DR ANDREW THOMSON.

to Evidences of Christianity; five, Moral Philosophy; six, Commercial Discourses; seven, Astronomical DisDR ANDREW THOMSON (1779-1831), an active and courses; eight, nine, and ten, Congregational Serable minister of the Scottish church, was author of mons; eleven, Sermons on Public Occasions; twelve, various sermons and lectures, and editor of the Tracts and Essays; thirteen, Introductory Essays, Scottish Christian Instructor, a periodical which exer- originally prefixed to editions of Select Christian cised no small influence in Scotland on ecclesiastical Authors; fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen, Christian questions. Dr Thomson was successively minister and Economic Polity of a Nation, more especially of Sprouston, in the presbytery of Kelso, of the East with reference to its Large Towns; seventeen, On Church, Perth, and of St George's Church, Edin- Church and College Endowments; eighteen, On burgh. In the annual meetings of the general Church Extension; nineteen and twenty, Political assembly he displayed great ardour and eloquence as Economy; twenty-one, The Sufficiency of a Parochial a debater, and was the recognized leader of one of System without a Poor - Rate; twenty-two, three, the church parties. He waged a long and keen four, and five, Lectures on the Romans. In all Dr warfare with the British and Foreign Bible Society Chalmers's works there is great energy and earfor circulating the books of the Apocrypha along nestness, accompanied with a vast variety of illuswith the Bible, and his speeches on this subject, tration. His knowledge is extensive, including though exaggerated in tone and manner, produced a science no less than literature, the learning of the powerful effect. There was, in truth, always more philosopher with the fancy of the poet, and a famiof the debater than the divine in his public addresses; liar acquaintance with the habits, feelings, and daily and he was an unmerciful opponent in controversy. life of the Scottish poor and middle classes. The When the question of the abolition of colonial sla- ardour with which he pursues any favourite topic, very was agitated in Scotland, he took his stand on presenting it to the reader or hearer in every posthe expediency of immediate abolition, and by his sible point of view, and investing it with the charms public appearances on this subject, and the energy of a rich poetical imagination, is a peculiar feature of his eloquence, carried the feelings of his country-in his intellectual character, and one well calculated men completely along with him. The life of this to arrest attention.* It gives peculiar effect to his ardent, impetuous, and independent-minded man was brought suddenly and awfully to a close. In the prime of health and vigour he fell down dead at the threshold of his own door. The sermons of Dr Thomson scarcely support his high reputation as a church leader and debater. They are weighty and earnest, but without pathos or elegance of style.

Robert Hall seems to have been struck with this peculiarity. In some Gleanings from Hall's Conversational Remarks, appended to Dr Gregory's Memoir, we find the following criticism, understood to refer to the Scottish divine:- Mr Hall repeatedly referred to Dr, and always in terms of great esteem as well as high admiration of his general character, exercising, however, his usual free and independent judgment. The following are some remarks on that extraordinary individual:-"Pray, sir, did you ever know any man who had that singular faculty of repetition possessed by Dr-? Why, sir, he often reiterates the same thing ten or twelve times in the course of a few pages. Even Burke himself had not so much of that peculiarity. His mind resembles that optical instrument lately invented; what do you call it?" "You mean, I suppose, the kaleidoscope." "Yes, sir, an idea thrown into his mind is just as if thrown into a kaleidoscope. Every turn presents the object in a new and beautiful form; but the object presented is still the same. ** His mind seems to move on hinges, not on wheels. There is incessant motion, but no progress. When he was at Leicester, he preached a most admirable sermon on the necessity of immediate repentance; but there were only two ideas in it, and on these his mind revolved as on a pivot." A writer in the London Magazine gives a graphic account of Dr Chalmers's appearances in London. When he visited London, the hold that he took on the minds of men was unprecedented. It was a time of strong political feeling; but even that was unheeded, and all parties thronged to hear the Scottish preacher. The very best judges were not prepared for the display that they heard. Canning and Wilberforce went together, and got into a pew near the door. The elder in attendance stood close by the pew. Chalmers began in his usual unpromising way, by stating a few nearly self-evident propositions neither in the "If this choicest language nor in the most impressive voice. be all," said Canning to his companion, "it will never do." Chalmers went on-the shuffling of the congregation gradually subsided. He got into the mass of his subject; his weakness became strength, his hesitation was turned into energy; and, bringing the whole volume of his mind to bear upon it, he poured forth a torrent of the most close and conclusive argument, brilliant with all the exuberance of an imagination which ranged over all nature for illustrations, and yet managed and applied each of them with the same unerring dexterity, as if that single one had been the study of a whole life. "The tartan beats us," said Mr Canning; "we have no preaching like that in England." Chalmers, like the celebrated French divines (according to Goldsmith), assumed all that dignity and zeal which become men who are ambassadors from Christ. The English divines, like timorous envoys, seem more solicitous not to offend the court to which they are sent, than to drive home the interests of their employers. The style of Dr

