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turn We heard, some time ago, one striking story about him. He had been seized with that dire calamity, which had once before laid him aside from public duty, and had been quietly removed to a country-house. By some accident his door had been left unlocked, and Hall rushed out from bed into th the open air. It was winter, and there was thick snow on the ground. He stumbled amid the snow-and the sudden shock on his half-naked body restored him to consciousness, He knelt down in the snow, and, looking up to heaven, exclaimed, "Lord, what is man ?" To the constant fear of this malady, and to deep and melancholy thoughts on man and man's destiny, was added what Foster calls an "apparatus of torture" within him-a sharp calculus in his spine-a thorn in the flesh, or rather in the bone. Yet against all this he manfully struggled, and his death at last might be called a victory. It took him away from the perplexities of this dim dawn of being, where the very light is as darkness-from almost perpetual pain, and from the shadow of the grimmest Fear that can hang over humanity-and removed him to those regions mild, of calm and serene air, of which he loved to discourse, where no cloud stains the eternal azure of the holy soul-where doubt is as impossible as disbelief or darknessand where God in all the grandeur of his immensity, but in all the softness of his love, is for ever unveiled. There his friends Foster and Chalmers have since joined him; and it is impossible not to form delightful conjectures as to their meeting each other, and holding sweet and solemn fellowship in that blessed region. "Shall we know each other in heaven ?" is a question often asked. And yet why should it be doubted for a moment? Do the brutes know each other on earth, and shall not the saints in heaven? Yes! that notion of a reunion which inspired the soul of Cicero, which made poor Burns exult in the prospect of his meeting with his dear lost Highland Mary, and which Hall, in the close of his sermon on Ryland, has covered with the mild glory of his immortal eloquence, is no dream or delusion. It is one of the "true" sayings of God," and there is none more cheering to the soul of the struggler here below. These three master spirits have met, and what a meeting it has been! The spirit of Foster has lost that sable garment which suspicious conjecture, pry

ing curiosity, and gloomy temperament had woven for it here, and his "raiment doth shine as the light." Chalmers has recovered from the wear and tear of that long battle, and life of tempestuous action which was his lot on earth. And Hall's thorn rankles no longer in his side, and all his fears and forebodings have passed away. The long day of eternity is before them all, and words fail us, as we think of the joy with which they anticipate its unbounded pleasures, and prepare for its unwearying occupations. They are above the clouds that encompassed them once, and they hear the thunders that once terrified or scathed them, muttering harmlessly far, far below. Wondrous their insight, deep their joy, sweet their reminis cences, ravishing their prospects. But their hearts are even humbler than when they were on earth; they never weary of saying, “Not unto us, not unto us," and the song never dies away on their lips, any more than on those of the meanest and humblest of the saved, "Unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood, be glory and honor, dominion and power, for ever and ever. Amen."

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THERE are some subjects which seem absolutely inexhausti ble. They may be compared to the alphabet, which, after, 5000 years, is capable still of new and infinite combinatiousor to the sun, whose light is as fresh to-day as it was a million of ages ago or to space,, which has opened her hospitable bosom to myriads of worlds, and has ample room for myriads on myriads more. Such a fresh ever-welling theme is Chalmers, and will remain so for centuries to come; and we make no apology at all for bidding his mighty shade sit once more for its portrait, from no prejudiced or unloving hand. And here we propose first to give our own reminiscences of him; then to speak of the characteristics of his genius, eloquence, and purpose; and, in fine, to examine at some length his most popular work, his "Astronomical Discourses."

We first heard Dr. Chalmers preach on Sabbath, the 9th of October, 1831, when introducing the Rev. Mr. Martin, of St. George's, Edinburgh, to his flock. Through the kindness of a friend who sat in the church, we obtained, although with difficulty, a seat in the very front of the gallery, near a pew in which, on Sabbath, the 8th of February, 1846, we enjoyed a comfortable nap under a sermon from the Rev. Dr. Brunton ! There was no napping THAT forenoon. We went, we remember, with excited but uncertain expectations. We had read Chalmers's "Astronomical Discourses," and had learned to admire them, but had no clear or decided view of their author, and were not without certain Dissenting prejudices against him. Being near-sighted, and the morning being rather dim, we could not catch a distinct glimpse of his features. We saw only a dark large mass of man bustling up the pulpit stairs, as if in some dread and desperate haste. We heard next a hoarse voice, first giving out the psalm in a tone of rapid familiar energy, and after it was sung, and prayer was over, announcing for text, "He that is unjust let him be unjust still (stull, he pronounced it), he that is filthy (fulthy, he called it), let him be filthy still, and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still, and he that is holy, let him be holy stull." And then, like an eagle leaving the mountain cliff, he launched out at once upon his subject, and soared on without any diminution of energy or flutter of wing for an hour and more. The discourse is published, and most of our readers have probably read it. It had two or three magnificent pas sages, which made the audience for a season one soul. A burst especially we remember, in reference to the materialism of heaven-"There may be palms of triumph, I do not knowthere may be floods of melody," and then he proceeded to show that heaven was more a state than a place. On the whole, however, we were disappointed, as indeed we were, at the first blush, with all the Edinburgh notabilities. Strange as it may seem, neither Wilson, nor Chalmers, nor Professor Leslie, nor Dr. Gordon, nor Jeffrey, produced, AT FIRST, on us a tithe of the impression which many country ministers, whose names are extant only in the Lamb's Book of Life, had easily and ineffaceably left. We learned, indeed, afterwards to admire Wilson and Chalmers to the very depths of our hearts; and

