Images de page
PDF
ePub

came-and the deep seriousness that sat on every countenance bespoke, not the pageantry, but the whole power and reality of woe. We could point to his closing sepulchre, and read to you there the oftrepeated lesson of man's fading and evanescent glories. But we gladly, my brethren, we gladly make our escape from all these images, and these sentiments, of oppressive melancholy. We would fain take refuge in other views, and betake ourselves to some other direction." pp. 9-12.

After these masterly general sketches, Dr. Chalmers proceeds to delineate in detail the character of his lamented friend, as a theologian, and as a man.

The following is his estimate of his theology.

"In briefest possible definition, his was the olden theology of Scotland. A thoroughly devoted son of our church, he was, through life, the firm, the unflinching advocate of its articles, and its formularies, and its rights, and the whole polity of its constitution and discipline. His creed he derived, by inheritance, from the fathers of the Scottish Reformation-not, however, as based on human authority, but as based and upholden on the authority of Scripture alone. Its two great articles are justification, only by the righteousness of Christ-santification, only by that Spirit which Christ is commis

sioned to bestow,-the one derived to the believer by faith-the other derived by faith too, because obtained and realised in the exercise of believing prayer. This simple and sublime theology, connecting the influences of heaven with the moralities of earth, did the founders of our church incorporate, by their catechisms, with the education of the people; and, through the medium of a clergy, who maintained their orthodoxy and their zeal for several generations, was it faithfully and efficiently preached in all the parishes of the land. The whole system originated in deepest piety, and has resulted in the formation of the most moral and intelligent peasantry in Europe. Yet, in spite of this palpable evidence in its favour, it fell into discredit. Along with the elegant literature of our sister country, did the meagre Arminianism of her church make invasion among our clergy; and we certainly receded for a time from the good old way of our forefathers. This was the middle age of the Church of Scotland, an age of cold and feeble rationality, when Evangelism was derided as fanatical, and its very phraseology was deemed an ignoble and vulgar thing, in the upper classes of society. A morality without godliness -a certain prettiness of sentiment, served up in tasteful and well-turned periods of composition-the ethics of philosophy, or the academic chair, rather than the ethics

of the Gospel-the speculations of Natural Theology, and perhaps an ingenious and scholar-like exposition of the credentials, rather than a faithful exposition of the contents of the New Testament,-these for a time dispossessed the topics of other days, and occupied that room in our pulpits, which had formerly been given to the demonstrations of sin, and of the Saviour. You know there has been a reflux The tide of sentiment has been turned; and there is none who has given it greater antly along, than didt he lamented pastor momentum, or borne it more triumphof this congregation. His talents and his advocacy have thrown a lustre around the cause. The prejudices of thousands have given way before the might and the mastery of his resistless demonstrations. The evangelical system has of consequence risen, has risen prodigiously of late years, in the estimation of general societyconnected to a great degree, we doubt not, under the blessing of God, with his powerful appeals to Scripture, and his no less powerful appeals to the consciences of men." pp. 13-15.

In estimating his character as a man, Dr. Chalmers particularly dwells upon that fixed determination of purpose with which, having seized the grand outline of a principle, he followed it up, with a vigour and unity of purpose, which we must continue to think, now that he is dead, as we did when he was living, did not always allow him to take into the account all those modifying circumstances which were necessary to be weighed, both for the

Of this the Apocryphal controversy purposes of charity and of truth. furnishes a remarkable instance. His great principle was right: he would not that the word of God and the word of man should be blended; in this he was to be honoured: but he would not have been the less useful in his efforts on this great question if he had always restrained them within the bounds of truth and charity. But we forbear recurring to these painful recollections; and shall therefore keep to our purpose, of only copying a few paragraphs of one who knew him well, and whose high eulogy is above all suspicion of weakness or partiality.

"No two things can be more dissimilar, than a religion of points, and a religion of principles. No one will suspect his of

being a religion of senseless or unmeaning points. Altogether, there was a manhood in his understanding-a strength and a firmness in the whole staple of his mind, as remote as possible from whatever is weakly and superstitiously fanciful. It is therefore, you will find, that whenever he laid the stress of his zeal or energy on a cause-instead of a stress disproportionate to its importance, there was always the weight of some great, some cardinal principle underneath to sustain it. It is thus, that every subject he undertook was throughout charged with sentiment. The whole drift and doings of the man were instinct with it; and that, too, sentiment fresh from the word of God, or warm with generous enthusiasm for the best interests of the church and of the species.

