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, that is the devil, or prince and principle of sin. And our Lord has achieved this also, for he put away sin _by the sacrifice of himself_; but this sacrifice can only really profit us when it is reproduced in us--when we, as branches of the true Vine, live by the sap of the root, which sap is _filial trust_, the only principle which can sacrifice _self_, because the only principle which can enable us to commit ourselves _unreservedly_ into the hands of God for guidance and for disposal. We are thus _put right_ by _trust, justified_ or _put right_ by faith in the loving fatherly righteous purpose of God towards us. Dear George Dundas's death has taken from me my chief social support in Edinburgh. I was fourteen years his senior, but I had known and loved him from his childhood. Our mothers were sisters, and thus we had the same family ties and traditions. I think of him now in connection with that verse, "to those who by patient continuance in well-doing," etc. And now farewell. Let us seek to live by the faith of the Son of God--his filial trust I suppose, which I so much need.--Ever truly and gratefully yours, T. ERSKINE. * * * * * The three following letters hardly help on the story of the Dean's life, but I could not pass them when they came into my hands.