'How am I to begin? Which am I to begin with?'
'There is one commandment which includes all the rest!'
'Which is that?'
'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved!'
What did the schoolmaster mean? He meant that the Person must precede the Precepts, as the Precepts must precede the Prohibitions; he was insisting on the divine order; that was all. And I feel confident that that was the burden of that powerful sermon that Ebenezer Erskine preached to his people at Portmoak in 1718. His last illness, as I have said, continued for twelve months. It was in its earlier stages that the old elder asked his question and received his minister's testimony concerning the text. A year later Mr. Erskine referred to the words again. On the morning of the first of June, he awoke from a brief sleep, and, seeing his daughter, Mrs. Fisher, sitting reading by his bedside, he asked her the name of the book.
'I am reading one of your own sermons, father!'
'Which one?'
'The one on "I am the Lord thy God!"'
'Ah, lass,' he exclaimed, his face lighting up, as a wave of sacred memories swept over him, 'that is the best sermon ever I preached!'