guidance of one, who has not only a divine compassion, but has also a human affection and sympathy, never deadened by depravity, but softened and improved by affliction, and by a continued exercise of active benevolence. They should be very faithful servants who have such a Master. Paul breminds servants, who have been often shamefully enslaved and oppressed, that "whatsoever they do, they should do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not to men, knowing that of the Lord they shall receive the re

Ir vis not simply the eminence attained by Dr Chalmers, in his riper years, and the large space which, for along period, he filled in the public eye, that excite in his countrymen the desire to be acquainted with the history of his earlier life. A full share, indeed, of the interest ordinarily attaching to the records of the youth of distinguished men, may justly be claimed for his on the usual grounds. As a man of original genius and remarkable attainments; as the most celebrated pulpit orator of his age and country-as a pious and laborious philanthropist, whose constant aim, as must be admitted even by those who did not wholly approve his plans, was to promote the best interests of the poor and industrious of the land-as the leader of the great ecclesiastical movement of 1843, the happy effects of which, in stirring up christian activity, and setting loose religious principle from the deadening influence of state

con

trol, both at home and in the colonies of Britain throughout the world, --it would not be easy to over-estimate; in these several points of view, it is natural that we should seek to know what were the circumstances in which the character of Chalmers was developed, and his faculties trained to that robust energy and action which

they displayed in their maturity. But there is more than all this to rouse public curiosity in regard to his early memoirs. It has long been understood that the life of Dr Chalmers was itself a religious epic; in the outset, presenting a mournful example of the bondage of error in the case of a man set to be a witness and minister of the truth; and, in its progress, shedding a brilliant light on the passage, by which the wandering spirit of man is brought back to God, and its powers sanctified and educated for his service. Christians could not but feel eager to possess themselves of authentic information touching such a change in the history of such a man. This desire, we are happy to find, has been well provided for in a volume now before us*-the first of three, which are to contain a biography of the illustrious Chalmers, written by his son-in-law, and published with the sanction and co-operation of his family. It is after the perusal of this volume, and, while its deeply interesting contents are fresh in our mind, that we pen what follows.

Anstruther, a small sea-port town

Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Thomas Chalmers, D.D., LL.D. By his Son-in-law, the Rev. William Hanna, LL.D. Vol. I. Sutherland and Knox, Edinburgh.

near the "east neuk of Fife," was the birthplace of Thomas Chalmers. He was the sixth of fourteen children, born of the same parents-John Chalmers, a dyer, shipowner, and general merchant, enjoying a prosperous business in Easter Anstruther, and Elizabeth Hall, daughter of a wine merchant at Crail. He first saw the light on March 17th, 1780, and was baptized two days thereafter. From his infancy he bore a yoke of trouble -being committed, when two years old, to a nurse whose cruelty and deceitfulness haunted his memory through life. Even as a child he was the martyr of his conscientiousness; for his inhuman nurse, after ber ill treatment of her charge, extorted from him the promise not to reveal it; a promise he faithfully kept-so perpetuating his infantile bondage. It fared little better with him at his first school-a parish school, by the way, decus et tutamen, of Scotland-where a "sightless tyrant " of a teacher used to amuse himself in his blindness by flogging at random among his unfortunate pupils.

"By those of his schoolfellows who survive, Dr Chalmers is remembered as one of the idlest, strongest, merriest, and most generous-hearted boys at Anstruther

school. Little time or attention would have been required for him to prepare his daily lessons, so as to meet the ordinary demands of the school-room; for, when he did set himself to learn, not one of all his schoolfellows could do it at once so quickly and so well. When the time came, however, for saying them, the lessons were often found scarcely half-learned-sometimes not learned at all. The punishment inflicted in such cases was to send the culprit into the coal-hole, to remain there in solitude till the neglected duty was discharged. If many of the boys could boast over Thomas Chalmers that they were seldomer in the place of punishment, none could say that they got more quickly out of it. Joyous, vigorous, and humorous, he took his part in all the games of the playground-ever ready to lead or to follow. When schoolboy expeditions were planned and executed, and whenever, for fun or for frolic, any little group of the merry-hearted was gathered, his full rich laugh might

be heard, rising amid the shouts of glee... But he was altogether unmischievous in his mirth. He could not bear that either falsehood or blasphemy should mingle with it. His own greater strength he always used to defend the weak or the injured, who looked to him as their natural protector; and whenever, in its heated overflow, play passed into passion, he hastened from the ungenial region,-rushing once into a neighbouring house, when a whole storm of mussel shells was flying to and fro, which the angry little hands that flung them meant to do all the mischief that they could, and exclaiming, as he sheltered himself in his retreat, 'I'm no for powder and ball,' a saying which the good old woman beside in these latter years, to quote in his favour whose ingle he found a refuge, was wont, when less friendly neighbours were charging him with being a man of strife, too fond

of war."

