think it, the foulest scorn that any pigmy philosopher of the day should mince his ambiguous scepticism to a set of giddy and ignorant admirers, or that a half-learned and superficial public

should associate with the Christian priesthood the blindness and the bigotry of a sinking cause; with these feelings we are not disposed to shun a single question that may be started on the subject of the Christian evidences. There is not one of its parts or bearings which needs the shelter of a disguise thrown over it. 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 a firmer attitude. The defensive armour 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 there is nothing to hide. All should be above boards. And the broadest light of day should be made fully and freely to circulate throughout all her secrecies. But secrets she has none. To her belong the frankness and the simplicity of conscious greatness; and whether she has to contend with the pride of philosophy, or stand in fronted opposition to the prejudices of the multitude, she does it upon her own strength, and spurns all the props and all the auxiliaries of superstition away from her."Vol. ii. pp. 72, 73.

Summer came with its holidays, and Chalmers, with a schoolboy's feelings, left Glasgow to pass a few weeks in visiting his friends in Fifeshire. He arranged a route that would most conveniently carry him from house to house of old acquaintances. He avoided public conveyances; but, at one place, rode on horseback; at another, in a friend's carriage; often, too, on what in Ireland, at least, is sometimes called "Shank's mare," and this was not the least pleasant of his modes of travel. Mrs. Chalmers had now her babies to mind, and could not journey with him, and this accident gives us an accurate journal of his progress through his old familiar haunts, for Chalmers was an honest-hearted, home-loving man, and did not pass his time away from his wife without writing home every day. Between Glasgow and Kirkaldy a whole week was consumed, with no more remarkable incident than the

Doctor's falling in with a complimentary review of a sermon of his. The second week saw him walking slowly from Kirkaldy to Anstruther, chiefly along the sea-shore. He reached his father's at Anstruther on Friday evening of that second week. His father had now become blind, and was led to church by a guide-Chalmers himself performed that office on the following Sunday. He passed a week with his parents, and proceeded to his old parish of Kilmany. That part of his journal that mentions this visit will be read with great interest. Some single sentences are very touching. "I proceeded to the manse. I remarked

that the large gate laboured under its wonted difficulty of being opened, and this circumstance, though minute, brought back the olden time with a gush of tenderness." He presided at family worship in what had been his own house; was led to the best bedroom, "where I indulged for some time time in lively recollections, which carried a mournfulness along with them, and, at length, by a sound and lengthened repose, repaired the sleeplessness of the preceding night." The next day we have a record of two hours' severe composition, and then he visited the village.

"I was happy to see W. S., who had returned to Dairsie the day before, and came back to meet me. He feels a little humbled at being my satellite, and, to complete the joke, he calls me the comet that has appeared in their hemisphere, and I call him a little bouncing cracker at my tail. We had a pleasant evening at the manse, and staid up till nearly one o'clock. I complete this day's nar rative by saying, that I should have mentioned in that of yesterday how young D. G. is turned remarkably stout, talking and walking, with a head as curly as ever I saw on a water-dog, and the hair so grown that his face looks like half-a-crown, with a prodigious system of head-dress all round it.

"After breakfast on Thursday I went to convoy W. S. towards Dairsie, ascended to the top of a romantic height at Airdit along with him, and then took leave; called on Mr. Anster, who was just mounting his horse with Mr. Heriot of Rathmornie. I walked back with them up the hill to Logie, and had there about an hour of severe composition. Reached the manse of Leuchars after eight o'clock."--Vol, ii. pp. 78, 79.

Another week passed with friends in

the neighbourhood, and then he was compelled "to preach at the window on my farewell sabbath." The day was windy, and the people without could not hear him. The crowds were oppressive to him. "It was not a preaching to my good, old people; many of them were jostled out, and instead of them I had an immense and most oppressive multitude." Dr. Hanna tell us of an incident that occurred either on this occasion or about this time. The wind interfered not alone with the people's hearing their preacher, but with the preacher's reading. He found a difficulty in holding the manuscript before him, and part of it was blown away. In Scotland it would be a dangerous experiment for any one but Chalmers to read a sermon, so strong and universal is their dislike to what they call a paper minister. Some person at a party where Chalmers was told a story of some country wife who defended the practice of a clergyman who read his sermons, by saying, "Ay, but he has a pith with his paper." Chalmers said, "This reminds me of an old anecdote

of myself. A friend of mine expressing his surprise to a country woman in Fife that she, who so hated reading, should yet be so fond of Mr. Chalmers. She replied, with a serious shake of the head, Nae doubt, but its fell readin' thon.' On the following day we again have a record of "two hours' severe composition after breakfast."

6

"At one sallied out; went down the Moutray, and recollected how often I had taken Anne down the bank, and entertained her with the ducks of Sandy Robertson I saw sailing in the burn. Dined in Mr. Cook's with a large party. There is a sideboard opposite to the fireplace in the dining-room, and the table is set from the south window to the opposite wall, Mr. Cook sitting at the window as the head. I looked out incessantly to the brae and upon Michael Matthew's ploughs running in their wonted style. Robie Dewar (the carrier) came from Cupar with a letter to me. I had a sentimental interview with him at the kitchen portico. He told me that he had no phrases, but that there was much in his heart.'

