My wife has received to-day the beautiful present of the new edition of your book.  She will enjoy it immensely.  I hope to send you, when I get to London, a little work called the “Mirror of Monks.”  Let not the title alarm you.  It is in the manner of a Kempis, and is original, 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 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,