lord of heaven and earth, who over-rules all things, accompany it in its journeys, abroad or at home, with His blessing to their souls for their holy recreation and their spiritual edification and comfort: and to His care I commend it, in the words of a famous and justly celebrated Scots poet, upon Psalm xxxv. 1—
“Rerum sancte opifex, adest
Et patrocinio protege me tuo.”
Which may be adapted to the matter in hand, thus:—
“The truth which hell may criticise
Great God, be near to patronise.”
The Gospel Sonnets did as much, if not more, to popularise the teaching of the Marrow of Modern Divinity as the powerful preaching of the Erskines themselves. Special emphasis is laid on the free offer of the Gospel:—
“The gospel preacher then, with holy skill,
Must offer Christ to whosoever will,
To sinners of all sorts that can be named,
The blind, the lame, the poor, the halt, the maim’d;
Not daring to restrict the extensive call,
But opening wide the net to catch them all.
No soul must be excluded that will come
No right of access be confined to some.
Though none will come till conscious of their want,
Yet right to come they have by sovereign grant,
Such right to Christ, His promise and His grace,
That all are damn’d who hear and don’t embrace.
So freely is the unbounded call dispensed,
We therein find even sinners unconvinced.”*
The most curious of the Gospel Sonnets is the part entitled the “Believer’s Riddle or the Mystery of Faith.” The author, in a style which may be regarded by some as extravagantly paradoxical, sets forth the experiences of the believer, and forestalls criticism by informing the reader that this “enigmatic song does not to wisest nat’ralists† belong.” The following specimen, which is the opening section of the Riddle, will give some idea of its nature:—
My life’s a maze of seeming traps—
A scene of mercies and mishaps,
A heap of jarring to-and-froes,
A field of joys, a flood of woes.
I’m in my own, and others’ eyes
A labyrinth of mysteries.
I’m something that from nothing came;
Yet sure it is I nothing am.
Once I was dead, and blind, and lame,
Yea, I continue still the same;
Yet what I was, I am no more,
Nor ever shall be as before.
My Father lives, my father’s gone,
My vital head both lost and won.
My parents cruel are, and kind
Of one, and of a diff’rent mind.
My father poison’d me to death,
My mother’s hand will stop my breath;
Her womb, that once my substance gave,
Will very quickly be my grave.
My sisters all my flesh shall eat,
My brethren tread me under feet;
My nearest friends are most unkind,
My greatest foes my greatest friend.
Another poem of interest is that in which he speaks of an imaginary contention in heaven:
In heavenly choirs a question rose,
That stirr’d up strife will never close,
What rank of all the ransom’d race
Owes highest praise to sov’reign grace?
Babes thither caught from womb and breast,
Claimed right to sing above the rest,
Because they found the happy shore
They never saw nor sought before.
Those that arriv’d at riper age,
Before they left the dusky stage
Thought grace deserv’d yet higher praise,
That wash’d the blots of num’rous days.
Am on the war more close began,
What praising harps should lead the van
And which of grace’s heav’nly peers
Was deepest run in her arrears.
” ‘Tis I (said one), ‘bove all my race,
Am debtor chief to glorious grace.”
” Nay (said another), hark I trow,
I’m more oblig’d to grace than you.”
These specimens are sufficient to give the reader some idea of the nature of the Gospel Sonnets, and to most they will reveal that Ralph Erskine, like some of the rhymer’s referred to by Fuller, drank more deeply at Jordan than Helicon. The Gospel Sonnets has been translated into Welsh,* and a translation† of The Believer’s Riddle into Gaelic was left in MSS. by the late Rev. Dr. Blair, of Barney’s River, Prince Edward Island. In Dr. Ryland’s Life and Death of Rev. A. Fuller it is told that Fuller one day took up Erskine’s “Gospel Catechism for Young Persons.” “I read,” he says, “and as I read I wept. Indeed, I was almost overcome with weeping, so interesting did the doctrine of eternal salvation appear to me.” The Catechism begins thus:—
Kind teacher, may I come to learn§
In this abrupt address,
By framing questions that concern
My endless happiness?
Yea, child; but, if you’d learn to run
The great salvation race,
Know that the name of Christ alone
Can answer every case.