John Bruce, whom at first, too, we rather disrelished, became ultimately an idol. But, on the whole, our first feeling, in reference to the Edinburgh celebrities, lay and cleric, was that of intense disappointment.

This feeling would be forgiven by the men themselves, or even by the warmest of their admirers, if they could have seen us, a year or two afterwards, listening to Wilson on the immortality of the soul, to John Bruce on the text, "The sting of death is sin," or to Thomas Chalmers repeating, at the opening of the General Assembly of 1833, the sermon on "He that is fulthy let him be fulthy still." That morning opened in all the splendor of May-and the Assembly which met knew that the Reform Bill had passed since its last session, and that it must become perforce a reforming Assembly too. Chalmers rose to the greatness of the occasion. After delivering, with greatly increased energy, all the original discourse, he added a new peroration of prodigious power, draw ing the attention of his "Fathers and Brethren" to the circumstances in which they were placed, and to the duties to which they were called. It told like a thunderbolt. Even the gallery, which was half empty, was absolutely electrified; and the divinity students and young ladies who had been perseveringly ogling each other there, were compelled to turn their eyes and hearts away towards the glowing countenance and heaving form of the "old man eloquent."

We occasionally heard him, too, in his class-room, always with great interest and often with vivid delight. Our tone of enthusiasm, however, was somewhat restrained, from our frequent intercourse with his students, who in general over-rated him, and were sometimes disposed to cry out, "It is the voice of a god, not of a man," and whose imitations of his style and manner were frequent, and grotesquely unsuccessful. We never but once heard him there rise to his highest pitch. It was at the close of a lecture illustrating the character and claims of Christianity; when, grasping, as it were, all around him (like an assaulted man for a sword), in search of a yet stronger proof of his point, he lifted up his own "Astronomical Discourses," and read (with a brow flushing like a crystal goblet newly filled with wine-an eye glaring with sudden excitation-a voice "pealing harsh thunder "-and a motion.

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"Let the priests of another faith ply their prudential expedients, and look so wise and so wary in the execution of them; but. Christianity stands in a higher and firmer attitude: The defensive armor of a shrinking or timid policy does not suit her. Hers is the naked majesty of truth; and with all the grandeur of age, but with none of its infirmities, has she come down to us, and gathered new strength from the battles she has won in the many controversies of many generations. With such a religion as this thore is nothing to hide. All should be above-boards; and the broadest light of day should be made fully and freely to circulate through all her secrecies. But secrets she has none. To her belong the frankness and simplicity of conscious greatness."

This is eloquent writing; but where the fiery edge of Bardie power which seemed to surround it as he spoke? That is gone; and the number must fast lessen of those who now can remember those strange accompaniments of Chalmers's elo. quence the uplifted, half-extracted eye--the large flushed forehead-the pallor of the cheek contrasting with it-the eager lips--the mortal passion struggling within the heaving breast--the furious motions of the short, fin-like arms, and the tones of the voice, which seemed sometimes to be grinding their way down into your ear and soul.f

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We heard Chalmers once, and only once, again. It was in Dundee, in the spring of 1839. The audience was crowded, although it was a week-day, and only afternoon. The object of the discourse was to defend church extension. For an hour or so the lecturer was chiefly employed in statistical details. He lifted up, and read occasional extracts from certain dingy, and as he called them, delightful ill-spelled letters," from working men in support of the object. Toward the end he became more animated, and closed a brilliant burst of ten minutes' duration by quoting the lines of Burns :—

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"From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs;
These make her loved at home, revered abroad,
Princes and lords are but the breath of kings;
An honest man's the noblest work of God."

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