pulpit ministrations; for by concentrating his attention on one or two points at a time, and pressing these home with almost unexampled zeal and animation, a distinct and vivid impression is conveyed to the mind, unbroken by any extraneous or discursive matter. His pictures have little or no background-the principal figure or conception fills the canvass. The style of Dr Chalmers is far from being correct or elegant-it is often turgid, loose, and declamatory, vehement beyond the bounds of good taste, and disfigured by a peculiar and by no means graceful phraseology. These blemishes are, however, more than redeemed by his piety and eloquence, the originality of many of his views, and the astonishing force and ardour of his mind. His Astronomical Discourses' contain passages of great sublimity and beauty, and even the most humble and prosaic subject, treated by him, becomes attractive and poetical. His triumphs are those of genius, aided by the deepest conviction of the importance of the truths he inculcates.

as before. In a word, though I might have made him a more upright and honourable man, I might have left him as destitute of the essence of religious principle as ever. But the interesting fact is, that during the whole of that period in which I made no attempt against the natural enmity of the mind to God, while I was inattentive to the way in which this enmity is dissolved, even by the free offer on the one hand, and the believing acceptance on the other, of the gospel salvation; while Christ, through whose blood the sinner, who by nature stands afar off, is brought near to the heavenly Lawgiver whom he has offended, was scarcely ever spoken of, or spoken of in such a way as stripped him of all the importance of his character and his offices, even at this time I certainly did press the reformations of honour, and truth, and integrity among my people; but I never once heard of any such reformations having been effected amongst them. If there was anything at all brought about in this way, it was more than ever I got any account of. I am not sensible that all the vehemence with which I Dr Chalmers is a native of Anstruther, in the urged the virtues and the proprieties of social life had county of Fife. A fugitive memoir states that he the weight of a feather on the moral habits of my was born about the year 1780, that he studied at St parishioners. And it was not till I got impressed by Andrews, and was soon a mathematician, a natural the utter alienation of the heart in all its desires and philosopher, and, though there was no regular pro- affections from God; it was not till reconciliation to fessor of that science at St Andrews, a chemist.' him became the distinct and the prominent object of After his admission to holy orders, he officiated for my ministerial exertions; it was not till I took the sometime as assistant to the minister of Wilton, Scriptural way of laying the method of reconciliation near Hawick. He afterwards obtained the church before them; it was not till the free offer of forgiveof Kilmany, in his native county, and here the acti- ness through the blood of Christ was urged upon their vity of his mind was strikingly displayed. In addi- acceptance, and the Holy Spirit given through the tion to his parochial labours, he lectured in the channel of Christ's mediatorship to all who ask him, different towns on chemistry and other subjects; he was set before them as the unceasing object of their became an officer of a volunteer corps; and he wrote dependence and their prayers; it was not, in one a book on the resources of the country, besides word, till the contemplations of my people were turned pamphlets on some of the topics of the day; and of a soul providing for its interest with God and the to these great and essential elements in the business when the Edinburgh Encyclopædia was projected, he was invited to be a contributor, and engaged to those subordinate reformations which I aforetime concerns of its eternity, that I ever heard of any of furnish the article "Christianity," which he after-made the earnest and the zealous, but, I am afraid, wards completed with so much ability."* At Kilmany Dr Chalmers seems to have received more serious and solemn impressions as to his clerical duties, for in an address to the inhabitants of the parish, included in his tracts, there is the following remarkable passage :

[Inefficacy of mere Moral Preaching.]

