FROM THE REV. RALPH ERSKINE’S “GOSPEL SONNETS.”
II.
The law brings terror to molest.
The gospel gives the weary rest,
The one does flags of death display.
The other shows the living way.
The law by Moses was exprest:
The glorious gospel came by Christ:
The first dim nature’s light may trace.
The last is only known by grace.
The law may rouse me from my sloth.
To faith and to repentance both:
And though the law commandeth each.
Yet neither of them can it teach.
Nor will accept for current coin
The duties which it does enjoin:
It seeks all, but accepts no less
Than constant, perfect righteousness.
The gospel, on the other hand,
Although it issue no command,
But, strictly view’d, does whole consist
In promises and offers blest.
Yet does it many duties teach.
Which legal light could never reach;
Thus faith, repentance and the like,
Are fire that gospel enkindles strike.
They have acceptance here through grace.
The law affords them no such place:
Yet still they come through both their hands.
Through gospel-teachings, law-com-
mands.
The law’s a house of bondage sore;
The gospel opens the prison-door:
The first me hamper’d in its net:
The last at freedom kindly set.
The present craves, the gospel gives;
While that me presses, this relieves;
And or affords the strength I lack,
Or takes the burden off my back.
The law requires on pain of death;
The gospel courts with loving breath;
While that conveys a deadly wound,
This makes me perfect, whole, and sound.
There viewing how disease’d I am,
I here perceive the healing balm:
Afflicted there with sense of need,
But here refreshed with meet remedy.*
The law’s a charge for which I owe;
The gospel’s my discharge to show;
The one a scene of fears doth ope,
The other is the door of home.
An angry God the law reveal’d.
The gospel shows Him reconciled:
By that I know He was displeas’d;
By this I see His wrath appeas’d.
The law thus shows the divine ire.
And nothing but consuming fire,
The gospel brings the olive branch.
And blood, the burning fire to quench.
The law still shows a fiery face:
The gospel shows a throne of grace:
Where Justice rides alone in state,
But here she takes the mercy-seat.
IN SUM.
Lo! in the law Jehovah dwells.
But Jesus is conceal’d:
Whereas the gospel’s nothing else
But Jesus Christ reveal’d.
* Suitable remedy.