to that "word which endureth for ever," hath heard of "the sufferings of Christ," of " the glory that shall be revealed,” and of the wretched case of him who walks without God in the world, and dies without a part in the Saviour.

We trust it is superfluous to say to this gentleman, " Macte virtute tua:" it is not any sacrifice which he is called to make to the interests of religion; "neither bonds, nor stripes, nor imprisonment, nor tribulation, nor distress, nor persecution, nor nakedness, nor peril, nor the sword," oppose his career; we trust, if they had, they would not have separated him from Christ; but the stars in their courses fight on his side; and the principalities and powers of this world have, for a time at least, withdrawn their open hostility. The success of his pen has prepared the way for his success in the pulpit; numbers who go not, or but seldom go, or go because others go, or go they know not for what, without delight, or awe, or love, to the worship of him who made both the heavens and the earth, of him who telleth the number of the stars, and calleth them all by their names, press in throngs, regardless of inconvenience, or distance, or trouble, old men and maidens, young men and children, to hear how brilliantly the creature can eulogize the Creator, with what new garniture he can array the heavens, to what compass of descriptive magnificence human utterance may be made to expand, or how the "loveliness of the song" may loveliness of the song" may be yet further enforced by new notes of rapture, and new touches of sublime expression.

This is what numbers call edification, and for this sort of edification numbers have run to hear Dr. Chalmers. This has been the primary attraction; by these credentials has this ambassador of Christ been first introduced to his courtly and crowded audience. The captivating manner in which his inferences have been drawn of the power of the Creator, from the great spectacle of his works, laid the foundation of his popularity. Had he written only in the language of awful verity, concerning righteousness, and temperance, and judgment to come, no man of the world would have trembled, because no man of the world would have read him. But having fortunately pitched upon a subject, in itself extremely attractive, coinciding with the philosophical tone of the times, demanding no labour of attention, or preparation in the reader, but affording to the peculiar excellence of the writer the fullest opportunity of display, he has produced a volume of sermons, which has suspended for a time every other fashionable topic of the literary kind, and spread as far as any tale of unholy love, mysterious murder, or sentimental crime.

But has Dr. Chalmers contented himself with thus amusing and attracting the public? Does popularity appear to have been

his real aim? To say this of him would, in our opinion, be doing him great injustice. We have been all this while adverting only to the primary impression, and immediate attraction of his work, which, we think, is to be ascribed partly to the popularity of his subject, and partly to the luxuriant graces of his composition. But of these qualities the impression is fugitive. The work before us possesses also those to which a style the most lofty is of very inferior importance, and without the support of which it is but the mimicry of reason and passion. Though we cannot say that Dr. Chalmers has presented us with any thing very new in argument, or even in the matter of his descriptions, nor that we have any anxious fears for Christianity on the side in which he has thrown up an additional rampart, yet, for elevating views of the Majesty on high, for apt illustrations of the providential care of the Creator, for reconciling the extremes of glory and condescension, for combining the perfections of JEHOVAH JESUS in the blessed fruits of righteousness and grace, and especially for the lines and characteristics of correct religious feeling, drawn with such precision, in the last discourse, we cannot testify to Dr. Chalmers, in terms above his merit, the sense we entertain of his labours. These properties of his work are now in operation; the first glance of beauty has been shot; the brilliance, which at first was almost nimium lubricus aspici, is improved into a steadier lustre; our pleasure becomes more profound, and our heart more permanently engaged. This is a true test of the merit of the performance, a sure earnest of its lasting celebrity; and on this experience we found our opinion that Dr. Chalmers is no meteor, but a fixed star in that firmament of science, which he has taught to shine with the radiance of the Gospel.

He has begun his argument with imputing to the astronomical objectors an assertion and an inference, both of which he undertakes to deprive of their weight. "The assertion is, that Christianity is a religion which professes to be designed for the single benefit of our world; and the inference is, that God cannot be the author of this religion, for he would not lavish on so insignificant a field, such peculiar and such distinguishing attentions, as are ascribed to him in the Old and New Testament." The assertion, he contends, is without foundation; for Christianity makes no such profession. And after having, in his first discourse, paid the fullest homage to the energy of the Divine attributes, and given the widest expansion to the hypothesis of a plurality of worlds; after having deduced from the astronomical fact, that God has done the same things, for the other pla nets, as he has done for that which we inhabit, giving them lights in their firmaments, to be for signs and for seasons, and for days and for years, and dividing the light from the darkness,

he deduces the presumption, that the Creator has not left them without beings to profit by these arrangements. After letting the fancy loose to tire itself with wonder and conjecture, amidst the host of luminaries that light up the whole concave of heaven, and to exhaust its powers of conception in multiplying the probabilities of the living works of creation, he meets the astronomical sceptic in all that he has attempted to raise, upon the widest extent to which he can urge the theme. He denies the postulate, that Christianity necessarily bounds itself to this earth and its inhabitants: he challenges the objector on this ground to the proof, that the religion of Jesus is unknown to those planets, and those stars, thus peopled by this splendid hypothesis. "For any thing such objector can tell, sin has found its way into these other worlds. For any thing he can tell, their people have banished themselves from communion with God. For any thing he can tell, many a visit may have been made to each of them, on the subject of our common Christianity, by commissioned messengers from the throne of the Eternal. For any thing he can tell, the redemption promised to us is not one solitary instance, or not the whole of that redemption which is by the Son of God; but only our part in the plan of mercy, equal in magnificence to all that astronomy has brought within the range of human contemplation.”