And here I cannot but record the effect of an actual though undesigned experiment which I prosecuted for upwards of twelve years amongst you. For the greater part of that time I could expatiate on the meanness of dishonesty, on the villany of falsehood, on the despicable arts of calumny-in a word, upon all those deformities of character which awaken the natural indignation of the human heart against the pests and the disturbers of human society. Now, could I, upon the strength of these warm expostulations, have got the thief to give up his stealing, and the evil speaker his censoriousness, and the liar his deviations from truth, I should have felt all the repose of one who had gotten his ultimate object. It never occurred to me that all this might have been done, and yet every soul of every hearer have remained in full alienation from God; and that even could I have established in the bosom of one who stole such a principle of abhorrence at the meanness of dishonesty that he was prevailed upon to steal no more, he might still have retained a heart as completely unturned to God, and as totally unpossessed by a principle of love to Him,

Chalmers became the rage in Scotland among the young
preachers, but few could do more than copy his defects.
* London Magazine.

ministrations. Ye servants, whose scrupulous fidelity at the same time the ultimate object of my earlier has now attracted the notice and drawn forth in my hearing a delightful testimony from your masters, what mischief you would have done had your zeal for doctrines and sacraments been accompanied by the sloth and the remissness, and what, in the prevailing tone of moral relaxation, is counted the allowable purloining of your earlier days! But a sense of your heavenly Master's eye has brought another influence to bear upon you; and while you are thus striving to adorn the doctrine of God your Saviour in all things, you may, poor as you are, reclaim the great ones of the land to the acknowledgment of the faith. You have at least taught me that to preach Christ is the only effective way of preaching morality in all its branches; and out of your humble cottages have I gathered a lesson, which I pray God I may be enabled to carry with all its simplicity into a wider theatre, and to bring with all the power of its subduing efficacy upon the vices of a more crowded population.

From Kilmany Dr Chalmers removed to the new church of St John's in Glasgow, where his labours were unceasing and meritorious. Here his principal sermons were delivered and published; and his fame as a preacher and author was diffused not only over Great Britain, but throughout all Europe and America. In 1823 he removed to St Andrews, as professor of moral philosophy in the United college; and in 1828 he was appointed professor of divinity in the university of Edinburgh. This appointment he relinquished in 1843, on his secession from the established church.

suers.

ENGLISH LITERATURE.

[Picture of the Chase-Cruelty to Animals.]

DR THOMAS CHALMERS.

ill-fated creatures; and whether for the indulgence stalk paramount over the sufferings of that prostrate of his barbaric sensuality or barbaric splendour, can creation which has been placed beneath his feet. That beauteous domain whereof he has been constituted the terrestrial sovereign, gives out so many blissful and benignant aspects; and whether we look to its peaceful lakes, or to its flowery landscapes, or its evening skies, or to all that soft attire which overspreads the hills and the valleys, lighted up by smiles of sweetest sunshine, and where animals disport themselves in all the exuberance of gaiety-this surely than for the iron rod of a murderous and remorseless were a more befitting scene for the rule of clemency, tyrant. But the present is a mysterious world wherein we dwell. It still bears much upon its materialism of the impress of Paradise. But a breath from the air of Pandemonium has gone over its living generations; and so the fear of man and the dread of man is now upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, and upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into man's hands meat for him; yea, even as the green herbs, there are they delivered: every moving thing that liveth is have been given to him all things.' Such is the extent of his jurisdiction, and with most full and wanton license has he revelled among its privileges. The whole earth labours and is in violence because of his cruelties; and from the amphitheatre of sentient Nature there sounds in fancy's ear the bleat of one wide and universal suffering a dreadful homage to the power of Nature's constituted lord.

