Erskine, THOMAS

Erskine, THOMAS, of Linlathen, was born in 1788, and educated at Edinburgh High School, at Durham, and at the university of Edinburgh. He was admitted advocate in 1810, but ceased to practise after his elder brother's death gave him the family estate of Linlathen, near Dundee, and devoted himself for the remainder of his uneventful life to his favourite theological studies. He never married, but his devoted sister helped him to make his house at Linlathen a hospitable centre of Christian culture. Among his intimate friends were such spiritual leaders as M'Leod Campbell, Maurice, Stanley, Ewing, Vinet, as well as Carlyle and Prévost-Paradol. He died 20th March 1870. Erskine was brought up an Episcopalian, but in later life was at least nominally a member of the Church of Scotland. His theological opinions and religious sympathies hardly fell within the lines of the usual creed definitions, while a belief in the ultimate universal salvation of mankind and the worthlessness of miracles as evidence for inspiration were scarcely consistent with formal citizenship within any church so recently as fifty years ago. His books were Remarks on the Internal Evidence for the Truth of Revealed Religion (1820); An Essay on Faith (1822); The Unconditional Freeness of the Gospel (1828); The Brazen Serpent, or Life coming through Death (1831); The Doctrine of Election (1837); and The Spiritual Order, a posthumous work (1871). See his Letters, edited by Dr W. Hanna (1877-78).

Eruptive Rocks. See IGNEOUS ROCKS.