It does not seem that young Chalmers learned much of his religion at the place which is so often vaunted of as the palladium of Scottish piety the parish school. This branch of education was attended to by pious parents at home. His father is described as "particularly and pre-eminently" pious, and in the results of his paternal instruction of Thomas, who came to himself, and to earnest evangelical religion, after preaching cold moderatism for years, one can trace the fulfilment of the promise, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old" (whatever he may do in the folly of his youth) "he will not depart from it." Says his filial biographer, "Altogether the school did little for him." But he had made up his mind to be a minister -had preached over a chair-back to an auditory of one, and had determined on the text of his first sermon"Let brotherly love continue." With scanty attainments he went to college, November 1791, when less than twelve years old; and the first two years of his curriculum proved how unwise it is to begin a university course without the requisite preparation in English composition and the learned languages. "Letters written by him, after two years at college, exhibit a glaring deficiency in the

first and the simplest elements of correct writing." The disproportion between Dr Chalmers' classical scholarship and his knowledge of science and philosophy, has frequently enough been noticed; but the connection between this comparative deficiency and his premature enrolment as a student at the university, is less generally known. It was the third year of his attendance at college-a period at which the study of philosophy commences, and when classical attainments are less indispensable than previously to a youth's acquiring distinction among fellow-students -ere his intelligence was fairly awakened. The third session, 1793, 1794, was his "intellectual birthtime," and the mathematics the study that breathed life into his slumbering powers. In November 1795 he was enrolled as student of divinity.

"Theology, however, occupied but little of his thoughts. During the preceding autumn he had learned enough of the French language to enable him to read fluently and intelligently the authorship in that tongue upon the higher branches of mathematics. His favourite study he prosecuted with undiminished ardour. Not even the powerful spell of one of the ablest of theological lecturers, to whose ability he afterwards rendered so full a tribute of praise, could win him from his mathematical devoteeism."

In the course of his study of divinity, Mr Chalmers became a tutor in a family, whose name and residence are kindly suppressed in the memoir. From his letters to his father, it is obvious that the young student writhed under the indignities to which he was subjected in this vulgar rich household; and the trial of his youthful spirit in these circumstances helps to explain the marked and special respect which, as we know, Dr Chalmers, when his c s company was courted by the great and noble of the land, was accustomed to show to the family tutor he might meet in their baronial mansions. It looks strange enough to say, now-a-days, that the foolish

people, especially the ladies among them, whose house was honoured by having Thomas Chalmers as a resident within it, counted him unworthy to sup with the family, and sent him his morsel to eat alone.

The

Не

"Matters grew worse as the summer months rolled on. Though at first disposed to favour one so zealously bent on the careful training of his children, his employer, won over at last by the predominating female influence, passed into the ranks of the enemy. The very servants, catching the spirit which prevailed elsewhere, were disposed to be insolent. whole combined household were at war with him. The undaunted tutor resolved, nevertheless, to act his part with dignity and effect. Remonstrances were vain. To the wrong they did him in dismissing him, when company came, to his own room, they would apply no remedy. He devised, therefore, a remedy of his own. was living in a town in which, through means of introductions given him by Fifeshire friends, he had already formed some acquaintances. Whenever he knew that there was to be a supper, from which he would be excluded, he ordered one in a neighbouring inn, to which he invited one or more of his friends. To make his purpose all the more manifest, he waited till the servant entered with his solitary repast, when he ordered it to be taken away, saying, I sup elsewhere to-night.' curiously timed tutorship suppers, were not very likely to be relished by Mrwho charged him with unseemly and unseasonable pride. 'Sir,' said he, The very servants are complaining of your haughtiness. You have far too much pride.' There are two kinds of pride, Sir,' was the reply. There is that pride which lords it over inferiors; and there is that pride which rejoices in suppressing the insolence of superiors. The first I have none of; the second I glory in.'”

Such

His stay in this saucy family was of short continuance. He left it in the end of the year, and so ended his lesson of tutorship. After completing his course of divinity, he was licensed to preach the Gospel in July 1799, being then only nineteen years of age; a dispensation having been obtained for him in respect to years, on the ground of "rare and singular qualities," as provided for in the act of Assembly, or in respect of his being a lad of pregnant pairts," as expressed by the friend who proposed

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him to his presbytery as a candidate for license.

In the Scotch church at Wigan, Lancashire, Mr Chalmers commenced his career as a preacher, delivering his first sermon on 25th August 1799. After a visit of a few weeks to England, he returned to Edinburgh, in the view of attending some classes at the University there, and employing himself as a private tutor. After spending two winters at Edinburgh, during which his gifts as a preacher seem to have been kept in abeyance, except once, when he preached, at Pennycuick, his first sermon in Scotland, he accepted, in September 1801, an appointment as assistant in the parish of Cavers, where he remained for twelve months. Having (November 1802) been presented to the church of Kilmany by the patrons, the principal and professors at St Andrews, and having spent the winter in teaching as a substitute for the professor of mathematics there, he was ordained to his first ministerial charge on the 12th May 1803, in his 21st year. But the duties of a parish minister had few attractions for him. He attempts to reconcile his worthy father to the idea of not confining his whole attention to his ministerial employment, by saying, "The fact is, that no minister finds that necessary," and he justifies his non-residence, by explaining that he was never but once called to any incidental duty through the week." In his pamphlet concerning Professor Playfair, and the Edinburgh Mathematical Chair, he says he can assert, from what to him is the highest of all authority, the authority of his own experience, that, after the satisfactory discharge of his parish-duties, a minister may enjoy five days in the week of uninterrupted leisure for the prosecution of any science, in which his taste may dispose him to engage." Acting on these views, he found time, during the first two years of his ministry, to occupy himself at St Andrews during

the winter, superintending a class of mathematics and a chemistry class in rivalry with the University-riding over to his parish on Saturday, to fulfil his pulpit-engagements, and re turning on Monday to his more confl genial pursuits. CDL 9w 161