"Escorted at different times by one or more of his old parishioners, and making many a visit by the way, late on the Monday evening he was welcomed to Starbank by his wife's relatives, Mr. and Mrs. Simpson. His earliest visits on the following morning were to those

spots made dear to him by the most peculiar recollections. In the midst of scenes so familiar to Mrs. Chalmers, his narrative now becomes, if possible, more minute than ever; and he tells how the shrubbery, in absence of the tending hand, had become a tangled wilderness; how Alexander Dun, however, still wrought the garden, and kept it in very good order; how half the strawberries on the bank had been renewed and yielded nothing, and the other half in their old state were not peculiarly productive; how, striving to get into the upper park, he had found all the gaps so closed that he had difficulty in penetrating into it; how he had tried to find out the place where once they had sat together, but could find no vestige of the seat which they had occupied; and how he had taken up his station for some time upon the elevation which, because of some tender remembrance, he denominates as 'the sentimental knowe.'"-Vol. ii. pp. 81, 82.

We have some notices which, at first, we did not understand. "After breakfast I retired to my bedroom, and read Jones.' Who or what is "Jones?" said we. Jones was a popular preacher whose sermons were printed, and Chalmers had undertaken to write a review of them.

"His sermons at Glasgow and Kilmany are in the volume, but they look sadly reduced and enfeebled in print. Anstruther, Saturday, half-past one.-I have now finished the review of Dr. Jones's Sermons.' I am heartily tired of this kind of work, and should like henceforward to decline it altogether." -Vol. ii. p. 84.

It was during this tour that he wrote most of the astronomical discourses, which he delivered shortly after at the Tron Church. When these sermons were first published the critics spoke of the midnight oil consumed on the elaboration with which they must have been prepared. Little did they imagine in what circumstances these were written. In a little pocket-book, with borrowed pen and ink, in apartments not his own, and where he was liable to continued interruption, those sermons were written. As he could snatch an hour at any of the friends' houses where his tour of visits brought him, he wrote rapidly what, no, doubt, however, had been before the subject of much thought. On his return to Glasgow he commenced preaching

these sermons. At the time we speak of it was customary for the city clergymen of Glasgow to preach, in rotation, on Thursdays in the Tron Church. Their number was eight, and the returns of duty was to each at an interval of two months. Chalmers's first discourse was delivered on Thursday, the 23rd of November. He undertook to shew the groundlessness of the prejudice against revelation, which rests on the vastness of the planetary universe, and what would seem the comparative unimportance of man. The discussion occupied all the Thursdays of 1816 that fell to him. The crowds that thronged to hear him were immense. All the news-rooms poured out their most diligent students of the Herald and Courier. The law-courts were deserted; the offices of merchants and bankers, in the busiest time of a busy city, sent out their thousands; master, clerk, and apprentice all crowding to hear Chalmers. "Out of the very heart of the great tumult, an hour or two stood redeemed for the highest exercises of the spirit; and the low traffic of earth forgotten, heaven and its high economy, and its human sympathies and eternal interests, engrossed the mind at least and the fancy of congregated thousands." In January, 1817, these discourses were announced for publication. The publication of sermons was a matter of so much commercial risk that a subscription was frequently resorted to, and this was suggested to Chalmers by his publisher. Chalmers resisted, and preferred trusting to the general market. Bookseller and author were alike surprised at the result. Within a year nearly 20,000 copies were disposed of. "The Tales of my Landlord" were published about the same time, and the circulation of the sermons equalled that of the popular novel. Hazlitt, from whom, by the way, we have the pleasantest if not the best account of Coleridge's preaching, tells us of Chalmers's: "These sermons ran like wildfire through the country, were the darlings of watering-places, were laid in the windows of inns, and were to be met with in all places of public resort. We remember finding the volume in the orchard of the inn at Burford Bridge, near Boxhill, and passing a whole and very delightful morning in reading it without quitting the shade of an apple tree." Canning

VOL. XXXVIII.-NO. CCXXVIII.

told Mackintosh that he was entirely converted to admiration of Chalmers. Foster, in the Eclectic Review, blamed Chalmers for "dragging into notice a stale and impotent objection against the truth of the Christian religion, and giving a wide spread, by his discourses, to an argument which, as far as we can find, is almost unknown." We believe that Foster was wrong in supposing that some such feeling of prejudice does not lurk in many minds, and we think the greatest service is done in dragging into distinct light all such objections; whose real force is in the obscurity which gives them substantive existence. Forced into distinct ex

pression there is nothing whatever in the strange fear that the God who created should disregard his creature. That the objection is "stale" is no reason for leaving it unanswered; that it is "impotent," if by impotent Foster means, as is most probable, that it ought to have no effect, is no reason for allowing it to produce an effect which it ought not to have the power of producing. There can, we think, be little doubt that, in all such cases, the fairest and the wisest course, if not the only fair and wise one, is-where a preacher feels himself competent to treat of a difficulty such as the prejudice dealt with by Chalmers-in his discourses to bring it fully before the minds of his congregation; to allow it such force as it may seem justly to have. Concealment, or shirking the difficulty, is the worst course he can adopt. We transcribe, from Blackwood, a passage no doubt by Wilson:

