We know no fact, which, viewed in all its relations, speaks more highly in favour of the spirit of the present day, than the great popularity of Dr Chalmers. Much has already been written about him in this journal, and that by many different hands-but we feel, on looking over all that has been said, as if it were quite feeble and ineffectual, when compared with the real sense of his merits, that is spread widely, and we would hope, fixed deeply, over the whole healthy and right-thinking mass of the people. He has been eulogized abundantly for the fervour of his impassioned eloquence, and the dignified sweep of his illustration, and the enlightened wisdom of his remarks on the character and condition of the times in which he lives; but we feel as if no adequate tribute of admiration has ever yet been paid in these, or in any other pages, to that rare spirit of christian self-denial, which has been, and is every day exemplified in the uses to which, animated at once by a noble humility and an honest pride, this GOOD and GREAT MAN has thought fit to devote his powers of thought and language. There can be no doubt, that taking oratory in the highest of its acceptations, he is the greatest of all living orators. At the bar-in the senate-(perhaps even in the church)-it may be possible to find men possessed of much more brilliancy, both of fancy and expres sion; and, we have no doubt, hundreds may be found far superior to him, in all the elegancies of composition, style, and delivery; but there is a certain directness of understandinga certain clear thorough-going honesty of thought—a plain weight of powerand a simple consciousness of power, about Dr Chalmers, that are a thousand times more than enough to set him triumphantly over the heads of all the living speakers in the land. Perhaps, since Charles Fox died, Great Britain cannot be said to have exhibited one genuine natural orator, in any one department, except this mighty

preacher. And yet, it is not the power of the man, but the purpose of the man, that stamps his mind with its truest character of greatness.

His greatest excellence, as a preacher of christianity, is, in one word, his total want of flattery-his perfect scorn of all those arts by which most popular preachers seek and obtain their popularity. He is, at once, the most evangelical and the most practical of sermon-writers—and this alone, if the matter be looked narrowly into, is sufficient to justify all that has been-all that can be said in his praise. No sensible man will ever dare, after reading his works, to use the word evangelical in a contemptuous sense ;-he has, for ever, done away the reproach of being a Calvinist. He is a bold original thinker-a profound metaphysician-and a most accomplished master of declamation-and, being such, he might easily have raised himself to a high pitch of estimation in the church, without giving up, as he has done, all the vulgar appliances of ecclesiastical success-without despising the prejudices of both the great divisions of Christian hearers alike— and so, without encountering any one of the difficulties of that adventurous, and, in some eyes at least we fear, invidious career, to which he has devoted himself. But such were not the views likely to sway the mind of such a man as Dr Chalmers. In spite of the sneers with which his first splendid appearances were received by the leaders of both the ecclesiastical parties in Scotland, he went on rejoicing in his course; and the result has been, that while neither of these parties dare to claim him for its owneither of them would be too proud to enlist him almost at any price in its ranks. He stands, as it is, entirely by himself a noble example of what the true minister of Christianity ought to be-totally unfettered by any trammels of party-feeling, civil or ecclesiastical-the unwearied deviser of good, slowly but surely witnessing the triumph of all that he devises-with

out suspicion of servility, or semblance of self-seeking, the upright unshaken indefatigable advocate of every thing that tends to dignify the high, and to ennoble the low-labouring from hour to hour, and from day to day, to make men perceive wherein the true secret of all the calamities of the times consists and to repair and replenish from at once the simplest and the loftiest of sources, all the decayed channels of sober, wise, and rational loyalty, among the unhappily estranged and alienated feelings of a once virtuous devout and patriotic population.

The close adaptation of all that he says and writes, to the actual condition of the people he is addressing, and the circumstances of the times in which he lives, forms one most remarkable peculiarity of the works of Dr Chalmers -and accounts, of itself, in a great measure, for the elevation to which he has attained in the public opinion. It is not, that he is singular in the wish to adapt himself, in this manner, to the necessities of his auditors and readers. Hundreds, we might say thousands, of excellent, and of able men, are scattered throughout the land, and animated with the same honourable desire; and who shall doubt, that success has been, and is, from day to day, granted to their labours? But none of those that have published sermons of late appear to us to have entered upon this part of the task with any thing like the same felicity, whether of view or of execution, as Dr Chalmers. We look in vain among the religious publications of the day for any thing like that certain mastery of glance, by which he appears to scrutinize all the moving surfaces of external things around him-that boldness with which he brings the great doctrines of the Bible into close contact with every manifestation of the spirit of the age-from the fine built theories of the would-be philosopher, down to the wild coarse ravings of the mechanic reformer-that noble confidence which makes him seek and find, on every occasion, one sure remedy for every evil "sign"-and having found, to proclaim it-in one word, finally, that clear and distinct "application of Christianity to the ordinary affairs of life," in which the principal merit of Dr Chalmers' sermons and other reli

VOL. VIII.

gious writings consists; and from which, we have no doubt, their principal usefulness is derived.

We have already had frequent occasion to take notice of his quarterly publications "on the Christian and civic economy of great towns," and of the beautiful speculations therein laid before the public, concerning the best, or rather only, means of repairing the present alarming deficiency of every sort of education among the crowded population of such cities as that in which he resides. The present volume of sermons may be considered, in one point of view, as a part of the same work; for it is easy to see that it has originated in the same course of study and reflection-study close and searching of every species of that commercial character by which he is surrounded-and reflection deep and sincere, concerning the means of improving that character, alike in its higher and its lower walks of exhibition. We observe that this author has already been attacked by the various oracles of the mob,* on account of the zeal with which he preaches to the humble in condition the necessity of civil government, and the duty of loyal obedience to the constitution and administration of the country-doctrines on which, most surely, no preacher ever commented in a manner more free from all guise and semblance of courtly adulation, or mean servility of purpose, than Dr Chalmers. We know not what misrepresentations may be given of this volume also by the same dealers in calumny-men whose hatred of such a man as this, is of course in exact proportion to their sense of his power and fear of his zeal. It will be evident to all who bring honest minds to the investigation, that the plain simple purpose of the book is chiefly to do good to the lower orders of society, by reminding the higher of their much-neglected duties towards them→→ to enforce the great obligation of good example-and to shew how easily and how naturally the trifling faults (as they are courteously denominated) of the rich may be converted by the poor into covering, and precedent, and apology, for their own coarser and more obviously and immediately pernicious offences. But as the whole strain of his arguments has the same tendency