, as well as excellent and
lofty. I have had much Scotch reading. The "Life of Dr. Lee;"
Macdonald's "Love, Law, and Theology;" last, not least, Lady
Nairne. I am equally struck with her life, and her singularly
beautiful songs, and this though she was Tory and Puritan; I
am opposed to both. Her character brings into view a problem
common to all times, but also I suppose special to this. I
take it that if there is a religious body upon earth that
fully and absolutely deserves the character of schismatical,
it is your Drummond secession. 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