Thomas Erskine

of linlathen) (1788-1870. A qualified advocate who had never practiced law, this landed proprietor of distinguished ancestry and ample means lives in the history of Scotland as the most outstanding lay theologian that country has ever produced. Alike by his personality and writings he influenced profoundly some of the ablest men of his day-among those who came regularly to sit at his feet in Linlathen, his beautiful Forfarshire home, being Dean Stanley, Thomas Carlyle, Benjamin Jowett, and Charles Kingsley. Well known also in western Europe, his Internal Evidence for the Truth of the Christian Religion passed rapidly through nine editions, while books like The Brazen Serpent and The Unconditional Freeness of the Gospel introduced to thousands a daring thinker of deep spiritual insight with something new and compelling to say about the Fatherhood of God, the nature of the Atonement, and the doctrine of election. His Letters (2 vols.) have long since taken their place as a minor religious classic and have been used as a textbook on practical Christianity in many college classrooms.