thing which he did not understand. He did not fully understand the Gospel, and he did not fully preach it; but those moral truths and personal duties which he did comprehend, he enforced with a downrightness, a simplicity and minuteness which cannot be sufficiently admired. To latest existence Dr. Chalmers retained a profound respect for the practical wisdom and lively sense of this Scottish Epictetus; and though it is comparing the greater with the less, those who have heard him in his more familiar sermons-discoursing the matter with a village audience, or breaking it down to the unlettered hearers of the West Port or the Dean-were just listening to old Charters of Wilton, revived in a more affectionate and evangelical version. In May 1803, he was settled in the rural parish of Kilmany. This was to his heart's content. It brought him back to his native county. It gave him an abundance of leisure. It brought him near the manse of Flisk, and beside a congenial and distinguished naturalist. It was the country, with the clear stars above and the glorious hills around him; and it allowed him to wander all day long, hammer in hand and botanical box on his shoulders, chipping the rocks and ransacking the glens, and cultivating a kindly acquaintance with the outlandish peasantry. But all this while, though a minister, he was ignorant of essential Christianity. There was in nature much that pleased his taste, and he knew very well the quickened step and the glistening eye of the eager collector, as he pounces on some rare crystal or quaint and novel flower. But as yet no Bible text had made his bosom flutter, and he had not hidden in his heart sayings which he had detected with delight and treasured up like pearls. And though his nature was genial and benevolent-though he had his chosen friends and longed to elevate his parishioners to a higher level of intelligence, and domestic comfort, and virtuous enjoyment-he had not discovered any Being possessed of such paramount claims and overwhelming attractions as to make it end enough to live and labour for His sake. But that discovery he made while writing for an Encyclopædia an article on Christianity. The death of a relation is said to have saddened his mind into more than usual thoughtfulness, and whilst engaged in the researches which his task demanded, the scheme of God was manifested to his astonished understanding, and the Son of God was revealed to his admiring and adoring affections. The Godhead embodied in the person and exemplified in the life of the Saviour, the remarkable arrangement for the removal and annihilation of sin, a gratuitous pardon as the germ of piety and the secret of spiritual peace-these truths flung a brightness over his field of view, and accumulated in wonder and endearment round the Redeemer's person. He found himself in sudden pos

session of an instrument potent to touch, and, in certain circumstances, omnipotent to transform the hearts of men; and exulted to discover a Friend all-worthy and divine, to whom he might dedicate his every faculty, and in serving whom he would most effectually subserve the widest good of man. And ignorant of their peculiar phraseology, almost ignorant of their history, by the direct door of the Bible itself he landed on the theology of the Reformers and the Puritans; and ere ever he was aware, his quickened and concentrated faculties were intent on reviving and ennobling the old Evangelism.

The heroism with which he avowed his change, and the fervour with which he proclaimed the newly-discovered Gospel, made a mighty stir in the quiet country round Kilmany; and at last the renown of this upland Boanerges began to spread over Scotland, till in 1815 the Town Council of Glasgow invited him to come and be the minister of their Tron Church and parish. He came, and in that city for eight years sustained a series of the most brilliant arguments and overpowering appeals in behalf of vital godliness which devotion has ever kindled or eloquence ever launched into the flaming atmosphere of human thought. And though the burning words and meteor fancies were to many no more than a spectacle-the crash and sparkle of an illumination which exploded weekly and lit up the Tron Church into a dome of coloured fire-they were designed by their author and they told like a weekly bombardment. Into the fastnesses of aristocratic hauteur and commercial self-sufficiency-into the airy battlements of elegant morality and irreligious respectability they sent showering the junipers of hot conviction; and in hundreds of consciences were mighty to the pulling down of strong-holds. And though the effort was awful-though in each paroxysmal climax, as his aim pointed more and yet more loftily, he poured forth his very soul-for the Gospel, and love to men, and zeal for God now mingled with his being, and formed his temperament, his genius, and his passion-though he himself was his own artillery, and in these self-consuming sermons was rapidly blazing away that holocaust-himself-the effort was sublimely successful. In the cold philosophy of the Eastern capital and the coarse earthliness of the Western a breach was effected, and in its Bible dimensions and its sovereign insignia the Gospel triumphant went through. Though the labours of Love and Balfour had been blessed to the winning of many, it was not till in the might of commanding intellect and consecrated reason Chalmers came up-it was not till then that the citadel yielded, and evangelical doctrine effected its lodgment in the meditative and active mind of modern Scotland; and whatever other influences may have worked together, it was then and there that the battle of

a vitalized Christianity was fought and won.

Patrons converted or overawed, evangelical majorities in Synods and Assemblies, Church of Scotland Missions, the two hundred additional chapels, the Disruption, the Free Church, an earnest ministry and a liberal laity, are the trophies of this good soldier, and the splendid results of that Glasgow campaign.

From that high service, worn, but not weary, he was fain to seek relief in an academic retreat. Again his native county offered an asylum, and in the University of St. Andrew's, and its chair of Moral Philosophy, he spent five years of calmer but not inglorious toil. Omitting that psychology, which in Scottish colleges is the great staple of moral philosophy lectures, with his characteristic intentness he advanced direct to those prime questions which affect man as a responsible being, and instead of dried specimens from ancient cabinets, instead of those smoked and dusty virtues which have lain about since the times of Socrates and Seneca-instead of withered maxims from a pagan text-book, he took his code of morals fresh from Heaven's statutebook. It is not enough to say, that into his system of morality he flung all his heart and soul. He threw in himself-but he threw something better-he threw the Gospel, and for the first time in a Northern University was taught an evangelized ethicsa system with a motive as well as a rule-a system instinct with the love of God, and buoyant with noble purposes. And in the warm atmosphere of his crowded class-room-caught up by enthusiastic and admiring listeners, the contagion spread; and as they passed from before his chair, the élite of Scottish youth, Urquhart, Duff, and Adam, issued forth on the world, awake to the chief end of man, and sworn to life-long labours in the cause of Christ. Too often a school for sceptics-when Chalmers was professor, the ethic class became a mission college-the citadel of living faith, and the metropolis of active philanthropy; and whilst every intellect expanded to the vastness and grandeur of his views, every susceptible spirit carried away a holy and generous impulse from his own noble and transfusive nature.

