“I cannot believe that any human being can be beyond the reach of God’s grace and the sanctifying power of His Spirit”

Undated letter of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen to J. Craig, author of the tract “The Final Salvation of All Men from Sin”

Dear Sir, 

Your epistle on the “Final Salvation of All Men from Sin” has been put into my hands by a friend who knew that the principles contained in it are those with which I have long concurred and sympathized, and having read it, I cannot help reaching out to you a brotherly hand, and saying, God speed you! 

The title of your pamphlet has been, I think, well chosen. It is not a deliverance from punishment, but a deliverance from sin that you desire or expect. All punishment appointed by God, whether it be the natural result of sin or any superadded chastisement, is intended by Him “for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness”; so that a deliverance from punishment, instead of being a thing to be desired, would, in fact, be equivalent to the deliverance of a sick man from the necessary and wise prescription of a skillful physician. This is the revealed purpose of punishment—a purpose agreeing with the character of God and with the relation in which He stands to men. He is the “righteous Father”—”the Father of the spirits of all flesh,” “who willeth not the death of a sinner; but that all should come to repentance.” Let us uphold fast the purpose of God in all punishment, and remember that as it is the purpose of Him who changes not, but who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, it cannot be a purpose confined to any one stage of our being, but must extend over all the stages, and the whole duration of our being. It is surely most unreasonable to suppose that God should change His manner of dealing with us, as soon as we quit this world, and that if we have resisted, up to that moment, His gracious endeavors to teach us righteousness, He should at once abandon the purpose for which He created us and redeemed us, and give us over to the everlasting bondage of sin. Do we not feel that such a supposition is too horrible—that it is most dishonoring to Him who has said, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee,” and, “The mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee”? 

This reasoning agrees with the argument presented to us in the 5th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, where the Apostle, in setting forth the fulness of the redemption by Christ, declares that the benefit through Him is, in extent, parallel to the evil introduced by Adam; that is, that as the evil affects all without exception, so the blessing embraces all without exception. Let anyone read the 12th and 18th verses of that chapter, as if in juxtaposition, which they really are by construction, and he will find himself constrained to admit that this and nothing less could have been the meaning of the writer. Indeed, through the whole chapter there is a preponderating advantage thrown into the scale of the redemption, to the effect that not only were the evils of the fall met by the salvation of Christ, but that the gain far surpassed the loss, so that it is really contrary to sound criticism to hold, that in that most marked and most remarkable passage, where the comparative results of the fall and the restoration are expressly considered, any ground is allowed or given for a doubt as to the final salvation of the whole human race. The 11th chapter of that Epistle is pervaded by the same doctrine being a declaration that God’s election does not affect the truth and certainty of the final salvation of men, but relates to the temporary use which He makes of individuals or nations to accomplish the ends of His government. I know well that most people in this country feel that all such arguments and expositions are met and overturned by the solemn words of our Lord in the 25th chapter Matthew, and by other passages of a like import. I feel, on the contrary, that the passages which I have quoted from the Epistle to the Romans ought really to be considered as the ruling passages on the question, and that those from St. Matthew, and others of the same class, should be explained by them, and in accordance with them, because in them the fall and the restoration are expressly compared with each other, in their whole results, and the entire superiority claimed for the restoration in amount of benefit, and entire equality in point of extent; all which would seem to me to be utterly nullified by the fact of a single human spirit being abandoned and consigned to a permanent state of sin and misery. I therefore understand that awful scene represented in St. Matthew as declaring the certainty of the connection between sin and misery, but not as a finality. I do not believe that αίώνιος, the Greek word rendered “eternal” and “everlasting” by our translators, really has that meaning. I believe that it refers to man’s essential or spiritual state, and not to time, either finite or infinite. Eternal life is living in the love of God; eternal death is living in self, so that a man may be in eternal life or in eternal death for ten minutes as he changes from the one state to the other. 

