Ralph Erskine.\

I.

IN order to our forming a just and instructive estimate of a preacher, we must distinguish between his popularity and his usefulness in the highest sense which this word can bear. . . .

The fact to which we now wish to draw more special attention is, that Ralph Erskine was not simply an eminent preacher, but one whose gospel, in a remarkable manner, came to men “not in word only, but in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance.” Wherever he went, a reviving influence appeared to go with him, “God causing him to triumph in every place.” There is in one part of his Memoir an itinerary from which it appears that wherever he preached in a lengthened circuit, there were great meltings and searchings of heart and the nucleus of a flourishing church was formed; while on the slopes of the Lomond Hills near to his brother’s church at Portmoak, and in the wide sphere of his own stated ministry at Dunfermline, especially on great sacramental solemnities when numbers travelled on foot over a distance of seventy miles “to keep the solemn feasts,” he and his associates were favoured with a succession of pentecosts. Far beyond the range of his living voice, he did good by his printed sermons at the time, and there are facts to prove that, after the lapse of more than a century, their sweet odour and vitalizing power have not been spent. It is well known that the devout author of “Theron and Aspasio” preferred his writings above all other uninspired productions, as the companion and solace of his dying hours; Whitefield owned himself indebted to them for a more clear and evangelical theology; while, in later times, the strong-minded Andrew Fuller acknowledged that they had awakened him to conviction and moved him even to tears. And at this hour, as we are able to testify from personal observation, his sermons are purchased and read with avidity by the Dutch peasant, and are serving to keep alive on many a family hearth in Holland the fire of evangelical life, when it has become extinguished in the pulpit. The body of the dead prophet let down into the grave of a dead church, causes the dry and mouldering bones to live.

Now, it is a question of much practical interest, especially to ministers of the gospel—Can we discover any prominent qualities in the character and ministry of Mr. Erskine which account for this success? It is superfluous to explain that in proposing this question we acknowledge as one of our most settled convictions the operation of the Holy Spirit as an agency at work in every case in which a human soul is “born unto God.” But then, in entire harmony with this belief, we assert that there is more of adaptation in some of the human instruments employed by the Divine Spirit than in others, and that where certain conditions of character and habits of ministerial life are given, this higher form and more abundant measure of success usually accompanies them. And an inquiry conducted on this principle respecting the secret of Ralph Erskine’s success, as one who was singularly “wise in winning souls,” may perhaps suggest to some who are bearing the heavy burden of the sacred office in our own days, what have hitherto been their deficiencies and what should now be their aims.

*This article from the pen of the Rev. Dr. Andrew Thomson, forms a preface to two volumes of selections from the writings of Ralph Erskine—”The Beauties of Ralph Erskine.”

1. If we are to account for the effects of Mr. Erskine’s ministry, as one in which the highest ends of the pastorate were gained, we must begin at his study and mark his diligent preparation on week-days, for the full and faithful delivery of his message when he went forth with it, on Sabbath mornings, to his pulpit. He lighted up the temple with the pure “beaten oil,” and to the end of his pastorate he appears to have abridged nothing of his studious labours. He never fell into the mistake which has betrayed multitudes into indolence, if not sunk them into contempt, of imagining that it was an easy thing to speak with simplicity. In the case of men like Whitefield and Wesley, who spent much of their time in itinerating, and whose parish was almost literally a kingdom, less of this continuous preparation was needed; but in a settled pastorate it is essential, if we would not be despised. Mr. Erskine’s hearers were not long in discovering that what he gave them was the ripened fruit of much thought, and they gathered around him in growing multitudes with the confidence that they would not be “sent empty away.”

2. Nor was the work of this great preacher in his study a mere intellectual exercise. He sought in frequent prayer other aids than those which mere lexicons or commentaries could yield him. It is not merely, as applied to him, a strong metaphor but a literal fact, that he often read his Bible on his knees. When there seemed decay in his own spiritual life or in that of his people, whole days were set apart by him for secret fasting and prayer, while there was much earnest pleading not only for divine illumination in his study, but for a blessing on his message when he bore it forth, with shining countenance, to his people. Few things are more interesting in his correspondence than the evidence it affords of the devout spirit with which his work in the pulpit was anticipated, and the united and earnest longings expressed by himself and his brethren, when some sacramental festival was in prospect, for showers of blessing. We quote a portion of a prayer which was found as a memorandum in one of his note-books, and which, though afterwards offered in the public assembly on a day of humiliation preparatory to the Lord’s Supper had evidently been part of his “Cardiphonia” ere he passed from his closet to the sanctuary:—