"It has, we know, been said by some, that Chalmers has, in these noble 'Discourses,' all along combated a phantom, and that those objections to the truth of Christianity have never been raised which it is their object to overthrow. On this very account are his 'Discourses' invaluable. The objections which he combats are not so much the clear, distinct, and decided averments of infidelity, as they are the confused, glimmering, and disturbing fears and apprehensions of noble souls bewildered among the boundless magnificence of the universe. Perhaps there is no mind of any strength, no soul of any nobility, that has not often, in the darkness of the night, been beset by some of those majestic terrors; we may never have communicated them even to our dearest friends, for when they are gone, they are unutterable-like the 3 A

imagined shadows of ghosts, they come and go, silently and trackless; but an awe is left in the haunted mansion of the soul; and with all the deepest gratitude of a perturbed imagination we listen to the holy and the lofty voice which scares away the unhallowed visitants, and once more fills the midnight stillness with dreams of a peaceful and heavenly happiness. What although in the conversation of ordinary society no such thoughts ever find expression? Low, indeed, and unimpassioned is the strain of feeling which man holds with man in the common intercourse of life. And how, amid the trivial talk of amusement, or the intelligent discussion of affairs, or even the more dignified colloquy of philosophers, how could such emotions as we now speak of find utterance or sympathy? How can there be any conducting atmosphere by which such mysterious thoughts might be conveyed from soul to soul? But as there are fears, and doubts, and troubles, and agitating aspirations, too awful to bear the garb of ordinary words, so is there a Chalmers to meet them in all their dark array, and to turn them, during their hesitating allegiance or their open rebellion, into the service and beneath the banner of our God and our Redeemer."-Blackwood's Magazine, vol. ii.

p. 139.

The admiration with which these discourses were greeted was well deserved, but yet we agree with Chalmers's own judgment of them, who, when he was led to speak of them in advanced life, spoke of them "as a juvenile production, with too rich an exuberance of phraseology, to which the pruning-knife might be beneficially applied."

"Even among his sermons he did not think that they stood first, his Commercial Sermons' being always regarded by him as in every respect superior to them. In this, however, as in so many other instances, the judgments of the author and his readers have been at variance; for not only do these 'Astronomical Discourses' continue to be favourites with the public, but to this day they command a larger sale than any other portion of Dr. Chalmers's writings." Vol. ii. p. 92.

We have exhausted the space which can be given to this paper, and yet we have left unsaid much that we wish to bring before our readers. Hitherto Chalmers's triumphs were on Scottish ground; in the course of the next year

he appeared for the first time in a London pulpit. Mrs. Chalmers and he, accompanied by Mr. Smith, his publisher, left Glasgow for London on Monday the 14th of April, 1817. Their progress was a circuitous one. They crossed from Cumberland to Yorkshire, visited the scenery of Rokeby, and inspected the Moravian establishment at Fulneck.

The journey was a delightful one. They saw with intelligent eyes the great manufacturing towns. They visited many eminent men-James Montgomery, at Sheffield; Robert Hall, at Leicester. As Mrs. Chalmers was of the party, we have not the kind of record which remains of most of Chalmers's other journies, in his letters to his wife. But Smith and he wrote a joint journal, the Doctor undertaking to chronicle character, and Smith narrating such incidents as occurred, and describing scenery. That chronicle has not been recovered, but some of Smith's letters have been preserved, and the poet, Montgomery, has given an account of his recollections of the day on which he saw Chalmers. The Moravian missions were the subject of their conversation, and "Chalmers said-evidently not from sudden impulse, but a cherished purpose in his heart I mean to raise five hundred pounds for the Brethren's missions this year. Five hundred pounds for our poor missions!' I cried; I never hear of such a thing before.' He rejoine I -'I will do it.' But while I heartily thanked him, and implicitly believed in the integrity of his intention, I could only hope that he might be able to fulfil it, and within myself I said—' I will watch you, Doctor.' I did so, and traced him through sermons, subscriptions, collections, and donations, till he had realised, to the best of my recollection, a sum nearer to six than five hundred pounds."

"Now, considering in how many comprehensive concerns he was at that very time putting forth all his strengthoriginating, promoting, and accomplishing economical, local, patriotic, and Christian plans for the well-being of populous communities-in comparison with which this effort in aid of the Brethren was like the putting forth of his little finger only-yet, I confess, that 'small thing,' not to be despised, gave me a most magnificent idea of the intellectual, moral, and sanctified power for