The sufferings of the lower animals may, when out of sight, be out of mind. But more than this, these sufferings may be in sight, and yet out of mind. This is strikingly exemplified in the sports of the field, in the midst of whose varied and animating bustle that cruelty which all along is present to the senses may not for one moment have been present to the thoughts. There sits a somewhat ancestral dignity and glory on this favourite pastime of joyous old England; when the gallant knighthood, and the hearty yeomen, and the amateurs or virtuosos of the chase, and the full assembled jockeyship of half a province, muster together in all the pride and pageantry of their great emprize-and the panorama of some noble landscape, lighted up with autumnal clearness from an unclouded heaven, pours fresh exhilaration into every blithe and choice spirit of the scene-and every adventurous heart is braced and impatient for the hazards of the coming enterprise-and even the high-breathed coursers catch the general sympathy, and seem to fret in all the restiveness of their yet checked and irritated fire, till the echoing horn shall set them at liberty—even that horn which is the knell of death to some trembling victim now brought forth of its lurking-place to the delighted gaze, and borne down upon with the full and open cry of its ruthless purBe assured that, amid the whole glee and fervency of this tumultuous enjoyment, there might not, in one single bosom, be aught so fiendish as a principle of naked and abstract cruelty. The fear which gives its lightning-speed to the unhappy animal; the thickening horrors which, in the progress of field are not so many automata without sensation, These sufferings are really felt. The beasts of the exhaustion, must gather upon its flight; its gradually and just so constructed as to give forth all the sinking energies, and, at length, the terrible certainty natural signs and expressions of it. Nature hath not of that destruction which is awaiting it; that piteous practised this universal deception upon our species. cry which the ear can sometimes distinguish amid These poor animals just look, and tremble, and give the deafening clamour of the bloodhounds as they forth the very indications of suffering that we do. spring exultingly upon their prey; the dread massacre and dying agonies of a creature so miserably torn ;- equivocal physiognomy of pain. They put on the Theirs is the distinct cry of pain. Theirs is the unall this weight of suffering, we admit, is not once sympathised with; but it is just because the suffering menaced blow. They exhibit the same distortions of same aspect of terror on the demonstrations of a itself is not once thought of. It touches not the sensibilities of the heart; but just because it is never burn, or the fracture, or the deep incision, or the agony after the infliction of it. The bruise, or the present to the notice of the mind. We allow that the fierce encounter with one of equal or superior strength, hardy followers in the wild romance of this occupa-just affects them similarly to ourselves. Their blood tion, we allow them to be reckless of pain, but this is circulates as ours. They have pulsations in various not rejoicing in pain. Theirs is not the delight of the parts of the body like ours. They sicken, and they savage, but the apathy of unreflecting creatures. grow feeble with age, and, finally, they die just as we They are wholly occupied with the chase itself and do. They possess the same feelings; and, what exits spirit-stirring accompaniments, nor bestow one poses them to like suffering from another quarter, moment's thought on the dread violence of that in- they possess the same instincts with our own species. fliction upon sentient nature which marks its termi- The lioness robbed of her whelps causes the wilderness nation. It is the spirit of the competition, and it to wring aloud with the proclamation of her wrongs; alone, which goads onward this hurrying career; and or the bird whose little household has been stolen, even he who in at the death is foremost in the triumph, fills and saddens all the grove with melodies of deepest although to him the death itself is in sight, the agony pathos. All this is palpable even to the general and of its wretched sufferer is wholly out of mind. * Man is the direct agent of a wide and continual the recesses of their system by means of that scalpel, unlearned eye and when the physiologist lays open distress to the lower animals, and the question is, Can under whose operation they just shrink and are conany method be devised for its alleviation? On this vulsed as any living subject of our own species-there subject that Scriptural image is strikingly realised, stands forth to view the same sentient apparatus, 'The whole inferior creation groaning and travailling and furnished with the same conductors for the transtogether in pain,' because of him. It signifies not to mission of feeling to every minutest pore upon the surthe substantive amount of the suffering whether this face. Theirs is unmixed and unmitigated pain-the be prompted by the hardness of his heart, or only per- agonies of martyrdom without the alleviation of the mitted through the heedlessness of his mind. either way it holds true, not only that the arch-de- When they lay them down to die, their only fellowIn hopes and the sentiments whereof they are incapable. vourer man stands pre-eminent over the fiercest chil- ship is with suffering; for in the prison-house of their dren of the wilderness as an animal of prey, but that beset and bounded faculties there can no relief be for his lordly and luxurious appetite, as well as for afforded by communion with other interests or other his service or merest curiosity and amusement, Nature things. The attention does not lighten their distress must be ransacked throughout all her elements. Rather than forego the veriest gratifications of vanity, that existing pungency and pressure which might else as it does that of man, by carrying off his spirit from he will wring them from the anguish of wretched and be overwhelming. There is but room in their myste

*

663

rious economy for one inmate, and that is, the absorbing sense of their own single and concentrated anguish. And so in that bed of torment whereon the wounded animal lingers and expires, there is an unexplored depth and intensity of suffering which the poor dumb animal itself cannot tell, and against which it can offer no remonstrance-an untold and unknown amount of wretchedness of which no articulate voice gives utterance. But there is an eloquence in its silence; and the very shroud which disguises it only serves to aggravate its horrors.

[Insignificance of this Earth.]

Though the earth were to be burned up, though the trumpet of its dissolution were sounded, though yon sky were to pass away as a scroll, and every visible glory which the finger of the Divinity has inscribed on it were extinguished for ever-an event so awful to us, and to every world in our vicinity, by which so many suns would be extinguished, and so many varied scenes of life and population would rush into forgetfulness-what is it in the high scale of the Almighty's workmanship? a mere shred, which, though scattered into nothing, would leave the universe of God one entire scene of greatness and of majesty. Though the earth and the heavens were to disappear, there are other worlds which roll afar; the light of other suns shines upon them; and the sky which mantles them is garnished with other stars. Is it presumption to say that the moral world extends to these distant and unknown regions? that they are occupied with people? that the charities of home and of neighbourhood flourish there that the praises of God are there lifted up, and his goodness rejoiced in? that there piety has its temples and its offerings? and the richness of the divine attributes is there felt and admired by intelligent worshippers?