There is no lack of arguments for the general view which I have taken of this subject, drawn either from conscience or the Scriptures or both. There is one which cannot but have great weight with all who fairly consider it. Throughout even the Old Testament, God is more constantly presented to us as a Father than in any other character, and in the New, our Lord speaks of it as the chief purpose of His appearance in this world to reveal His Father as the Father of the whole human race. In both, frequent appeals are made to our sense of the love and desires and obligations of an earthly parent towards his children, in order to impress on us the nature of the relation in which God stands to each one of us; and very frequently these appeals are accompanied with the assurance that the love of the human parent is but a faint reflection of the love of the Heavenly Father. What can be more touching than the appeal in the prophet Isaiah? “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will not I forget thee.” The parallel passage in the New Testament is this: “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give!” But we all feel that the first and ever-during duty of a father is to endeavor to make his child righteous. A righteous father must always do this. The moment he ceases to do this, he ceases to be a righteous father. However the son transgresses, we never feel that the father’s obligation to try to bring him back can be dissolved. And the righteous father’s heart goes along with his obligation. He could not give up his son although the whole world agreed that he had done all that could be done for him, and that it was useless to try any more. And shall we not reason confidently that the righteous Heavenly Father will do exceeding abundantly above all that the righteous earthly father can either desire or effect? But does this desire for the righteousness of his child in the heart of the earthly father terminate with the child’s life? Although he is only the father of his body, does he not yearn after the soul of his son, who has been, perhaps, cut off suddenly in the midst of sin and thoughtlessness? He does indeed yearn after his soul and carries it on his heart a heavy burden mourning all his life long and wavering between hope and fear as to what his everlasting lot may be. The righteous earthly father being only the father of the child’s body feels thus and acts thus, and can we suppose that the Father of the spirits of all flesh will throw off His care for the souls of His children when they leave this world, because they have, during their stay here, resisted His efforts to make them righteous? The supposition seems monstrous and incredible, and in truth could not be acquiesced in by any human being were it not for certain false ideas concerning the justice or righteousness of God.

I believe that love and righteousness and justice in God mean exactly the same thing, namely, a desire to bring His whole moral creation into a participation of His own character and His own blessedness. He has made us capable of this, and He will not cease from using the best means for accomplishing it in us all. When I think of God making a creature of such capacities, it seems to me almost blasphemous to suppose that He will throw it from Him into everlasting darkness because it has resisted His gracious purposes towards it for the natural period of human life. No; He who waited so long for the formation of a piece of old red sandstone will surely wait with much long-suffering for the perfecting of a human spirit. 

I have found myself helped in taking hold of this hope by understanding that God really made man that He might educate Him, not that He might try him. If we suppose man to be merely on his trial here, we more readily adopt the idea of a final judgment coming after the day of trial is over. But if we suppose man to be created, not to be tried, but to be educated, we cannot believe that the education is to terminate with this life, considering that there is so large a proportion of the human race who die in infancy, and that of those who survive that period there are so many who can scarcely be said to receive any education at all, and that so few— not one in a million—appear to benefit by their education. That, as there are great judgment days in this world, so there will be great judgment days in the other world, I have no doubt, but I believe that they are all subservient to the grand purpose of spiritual education. We are judged in order to be thereby educated. We are not educated that we may be judged. I believe that each individual human being has been created to fill a particular place in the great body of Jesus Christ, and that a special education is needed to fit each one for his place. Whilst we are ignorant of the destined place of each, it must of course be impossible for us to understand the wonderful variety of treatment through which the great Teacher is conducting all by a right way to the right end. But He knows and does what is best and wisest, and may there not be a necessity in some cases for treatment which can only be had on the other side of the grave? And shall we in our short-sightedness consider Him debarred from any such treatment? 

I cannot believe that any human being can be beyond the reach of God’s grace and the sanctifying power of His Spirit. And if all are within His reach, is it possible to suppose that He will allow any to remain unsanctified? Is not the love revealed in Jesus Christ a love unlimited, unbounded, which will not leave undone anything which love could desire? It was surely nothing else than the complete and universal triumph of that love that Paul was contemplating when he cried out, ” Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” (Romans 11:33.) 

Let me conclude now by saying that I am persuaded that this doctrine which you advocate is the only sufficient ground for an entire confidence in God, which shall, at the same time, be a righteous confidence. According to it, God created man that he might be a partaker in His own holiness as the only right and blessed state possible for him. If I truly apprehend this—if I truly apprehend that righteousness and blessedness are one and the same thing, and just the very thing I most need—I shall rejoice to know that God desires my righteousness, and if I further know that He will never cease to desire it and to insist upon it, and that all His dealings with me are for this one end, then I can have an entire confidence in Him as desiring for me the very thing I desire for myself. I shall feel that I am perfectly safe in His hand, that I could not be so safe in any other hand for that, as He desires the best thing for me, so He alone knows and can use the best means of accomplishing it in me. Thus, I can actually adopt the sentiment of the Psalmist, and say, “Thou art my strong habitation, whereunto I may continually resort. Thou hast given commandment to save me, for Thou art my rock and fortress.” And I can adopt these words without any feeling of self-trust, because my confidence has no back look to myself, but rests simply on God. The greatest sinner upon earth might at once adopt those words, if he only saw that righteousness was his true and only possible blessedness, and that God would never cease desiring this righteousness for him. I am fully persuaded that the real meaning of believing in Jesus Christ is believing in this eternal purpose of God, the purpose of making us living members of the body of His Son. And as this blessed faith helps me to love God and trust Him for myself, so it helps me to love my fellow creatures because it assures me that however debased and unlovable they may be at present, yet the time is coming when they shall all be living members of Christ’s body, partakers in the holiness and beauty and blessedness of their Lord.—I remain, dear sir, Yours truly, 

T. Erskine