“Alas! we live amid many dark and dismal days of wrath, wherein God is frowning upon our mother-church, and frowning on all her children. O may we have one glorious day of the Son of man amongst all our gloomy days. May the Sun of Righteousness range the clouds and dart a beam of light upon this assembly. O for a thick shower of heavenly influences to make a glorious communion in this place! Does not the dry ground of our hearts need such a shower, especially on a humiliation-day? We come to set our parched and withered souls under the drop of thy ordinances. Lord, if we have a Bochim on the fast-day, may we not expect a Bethel on the feast-day? A shower of influences would make a shower of tears among us. Lord, come and thunder out of Sinai upon the dead and obstinate hearts that are here, to prepare them for coming to Mount Zion, the city of the living God. Lord, take thy bow in thine hand, and shoot off the arrows of conviction to pierce the heart of the enemies of the King. Our time will soon be at an end—our praying time, our preaching time, our hearing time, our communion time will soon be at an end. Death will in a little cut our breath, and send us to eternity, and part us and ordinances for ever. If we be not joined to the Lord in ordinances now, then in a little, God and we must part for ever and ever; but if God and we meet together graciously in time, then we shall meet together gloriously in eternity. O send forth thy light and thy truth; let them lead us to thy holy hill, and to thy tabernacles.”

1. And when Mr. Erskine ascended his pulpit, it was indeed to preach “the gospel.” He did not tarry always in what Dr. Arnold happily termed “the outer courts” of the temple of truth, but delighted to conduct his hearers inward to the sight of those great central doctrines which reflect with broadest lustre the glory of God, and which he knew to be God’s power to the salvation of every one that believed them. He sought for variety and freshness to his preaching, not in novelties that were outside the Christian doctrine and foreign to it, but in those exhaustless riches which were contained in the gospel itself. His gospel was “full-orbed,” and therefore eminently Christ-exalting; and because Christ was lifted up in it, he drew multitudes unto it. By other expedients he might perhaps have gathered crowds around him, but he knew that it was only by this means that he could hope that souls should be saved. “Go on, dear brother,” we find him writing on one occasion to Whitefield; “go on in asserting and publishing the doctrine of grace reigning through His righteousness unto eternal life; for this, and only this gospel, will be the organ of omnipotency and the power of God to the salvation of sinners.” We can imagine the surprise and holy jealousy for the honour of inspired truth with which he would have heard some men in our times propose to impart greater efficiency to their ministry by means of symbolism in ecclesiastical architecture, or by a kind of poetical and vague mysticism, by which the imagination is entertained and dazzled, rather than the conscience roused and the affections moved. With what eloquence would he have denounced as treachery to Christ and unfaithfulness to souls, that so called “gospel of progress” which casts a thick veil over the cross of Christ, and adorns truth with chaplets of flowers only that it may lead it forth to sacrifice! He would readily have admitted, indeed, that as ages advance and more of accumulated learning and experience are brought to bear upon the Bible, many parts of it will come to be better understood, the gospel will be seen in new adaptations and effects, according to the varying circumstances of men, and in such new relations and connections as may give to it all the effect of novelty; while in its increasing influence over individual minds and in its gradual leavening and blessing of the human race, he would have rejoiced to think of it as the “gospel of progress.” But in every degree in which progress meant transmutation he would have recoiled from every suggestion of novelty with the cry, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.” He knew that beneath all the external and superficial varieties in man’s condition, there ever lie the great wants of guilt, and sin, and unhappiness, which are common to the race, and that man no more needs another gospel than the human eye requires another sun. He had found it, in the experience of a most successful ministry, to be God’s lever by which he moves the world. And just as Paul preached “Christ crucified” alike to the voluptuaries of Corinth, to the proud reasoners of Athens, and to the idolaters of Ephesus—alike to Lydia in the oratory, to the jailer in the prison, and to Agrippa on the judgment-seat—so, whatever the changing forms of opinion or the new phases of society, he put his confidence in this as the great healing power and the new life of the world. What is the finest music at the top of the dungeon, or the most beautiful and fragrant flowers dropped down to the poor prisoner who is struggling and sinking far beneath in the miry clay? If you would really show him kindness provide him with a rope and with strong hands that shall pull him up and set his feet upon the solid rock amid sunlight and liberty. In this light did the wants of man and the gospel of the grace of God relatively present themselves to Mr. Erskine’s mind, and so he “preached Christ crucified.”

(To be continued.)