And what is this world in the immensity which teems with them; and what are they who occupy it? The universe at large would suffer as little in its splendour and variety by the destruction of our planet, as the verdure and sublime magnitude of a forest would suffer by the fall of a single leaf. The leaf quivers on the branch which supports it. It lies at the mercy of the slightest accident. A breath of wind tears it from its stem, and it lights on the streain of water which passes underneath. In a moment of time the life, which we know by the microscope it teems with, is extinguished; and an occurrence so insignificant in the eye of man, and on the scale of his observation, carries in it to the myriads which people this little leaf an event as terrible and as decisive as

and probability. It may hurry our globe towards the sun, or drag it to the outer regions of the planetary system, or give it a new axis of revolution and the effect, which I shall simply announce without explaining it, would be to change the place of the ocean, and bring another mighty flood upon our islands and continents.

These are changes which may happen in a single instant of time, and against which nothing known in the present system of things provides us with any security. They might not annihilate the earth, but they would unpeople it, and we, who tread its surface with such firm and assured footsteps, are at the mercy of devouring elements, which, if let loose upon us by the hand of the Almighty, would spread solitude, and silence, and death over the dominions of the world.

Now, it is this littleness and this insecurity which make the protection of the Almighty so dear to us, and bring with such emphasis to every pious bosom the holy lessons of humility and gratitude. The God who sitteth above, and presides in high authority over all worlds, is mindful of man; and though at this moment his energy is felt in the remotest provinces of creation, we may feel the same security in his providence as if we were the objects of his undivided care. It is not for us to bring our minds up to this mysterious agency. But such is the incomprehensible fact, that the same Being, whose eye is abroad over the whole universe, gives vegetation to every blade of grass, and motion to every particle of blood which circulates through the veins of the minutest animal; that though his mind takes into his comprehensive grasp immensity and all its wonders, I am as much known to him as if I were the single object of his attention; that he marks all my thoughts; that he gives birth to every feeling and every movement within me; and that, with an exercise of power which I can neither describe nor comprehend, the same God who sits in the highest heaven, and reigns over the glories of the firmament, is at my right hand to give me every breath which I draw, and every comfort which I enjoy.

TRAVELLERS.

Recent years have witnessed an immense influx of books of travels and voyages-journals and narratives of personal adventure-the result of that spirit of scientific discovery, religious zeal, and enlightened curiosity, which characterise the nineteenth century.

In physical geography large advances have been made. The extension of commerce and improvement of navigation have greatly facilithe destruction of a world. Now, on the grand scale tated foreign travelling; steamboats now traverse of the universe, we, the occupiers of this ball, which both the Atlantic and Mediterranean; and the performs its little round among the suns and the sys-overland route to India has introduced us to a more tems that astronomy has unfolded-we may feel the intimate acquaintance with the countries, so fertile same littleness and the same insecurity. We differ in interesting and romantic associations, which lie Indeed, if we except from the leaf only in this circumstance, that it would between India and Britain. some of the populous regions in the interior of require the operation of greater elements to destroy us. But these elements exist. The fire which rages within Africa-still guarded by barbarous jealousy and may lift its devouring energy to the surface of our bigotry-almost every corner of the earth has been planet, and transform it into one wide and wasting penetrated by British enterprise; and those counvolcano. The sudden formation of elastic matter in tries endeared to us from the associations of Holy the bowels of the earth-and it lies within the agency Writ, the gorgeous and fascinating fictions of Eastern of known substances to accomplish this-may explode fable, or the wisdom and beauty of the classic phiit into fragments. The exhalation of noxious air from losophers and poets, have been rendered familiar to below may impart a virulence to the air that is around every class of British society. Even war has been us; it may affect the delicate proportion of its ingre- instrumental in adding to our knowledge of foreign dients; and the whole of animated nature may wither nations. The French invasion of Egypt led to the and die under the malignity of a tainted atmosphere. study of Egyptian antiquities-for Napoleon carried A blazing comet may cross this fated planet in its savans in his train-and our most valuable informaorbit, and realise all the terrors which superstition tion regarding India has been derived from officers has conceived of it. We cannot anticipate with pre-engaged in hostile missions and journeys caused by cision the consequences of an event which every astro- war. The embassies of Macartney and Amherst to nomer must know to lie within the limits of chance | China (the first of which was highly satisfactory)