Thomas Erskine: From He to Thou

There lived in Scotland about a century ago a man of saintly character, Thomas Erskine, minister of the parish of Linlathen. “All religion,” he would affirm when speaking of God and our mode of addressing Him, “is in the change from He to Thou.

It is a mere abstraction as long as it is He: Only with the Thou we know God.” His biographer tells how one day, meeting a shepherd on the hills, in a tone which combined in an extraordinary fashion sweetness and authority, Erskine put the unlooked for question, “Do you know the Father?”

The shepherd, with all the native reserve of the Scot, was completely taken aback and answered nothing. But something about the question and about the personality of the questioner made so deep and abiding an impression that he could not evade the issue with which he was there and then confronted.

Meeting Erskine many years after, he recognized him at once and said, “I know the Father now.”