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173 RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA Erskine Eschatology sympathy, and pure and lofty character gave him a great influence. D. J. Vaughan (Contemporary Review, June, 1878) includes him among four Scotch men whose influence on English thought has been wide, deep, and lasting. Monod traced to a talk with him his deliverance from Socinianism. Vinet wrote: " Were it allowable to say ` I am of Paul' and ` I of Apollos,' I should say say'l am of Erskine."' His more important writings were' Remarks on the Internal Evidence for the Truth of Revealed Re ligion (Edinburgh, 1820; 10th ed., 1878); An Es say on Faith (1822); The Unconditional Freeness of the Gospel (1828; new ed., 1879); The Brazen Serpent, or, Life Coming through Death (1831; 3d ed., 1879); The Doctrine of Election (London, 1837; 2d ed., Edinburgh, 1878). Spiritual Order and Other Papers (Edinburgh, 1871) appeared posthu mously, and in 1877 two volumes of Letters, ed. William Hanna,, with reminiscences by Dean Stan ley and Principal Shairp. (WILLIAM LEEt.) HENRY COWAN. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Letters of Thomas Erskine . . . 1800-18.¢0, ed. W. Hanna, with a sketch of his ancestry, earlier years, etc., Edinburgh, 1877; DNB, xvii. 444-445. ERTHAL, §r"tiil',FRANZ LUDWIG VON: Bishop of Wiirzburg and Bamberg; b, at Lohron-the Main (26 m. e.s.e. of Frankfort) Sept. 16, 1730; d. at W iirzburg Feb. 16, 1795. He belonged to an old Frankish noble family and was early des tined for the Church. He studied theology and law at Wurzburg and Mainz, and enlarged his legal knowledge in the papal chancery and at Vienna. In 1779 he was made bishop of Wurzburg, and a few weeks later bishop of Bamberg. The tradi tional Wiirzburg policy, confessional considera tions, and fear of the dangerous Prussians induced him to join the ranks of the imperial party. His relations to the Vatican were proper, but he was bent on maintaining his own sovereignty against both emperor and curia. A child of the time, he ruled in accordance with the maxim of enlightened despotism, " everything for the people, but every thing through the ruler "; yet he was no tyrant, but governed as a benevolent patriarch, watching over all things, arranging all things, the head of the family, living only for his children. It was with the greatest reluctance that he ever imposed the death penalty. Under his. mild rule the prisons were emptied, the finances and the entire civil service were regulated, and the poor laws were made to accord with the modern principle that only the disabled are to be helped and begging must cease. Lotteries were abolished and schools-pri mary, intermediate, and high-were fostered with zeal and knowledge. His natural inclination toward the practical and useful is apparent in the administration of his episcopal office and animates his pastoral letters and still more his " sermons for the people." These sermons seldom treat of doc trine or contain cold philosophical discussions, but speak with seriousness and emphasis of Christian living in a language somewhat uncouth and heavy, but of heart-winning simplicity. While they are not free from allusions to the gracious effects of the mystery of the altar or of the mass, on the whole they are truly Evangelical, not decked out with emotional legendary stories, and without con fessional polemics. He visited his bishoprics, which constituted a kind of theocracy, as a simple priest, preaching in the most modest village church, examining the clergy vigorously and with justice, and admitting to it only the moat worthy pupils of his seminary. The active, ascetic, feeble man wished for no pleasures, and stood alone on the height of his ruling office, which brought him only duties and cares. In vain will one seek among the German Roman Catholic ecclesiastical princes a more noble personality, a .more worthy priest and a more earnest Christian. D. KERLERt.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: F. Leitachuh, Franz Ludwig von Er", Bamberg, 1894; Zum Gedochtnia des Piirstkschoft Franz Ludwig von Erthal, in Archiv des hiatorierhen Vereina van Unterfranken and Aaehafjenburp, vol. xxcvii., Wiirzburg, 1895.
ESARHADDON. See A$aYRIA, VI. 3, § 13. ESAU. See EDOM; JACOB.Eschatology (Gk. to eschttta) is the doctrine of the last things. In theology this signifies those events occurring after death which immediately concern man. Without detailed treatment the purpose here is to sketch only the principal lines of the subject.
Belief in some sort of existence after death appears to be a universal characteristic of the
human race, though neither the earlir. Primitive est form nor the precise cause of this Views. Belief among prehistoric peoples is
known. It may have originated in dreams, or have expressed itself in animism, or have been a prolongation of the instinct of selfpreservation (gee COMPARATIVE RELIGION, VI., 1, § a). From 4000 B.C. the daily life of the Egyptians was saturated with this expectation (cf. the " Book of the Dead "). That the belief was widespread from 1500 to 1000 B.C. is evinced in the great literary religious documents which have come down to us. The Homeric Hades is a gloomy underworld to which all the dead go, there to exist as
I wretched shades beyond the reach of divine help. The Babylonians knew of " a land of no return' (" Lay of Istar's Descent to Hades," see BABYLONIA, VIL, 3, § 5). The later Zoroastrian literature pictures the destinies of the dead with terrible severity (see ZOROA$TER, ZOROASTRIANISM). Plato (d. 347 B.C.) elaborated his splendid argument for immortality (" PhPedo ")-a, hope repudiated by the Epicureans, and only in part reaffirmed by the Stoic doctrine of a limited survival after death (see IMMORTALITY).
According to the Old Testament all the dead go ~ to Sheol (see HADES). Thus in some sort immor- tality was affirmed; but this belief did II z. Old not until the fourth century B.C. em- Testament phasize individual immortality, in the Doctrine. sense of personal moral development. This appears the more strange when one considers the profound belief of the Hebrews i in Yahweh, who alone had power to make alive