And then they took him to Edinburgh College, and made him Professor of Theology. In the old-established times this was the top of the pyramid-the highest post which Presbyterian Scotland knew and like Newton to the mathematic chair in Cambridge, his pre-eminent fitness bore Chalmers into the Edinburgh chair of divinity. And perhaps that Faculty never owned such a combination as the colleagues, Welsh and Chalmers. Alike men of piety-alike men of lofty integrity, and in their public career distinguished by immaculate purity--the genius and talents of the one were a supplement to those of the other. Popular and impassioned-a declaimer in the desk, and often causing

His Ideal of a Christian Church.

565

his class-room to ring again with the fine frenzy of his eloquence, Chalmers was the man of power. Academic and reserved-adhering steadfastly to the severe succession of his subjects, and handling them earnestly but calmly-Welsh was the man of system. Ideal and impetuous, the one beheld the truth embodied in some glorious fancy, and as the best and briefest argument tore the curtain and bade you look and see. Contemplative and cautious, the other was constantly rejecting the illustrations which pass for arguments, and putting the staff of his remorseless logic through the illusions of poetry when substituted for the deductions of reason or the statements of history. Sanguine and strenuous, the one was impatient of doubts and delays; and if reasoning failed had recourse to rhetoric;-if the regular passage-boat refused his despatches, he at once bound them to a rocket and sent them right over the river. Patient and acute, the other was willing to wait, and was confident that truth if understood must sooner or later win the day. Ardent and generous, the panegyric of the one was an inspiring cordial; vigilant and faithful, the criticism of the other was a timely caveat. A man of might, the one sought to deposit great principles, and was himself the example of great exploits. A man of method, the other was minute in his directions, and painstaking in his lessons, and frequent in his rehearsals and reviews. The one was the man of grandeur; the other the man of grace. The one was the volcano; the other was the verdure on its side. The one was the burning light; the other the ground glass which made it softer shine. Each had his own tint and magnitude; but the two close-united made a double star, which looked like one; and now that they have set together, who will venture to predict the rising of such another?

For thirty years it had been the great labour of Dr. Chalmers to popularize the Scottish Establishment. A religion truly national, enthroned in the highest places, and a beatific inmate in the humblest homes-a Church which all the people loved, and which provided for them all-a Church with a king for its nursing father, and a nation for its members-this was the splendid vision which he had once seen in Isaiah, and longed to behold in Scotland. It was to this that the herculean exertions of the pastor, and anon the professor, tended. By his great ascendancy he converted the populous and plebeian parish of St. John's into an isolated district-with an elder and a deacon to every family, and a Sabbath school for every child-and had wellnigh banished pauperism from within its borders. And though it stood a reproachful oasis, only shaming the wastes around it, his hope and prayer had been that its order and beauty would have said to other ministers and sessions, Go ye and do likewise. And then the whole

drift of his prelections was to send his students forth upon the country ardent evangelists and affectionate pastors-indoctrinated with his own extensive plans, and inflamed with his own benevolent purposes. And then, when for successive years he crusaded the country, begging from the rich 200 churches for the poor, and went up to London to lecture on the establishment and extension of Christian Churches, it was still the same golden futurea Church national but Christian, endowed but independent, established but free-which inspirited his efforts, and awoke from beneath their ashes the fires of earlier days. And when at last the delusion of a century was dissolved-when the courts of law changed their own mind, and revoked the liberty of the Scottish Church-much as he loved its old establishment-much as he loved his Edinburgh professorship and much more, as he loved his 200 churches-with a single movement of his pen he signed them all away. He had reached his grand climacteric, and many thought that, smitten down by the shock, his grey hairs would descend in sorrow to the grave. It was time for him" to break his mighty heart and die." But they little knew the man. They forgot that spirit which, like the trodden palm, had so often sprung erect and stalwart from a crushing overthrow. We saw him that November. We saw him in its Convocation-the sublimest aspect in which we ever saw the noble man. The ship was fast aground, and as they looked over the bulwarks, through the mist and the breakers, all on board seemed anxious and sad. Never had they felt prouder of their old first-rate, and never had she ploughed a braver path than when-contrary to all the markings in the chart, and all the experience of former voyages-she dashed on this fatal bar. The stoutest were dismayed, and many talked of taking to the fragments, and, one by one, trying for the nearest shore; when calmer because of the turmoil, and with the exultation of one who saw safety ahead, the voice of this dauntless veteran was heard propounding his confident scheme. Cheered by his assurance, and inspired by his example, they set to work, and that dreary winter was spent in constructing a vessel with a lighter draught and a simpler rigging, but large enough to carry every true-hearted man who ever trod the old ship's timbers. Never did he work more blithely, and never was there more of athletic ardour in his looks than during the six months that this ark was a-building-though every stroke of the mallet told of blighted hopes and defeated toil, and the unknown sea before him. And when the signal-psalm announced the new vessel launched, and leaving the old galley high and dry on the breakers, the banner unfurled, and showed the covenanting blue still spotless, and the symbolic bush still burning, few will forget the renovation of