"There is one peculiarity by which he was signalized above all his fellows; and which makes him an incalculable loss, both to the church and to the country at large. We have known men of great power, but they wanted promptitude; and we have known men of great promptitude, but they wanted power. The former, if permitted to concentrate their energies on one great object, may, by dint of a rivetted perseverance, succeed in its accomplishment-but they cannot bear to have this concentration broken up; and it is torture to all their habits, when assailed by the importunity of those manifold and miscellaneous applications, to which every public man is exposed, from the philanthrophy of our modern day. The latter again-that is, they who have the promptitude but not the power, facility without force, and whose very lightness favours both the exceeding variety and velocity of their movements,-why, they are alert and serviceable, and can acquit themselves in a respectable way of any slender or secondary part which is put into their hands; but then, they want predominance and momentum in any one direction to which they may betake themselves. But in him, never did such ponderous faculties meet with such marvellous power of wielding them at pleasure,-insomuch, that even on the impulse of most unforeseen occasions, he could bring them immediately to bear-and that with sweeping and resistless effect, on the object before him." pp. 23-25.

"I must now satisfy myself with a few slight and rapid touches on his character

as a man. It is a subject I dare hardly approach. To myself, he was at all times a joyous, hearty, gallant, honourable, and out and out most worthy friend-while, in harmony with a former observation, there were beautifully projected on this broad and general ground-work, some of friendship's finest and most considerate delicacies. By far the most declared and discernible feature in his character, was a dauntless, and direct, and right-forward honesty, that needed no disguise for itself, and was impatient of aught like dissimu. lation or disguise in other men. There were withal a heart and a hilarity in his companionship, that every where carried its own welcome along with it; and there were none who moved with greater acceptance, or wielded a greater ascendant over so wide a circle of living society. Christianity does not overbear the constitutional varieties either of talent or of temperament. After the conversion of the Apostles, their complexional differences of mind and character remained with them; and, there can be no doubt that, apart from, and anterior to the influence of the Gospel, the hand of nature had stamped a generosity, and a sincerity, and an openness on the subject of our description, among the very strongest of the lineaments which belong to him. Under an urgent sense of rectitude, he delivered himself with vigour and with vehemence, in behalf of what he deemed to be its cause-but I would have you to discri minate between the vehemence of passion, and the vehemence of sentiment, which, like though they be in outward expression, are wholly different and dissimilar in themselves. His was, mainly, the vehemence of sentiment, which, hurrying him when it did, into what he afterwards felt to be excesses, were immediately followed_up by the relentings of a noble nature. The pulpit is not the place for the idolatry of an unqualified panegyric on any of our fellow-mortals-but it is imposible not to acknowledge, that whatever might have been his errors, he was right at bottomthat truth, and piety, and ardent philanthrophy formed the substratum of his ' character; and that the tribute was altogether a just one, when the profoundest admiration, along with the pungent regrets of his fellow-citizens, did follow him to his grave." pp. 27, 28.

LITERARY & PHILOSOPHICAL INTELLIGENCE, &c.

LIST OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Sermons preached in St. David's College, Llampeter. By the Rev. A. Ollivant, Vice-Principal. 8s.

The Christian's Prayer, with Notes. By a Lay Member of the Church of England.

Edwards on the Freedom of the Will; with an Introductory Essay by the Author of "The Natural History of Enthusiasm."

The Temperance Society Record: to be continually monthly. 4d.

The Destinies of the British Empire. By W. Thorp.

Discourses on the Death of the Rev. R. Hall. By the Rev. J. Hughes; with the Address at the Interment by the Rev. T. S. Crisp. 1s. 6d. Another by the Rev. N. Bosworth. 1s. 6d. And another by the Rev. A. F. Cox, D.D.

The Literal Interpretation of Scripture enforced. By T. P. Platt.

Discourses on the Death of Dr. A. Thomson; by Dr. Chalmers; the Rev. G. Macculloch; and the Rev. J. R. Brown.