Ralph Erskine, the author of the Gospel Sonnets, was the son of the Rev. Henry Erskine. He was born at Monilaws, Northumberland, in 1685. He studied at Edinburgh, and for a time acted as tutor in the family of Colonel Erskine, whose residence was near Culross. During this period he made frequent visits to his brother, Ebenezer, who was minister at Portmoak. In a letter to the Rev. Mr. Shaw, of Leith, he makes reference to great spiritual benefit derived on one of these visits:—”It is now, I reckon,” he says, “more than twenty-five years since I staid some time in Portmoak; and being under deep concern about eternal salvation, I had occasion of hearing you preach at a sacrament in Ballingray on John xviii. 37—’Art thou a king then? by means of which some of the beams of King Jesus shone on my heart, to the darkening of all mundane glory, and to the drawing out of my soul in insatiable breathings after Him. And although I would fain hope He has since from time to time allowed further and clearer views of Himself, and His glorious mystery of salvation from sin and wrath by free grace, running in the channel of the Mediator’s blood, and of grace reigning through righteousness unto eternal life (Rom. v. 21), yet that being among the very first views that he remarkably vouchsafed, it is what I can never altogether forget. Some of the saving fruits and effects of that forementioned sermon of yours upon the Monday, I think the mountains at the back of my brother’s house will bear witness to, but oh! many hills and mountains of another kind have I seen in my way since that, and yet grace coming skipping over them.” He was licensed to preach the Gospel on July 8, 1709. In 1711 he was ordained at Dunfermline, and for many a long year broke the bread of life to his parishioners. “I got my ministry,” he says, “from the Lord; and, however unworthy I have been of it, yet I dare not deny that many, many times He hath owned me in it, and appended many seals to it from time to time.” He took an active part in the Marrow Controversy, and suffered the censures and calumny that his brethren endured in defence of the Marrow doctrines. In 1733 his brother Ebenezer was suspended from the office of the ministry by the Commission of the General Assembly, which met in August. This was the step which led to the Secession of 1733. Ralph did not join at first with the Seceders, though in full sympathy with them, but in 1737 he and Mair of Orwell cast in their lot with the Associate Presbytery. Ten years later, when the Associate Synod was broken into two parties, Burghers and Antiburghers, Ralph took his stand with the Burghers, and some of the most painful incidents in his ecclesiastical career met him during this controversy. He died in 1752, and was buried at Dunfermline. The fullest account of his life is that contained in Fraser’s Life and Diary of the Rev. Ralph Erskine. Prof. MacEwen’s The Erskines in the Famous Scots Series is an interesting and instructive sketch of the two brothers.
* A recent writer on the Scottish literature of the eighteenth century thus refers to the Gospel Sonnets:—”The nearest approach made to poetry was the Gospel Sonnets by the latter divine (Ralph Erskine)—’sonnets’ which are verily the Marrow of Divinity done into rhyme. Thousands of pious souls loved these lugubrious strains—which appeared in successive editions to be thumbed out of shape and peat-reeked out of legibility” (Graham’s Scottish Men of Letters in the 18th Century). It is to be regretted that a writer whose knowledge of this period was so intimate did not learn to dip his pen in oil when referring to the great evangelical divines of the period.
* “Your Sonnets and Sermons have been blessed to me and many.”—Letters of George Whitefield to Ralph Erskine. Fraser’s Life and Diary of Rev. R. Erskine, p. 318.
† Ibid., p. 501.
* Fraser’s Life and Diary of Rev. R. Erskine, p. 499.
* The Believer’s Espousals, chap. v., sec. v.
† That is unconverted readers, those in their natural state, as the divines put it.
* Brown’s Gospel Truth.
† Celtic Review, ii. 157.
§ The Believer’s Principles, chap. i., sec. iii.
In the covenant of grace God requires the truth of grace, not any certain measure; and a spark of fire is fire as well as the whole element. Therefore we must look to grace in the spark as well as in the flame. All have not the like strong, yet the like precious faith, whereby they lay hold, and put on, the perfect righteousness of Christ. A weak hand may receive a rich jewel; a few grapes will show that the plant is a vine, and not a thorn. It is one thing to be wanting in grace, and another thing to want grace altogether. God knoweth we have nothing of ourselves, therefore in the covenant of grace He requireth no more than He giveth, and giveth what He requireth, and accepteth what He giveth. He that hath not a lamb may bring a pair of turtle doves. —R. Sibbes, D.D.