Yet not only is this noble and holy woman in it, but even my own narrow experience has supplied me with other types of singular excellence and elevation within its pale; and the considerations hereby suggested are of immensely wide application.
I trust that your Walker Cathedral will be thoroughly good, and that your Bishop's book is prospering.
You will be glad to hear that the solemn thanksgiving at St.
Paul's may be regarded as decided on, to my great satisfaction.
If you will let me have particulars of any case such as you describe, I will most readily see what can be done; and now farewell, my dear friend .-- Always affectionately yours, W.E.
GLADSTONE.
If not quite so popular as some of the Dean's other correspondents, he whose letter I bring forward here stood as high as any man in the estimation of the better and most thinking classes of Scotsmen.
Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, though no clergyman, had his mind more constantly full of divine thoughts than most priests; though no technical scholar perhaps, he kept up his Greek to read Plato, and did not think that his enjoyment of the works of high reach in classical times unfitted him for Bible studies, which were the chief object of his existence.
* * * * * THOMAS ERSKINE to DEAN RAMSAY.
127 George Street, 19th Oct.

1869.
Dear Dean--I return you many thanks for that kind letter.
Neither you nor I can now be far from death--that commonest of all events, and yet the most unknown.

The majority of those with whom you and I have been acquainted, have passed through it, but their experience does not help us except by calling us to prepare for it.

_One_ man indeed--the Head and Lord of men--has risen from the dead, thereby declaring death overcome, and inviting us all to share in his victory.

And yet we feel that the victory over death cannot deliver us from fear, unless there be also a victory over that which makes death terrible--a victory over him that hath the power of death, that is the devil, or prince and principle of sin.
And our Lord has achieved this also, for he put away sin _by the sacrifice of himself_; but this sacrifice can only really profit us when it is reproduced in us--when we, as branches of the true Vine, live by the sap of the root, which sap is _filial trust_, the only principle which can sacrifice _self_, because the only principle which can enable us to commit ourselves _unreservedly_ into the hands of God for guidance and for disposal.