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We commend and admire the fidelity of the biographer in detailing this portion of Dr Chalmers' history.) Nothing apparently is kept back to mitigate the picture. His sceptical leanings toward the "System of Narture," taught by the French infidel, Mirabeau, whose work Dr Chal-c mers, when a professor of divinity, and as if relating his own mental: struggles in relation to it, describes as fitted, "by its gorgeous generalisado tions on nature, and truth, and the universe, to make tremendous impres sion on the unpractised reader," are.. candidly set forth. His use, in ordi nary discourse, of language which Scottish piety usually shrinks from, is not concealed. Indeed, after his change of views, his strong phraseod logy was sometimes fitted to startle the cautious christian ear-a peculiarity which perhaps belongs to men of warm eloquence. Robert Hall, and some others who might be. named, were not devoid of it. We have heard a friend of ours relate how, when a youth, living at Inver keithing, and a frequent visitor of old Ebenezer Brown (for whom Dr Chalmers, as we learn from this memoir, entertained a great admira-». tion *), he was asked by Mr Brown: to decypher for him the cramp handwriting of the minister of Kilmany, in a letter on the affairs of the Bible Society. The letter spoke of somer "confounded" affair or other, that was troubling Mr Chalmers. "What said ye?" said Ebenezer, "Look... again; that canna be the word." On being assured that nothing else

August 17 (1813). Had a party of Johnstons and Balfours at dinner with the dissenting clergy. Delighted with Ebenezer Brown," P.340.1.

could be made of it, he insisted on seeing the word for himself, but had tomassent to the rendering offered. "Ay, ay," he rejoined, "he has not forgotten the language of Ashdod yet." He had, however, forgotten much of it; for we find the phrases, "I swear," "I hope to God," "What in the name of heaven!" mingling in Dr Chalmers' earlier correspondence, in a manner which his pious taste afterwards would have rejected. To the same account-the want of a full appreciation of the value and sacredness of divine things-we must set his extraordinary, and, for a minister of the Gospel, extravagant, admiration of mathematics. Some of the finest eloquence in the volume before us is in praise of that science and of chemistry, on both of which he lectured after his ordination to the ministry. But, indeed, he could not speak, or rather could not write (for his most impressive sayings were framed, if not elaborated, at the desk) without being eloquent, whether he pronounced a eulogy on science, or defended himself in presbytery from the charge of non-residence, or denounced from the pulpit the reading of Baxter, John Newton, and Philip Doddridge, or maintained his claim to more chalders, as a parish minister, or expatiated on the great and glorious truths of the Gospel-no matter what the theme, so fully did he concentrate upon it the large and vehement powers of his great soul, that the listener or the reader could hardly help himself from being carried away in the gushing current.

It is time we were turning the great leaf in Mr Chalmers' history, and looking to the page which will ever have most interest with christian readers. When perplexed with the " gorgeous generalisations" of the French infidel, he seems to have been much indebted to the lectures of Professor Robinson of Edinburgh, for giving a practical bearing to his thoughts, which would have wandered

away in speculation; and to Beattie's Essay on Truth, for indoctrinating his mind on the true laws of evidence., But, though this discipline had considerably sobered his views, and was no doubt instrumental in preventing him from going further astray, it did not bring him nearer the true centre. He who scourgeth every son whom he receiveth, followed his ordinary plan in bringing this wanderer to himself. The death of his brother, of his sister Barbara, of his uncle Ballardie, followed by a long and severe illness in his own body, led him to serious thought. With him, as with others, the first step to conversion was a sight of his own depravity. A conviction of his sins and shortcomings was brought home to him by his contemplation of the character and demands of God; and, in the struggle which followed upon this conviction, the law was his schoolmaster to bring him unto Christ. A chapter in the history is devoted to the description of his effort after a pure and heavenly. morality, and of its result, by which he was shut up to the simple plan of, salvation by the faith which is in Christ Jesus. His change of heart has sometimes, mistakenly, been ascribed to the preparation of the article "Christianity" in the Edinburgh Encyclopædia-an exercise which was a concomitant rather than a cause of the change, for it was in the midst of his serious thoughts about religion that he sought, as a congenial work, to write that paper-which had previously been assigned to Dr Andrew Thomson. In connection with his great change, the following sensible remarks occur in his correspondence with a pious and enlightened friend, Mr James Anderson of Dundee :

'By the way, there is one anxiety which is apt to beset us upon this subject. When you read books upon the subject, you see a certain process assigned to a conversion, and in such a confident and authoritative way, too, that you are apt to conceive this, is the very process, and that there can be no other. I compare it with my own history,"