History of England. By F. Palgrave. (Anglo-Saxon period). Family Library. 5s. Sacred History in Letters, Part III. British Reformers-Wickliffe. 5s. The Select Library, Vol. II., containing Vol. ii. of Ellis's Polynesian Researches. 6s. Sermons, by Archbishop Usher.

The Christian's Magazine, Part I. ls.3d. A Protest against certain Speculations in the Prophecies of Scripture. By the Rev. J. F. Whitridge.

Counsels for the Communion Table. By the Rev. John Morison, D.D.

MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE.

GREAT BRITAIN.

In the press and preparing for publication:-A posthumous volume of Sermons by Sir Henry Moncrieff Wellwood, Bart. D.D.;-Letters on Prophetic Subjects, Part I.; by James H. Frere;-An Address, introductory to a Course of Theological Lectures; by the Rev. Mr. Conybeare;-A posthumous volume of Sermons by the Rev. Andrew Thomson;

The Cabinet for Youth, containing Narratives, &c. ;-Reflections on the Legislative Support of Parochial Schools and Ministry; by Rev. J. Wilson.

A series of original letters of Machiavel, from 1513 to 1522, it is announced has been discovered in the library of the late Earl of Guildford.

A medical journal states that Chevalier Ruspini's expensive popular styptic, which is still occasionally used by medical men, is gallic acid in alcohol and rose water, with a small portion, not worth adding, of sulphate of zinc and opium.

66

A thermometer in good preservation was lately exhibited at the French Institute, which, it is affirmed, was the cele brated instrument of Galileo. It is stated to have been secreted from the Inquisition. Many of our Roman cities have become entirely wasted and desolate-Silchester is one of these. Corn-fields and pastures cover the spot once adorned with public and private buildings, all of which are now wholly destroyed. Like the busy crowds who inhabited them, the edifices have sunk beneath the fresh and silent green-sward; but the flinty wall which surrounded the city is yet firm, and the direction of the streets may be discerned by the difference of tint in the herbage; and the ploughshare turns up the medals of the Cæsars."-History of England; Family Library.

"The Britons were so unmixed with their conquerors, that they kept their ancient speech until the reign of Henry VIII., when it gradually became obsolete. In the reign of Queen Anne, it was known only in a few villages near the Land's End. The children as they grew up

learnt English; and as the old Cornish people died off, the language gradually expired with them; so that towards the middle of the reign of King George III., one Dolly Pentrath, an old fish-wife, who resided about three miles from Mousehole, near Penzance, was the only surviving individual in the world who could converse in the tongue of the ancient Damnonian Britons. At this present time, the names of fields and towns, hills and rivers, in Cornwall, are the only memorials of the British language."-Ibid.

"The distance to which icebergs float from the polar regions on the opposite sides of the Line, is very different. Their extreme limit in the northern hemisphere appears to be the Azores; north latitude 42 deg. But in the other hemisphere they have been seen, within the last two years, off the Cape of Good Hope, between latitude 36 deg. and 39 deg. One of these was two miles in circumference, and 150 feet high. Others rose from 250 to 300 feet above the level of the sea: and for every solid foot seen above, there must be at least eight feet below water— Lyell's Geology.

[ocr errors]

Severity of climate is not always dependent on latitude. In the island of Georgia, which is in the 53d deg. south latitude, or the same parallel as the central counties of England, the perpetual snow descends to the level of the ocean. When we consider this fact, and then recollect that the highest mountains in Scotland do not attain the limit of perpetual snow on this side of the Equator, we learn that latitude is only one of many powerful causes which determine the climate of particular regions of the globe. The number and dimensions of icebergs in Baffin's Bay is prodigious. Captain Ross saw several of them together aground in water 1500 feet deep! Many of them are driven down into Hudson's Bay, and, accumulating there, diffuse excessive cold over the neighbouring continent; so that Captain Franklin reports, that at the mouth of Hayes river, which lies in the same latitude as the north of Prussia, or the south of Scotland, ice is found every

where in digging wells at the depth of four feet.-Ibid.

