account, for he wandered about from land to land, acknowledging no superior,
and seems to have regarded all the forms in which Christianity has been embodied with equal favour, or rather, perhaps, with equal contempt. Of course, Mr Whitefield and Mr Erskine had no sooner met, and begun to explain their
views, than they were mutually disgusted, and they parted in a manner which we think, has left no credit to either of the parties.
The associate presbytery was at this time preparing for what they considered the practical completion of their testimony, the renewal of the national covenants, in a bond suited to their circumstances, which they did at Stirling, in the month of December, 1743; Mr Ralph Erskine being the second name that was subscribed to the bond. The swearing of this bond necessarily introduced the discussion of the religious clause of some burgess oaths, which led to a breach in the secession body, an account of which the reader will find in a previous article [the life of Ebenezer Erskine]. In this controversy Mr Ralph Erskine took a decided part, being a violent advocate for the lawfulness of the oath. He, however, did not long survive that unhappy rupture, being seized with a nervous fever, of which he died after eight days' illness, on the 6th of November, 1752, being in the sixty-eighth year of his age, and the forty-second of his ministry.
Mr Ralph Erskine was twice married; first, to Margaret Dewar, daughter to the laird of Lassodie, who died in the month of November, 1730 ; having lived with him sixteen years, and born him ten children. He married, secondly, Margaret Simpson, daughter to Mr Simpson, writer to the signet, Edinburgh, who bore him four children, and survived him several years. Three of his sous lived to be ministers of the secession church, but they all died in the prime of life, to the grief of their relatives and friends, who had formed the highest expectations of their future usefulness.
Of the character of Mr Ralph Erskine there can be, and, in fact, we believe there is, but one opinion. Few greater names belong to the church of Scotland, of which, notwithstanding of his secession, he considered himself, and must by every fair and impartial man, be considered to have been a most dutiful son to the day of his death. During the days of Ralph Erskine, dissenterism was a name and thing unknown in the secession. Seceders had dissented from some unconstitutional acts of the judicature of the established church, and were compelled to secede, but they held fast her whole constitution, entered their appeal to her first free and reforming assembly, to which every genuine seceder long looked forward with deep anxiety, ready to plead his cause before it, and willing to stand or fall by its judgment Of Mr Ralph Erskine's writings, it is scarcely necessary to speak, any more than of his character. They have already, several of them, stood a century of criticism, and are just as much valued by pious and discerning readers, as they were on the day when they were first published. Models of composition they are not, nor do we believe that they ever were ; but they are rich with the ore of divine truth, and contain many passages that are uncommonly vigorous and happy. Of his poetical works we have not room to say much; some of them are all that the author intended, which is more than can be said of many poetical productions that have a much higher reputation in the world. His Gospel Sonnets, by far the best of his poems, he composed when he had but newly entered on his ministry, as a compend of the scheme of the gospel, and we know few books that in a smaller compass contain one more perfect The composition is very homely, but it is just so much better fitted for the serious and not highly instructed reader, whose benefit alone the author had in view. Of his versions of the Song of Solomon, of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, and of the Book of Job, it must be admitted