So much for the assertion, which Dr. Chalmers thus shows to be merely gratuitous. But admitting that the hypothesis of the Christian scheme necessarily bounds it to this earth-to this diminutive spot--to this spot, so unappreciably small in comparison of a dimensionless creation, that, were it suddenly swept away into annihilation, it would be only like one leaf lost to the forest; still, in the argument of this instructive writer, a moral magnificence and extent is given to the character and results of the work of salvation, which is quite independent of physical magnitude. Divine love, in his just and reasonable consideration, has no spiritual limit to its supposable efficacy, however small the immediate scene of its operation; for what is the magnitude, and where is the distance, over which the light from a single point, (to speak humanly, for all comparative magnitudes are merged in infinity), in the work of the Divine mind, may not be imagined to extend its effulgence. Great and Little have reference to the associations of a finite mind; the importance of things in this world are according to the impressions which our nature receives from them; we measure things by rules derived from our own infirmity, and throw the colours and characteristics of our own impotence over that small part of the creation which lies within our view; but are God's thoughts as our thoughts? Is it likely that to Him who is maximus in minimis, who car

ries his finishing hand to things of evanescent smallness, and, in proportion as the microscope gives magnitude to things invisible, developes his might in a downward series of infinite gradation,—is it likely, or is it consistent with unprejudiced philosophy, to suppose that to him small and great, as we count small and great, should furnish standards of appreciation, and vary his interest in the objects of his care?

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Dr. Chalmers well argues, that an objection, grounded on the extent of astronomical discoveries, goes to expunge a perfection from the character of God." For, even if we ascribe to the Deity the rules of human estimation, and the same views as our own of comparative magnitudes, yet can we suppose, that, in all the amplitude of his creation, there exists an object so humble as to be utterly beneath his regard. Human thoughts are easily overcome by numbers, and distracted by diversity; but is God liable to be lost in the crowd of his own creatures, or to suffer a world to be forgotten in the throng of existence? Let it be admitted, that what is vast is more precious than what is minute, yet if the vast is safe, and needs no remedy, shall we think that the contemplation of worlds, free from corruption, however great or numerous, can work an estrangement in the mind of the Creator, from one sinful portion of the universe, however little, or throw it out of the pale of his boundless and pervading love; at least, does it not add a kind of consummation to that assemblage of perfections which compose our idea of God, to think of him as of one, who, while from "ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands" of greater orbs, his ear is saluted with perpetual praise, he yet casts an eye of pity towards a little world of rebellious souls, on the eve of absolute and everlasting ruin? He is Alpha and he is Omega, and between these infinite extremes all is surveyed by the eye of his omniscience, all is embraced by the arms of his mercy, and pardon is offered to all through repentance and faith. And so this pious writer would have us think, and so the Christian revelation allows us, nay commands us to hope. But it is time that Dr. Chalmers should be suffered to explain himself in his own words.

"The objection we are discussing, I shall state again in a single sentence. Since astronomy has unfolded to us such a number of worlds, it is not likely that God would pay so much attention to this one world, and set up such wonderful provisions for its benefit, as are announced to us in the Christian Revelation. This objection will have received its answer, if we can meet it by the following position :-that God, in addition to the bare faculty of dwelling on a multiplicity of objects at one and the same time, has this faculty in such wonderful perfection, that he can attend as fully, and provide as richly, and manifest all his attributes as illustriously, on every one of these objects, as

if the rest had no existence, and no place whatever in his government or in his thoughts.

"For the evidence of this position, we appeal, in the first place, to the personal history of each individual among you. Only grant us, that God never loses sight of any one thing he has created, and that no created thing can continue either to be, or to act, independently of him; and then, even upon the face of this world, humble as it is on the great scale of astronomy, how widely diversified, and how multiplied into many thousand distinct exercises, is the attention of God! His eye is upon every hour of my existence. His Spirit is intimately present with every thought of my heart. His inspiration gives birth to every purpose within me. His hand impresses a direction on every footstep of my goings. Every breath I inhale, is drawn by an energy which God deals out to me. This body, which, upon the slightest derangement, would become the prey of death, or of woeful suffering, is now at ease, because he at this moment is warding off from me a thousand dangers, and upholding the thousand movements of its complex and delicate machinery. His presiding influence keeps by me through the whole current of my restless and everchanging history. When I walk by the wayside, he is along with me. When I enter into company, amid all my forgetfulness of him, he never forgets me. In the silent watches of the night, when my eyelids have closed, and my spirit has sunk into unconsciousness, the observant eye of him who never slumbers, is upon me. I cannot fly from his presence. Go where I will, he tends me, and watches me, and cares for me; and the same Being who is now at work in the remotest domains of Nature and-of Providence, is also at my right hand to eke out to me every moment of my being, and to uphold me-in the exercise of all my feel. ings, and of all my faculties.

"Now, what God is doing with me, he is doing with every distinct individual of this world's population. The intimacy of his presence, and attention, and care, reaches to one and to all of them. With a mind unburdened by the vastness of all its other concerns, he can prosecute, without distraction, the government and guardianship of every one son and daughter of the species.-And is it for us, in the face of all this experience, ungratefully to draw a limit around the perfections of God-to aver, that the multitude of other worlds has withdrawn any portion of his benevolence from the one we occupy-or that he, whose eye is upon every separate family of the earth, would not lavish all the riches of his unsearchable attributes on some high plan of pardon and immortality, in behalf of its countless generations?

"But, secondly, were the mind of God so fatigued, and so occupied with the care of other worlds, as the objection presumes him to be, should we not see some traces of neglect, or of carelessness, in his management of ours? Should we not behold, in many a field of observation, the evidence of its master being overcrowded with the variety of his other engagements? A man oppressed by a multitude of business, would simplify and reduce the work of any new concern that was devolved upon him. Now, point out a single mark of God being thus oppressed. Astronomy has laid open to us so many realms of