"Bones of the mammoth have been recently found at North Cliff, in the county of York, in a lacustrine formation, in which all the land and fresh-water shells have been identified with species now existing in that country. Bones of the bison, an animal now inhabiting a cold or temperate climate, have also been found in the same place. That these quadrupeds, and the indigenous species of testacea associated with them, were all contemporary inhabitants of Yorkshire (a fact of the greatest importance in geology), has been established by unequivocal proofs by the Rev. W. V. Vernon, who caused a pit to be sunk to the depth of more than 200 feet, through undisturbed strata, in which the remains of the mammoth were found imbedded, together with the shells, in a deposit which had evidently resulted from tranquil waters. These facts, as Mr. Vernon observes, indicate that there has been little alteration in the temperature of these latitudes since the mammoth lived there."-Ibid.

ITALY.

Mr. Lyell, in his Geology, mentions a remarkable discovery lately made on Etna of a large mass of ice, preserved for many years, perhaps for centuries, from melting, by a current of red-hot lava having flowed over it. The extraordinary heat of 1828, having caused the supplies of ice preserved for the use of Catania, Sicily, and Malta, to fail, considerable distress was felt for the want of a commodity regarded in these countries as one of the necessaries of life. The magistrates of Catania applied to Signor Gemmellaro, in the hope that his local knowledge of Etna might enable him to point out some crevice or natural grotto where drift snow was still preserved. Nor were they disappointed; for he had long suspected that a small mass of perennial ice at the foot of the highest cone was part of a larger and continuous glacier covered by a lava-current. Having procured a body of workmen, he quarried into this ice, and proved the super-position of the lava for several hundred yards, so as completely to satisfy himself that nothing but the subsequent flowing of the lava over the ice could account for the position of the glacier. Mr. Lyell, who visited the spot, supposes that, at the commencement of the eruption, a deep mass of drift snow had been covered by volcanic sand showered down upon it before the descent of the lava. A dense stratum of this fine dust mixed with scoriæ is an excellent non-conductor of heat, and might he thinks have preserved the snow from complete fusion when the burning flood poured over it. The shepherds in the higher regions of Etna are accustomed to keep an annual store of snow, by simply strewing over it a layer of volcanic sand a few inches thick, which effectually

prevents the sun from penetrating. When lava had once consolidated over a glacier at the height of 10,000 feet above the level of the sea, the ice might endure as long as the snows of Mont Blanc, unless melted by volcanic heat from below.

UNITED STATES.

It has been estimated that seven hundren thousand children are born in the United States every year; and that the amount of deaths of persons of all ages is only half that number. The reader may hence infer the importance and the difficulty of keeping up religious institutions to the wants of a population thus rapidly increasing. If, for instance, the number of ministers and places of worship were at this moment quite sufficient, there would require an addition of several hundreds every year, to keep pace with the exigency.

The powerful influence of the efforts in progress for procuring the better observance of the Lord's day are visible in the virulent opposition excited against them. In a string of resolutions lately passed at a public meeting at Mobile, of persons opposed to closing their shops and warehouses on Sunday, we find the following, which may throw light upon the discipline of the apostate Church of Rome. "Resolved, That a portion of the present meeting is composed of Roman Catholics, whose religious opinions do not compel them to close their stores or shops on Sunday: That this custom prevails in all Catholic countries in the world: That they have inherited these maxims from their forefathers, and are tolerated in them by their own church; and to this day their conduct has never been called into question in New Orleans, the capital of our sister state of Louisiana."

Theatres are often called "schools of morality;" a special illustration of which occurs in a question, now pending in some of the American theatres, whether the ma. nagers shall appropriate some particular part of the building for the usual profligate appendages of a play-house, or whether they shall sit promiscuously with the audience. It seems, after much deliberation, to be the opinion of the proprietors that the latter is the more virtuous plan; but in a late experiment it was obliged to be relinquished "on account of public disapprobation." Can any parent, professing to be a Christian, or even a friend of morality, read such things, and not shudder to expose his children to such contamination?

The New-England Christian Herald contains a letter from a converted Indian, stating that one thousand of the Chippewa Indians, and two hundred of the Mohawks, are members of the Methodist Society, and that they all abstain from the use of firewater-by which he means ardent spirits.

We have often expressed our surprise

and regret that such a pest as that of lotteries should still be allowed in the American Union. Will it be believed, that in the city of New-York lotteries are drawn every week, to the annual amount of nearly two million of tickets, and ten millions of dollars? Yet such appears by official returns to be the fact. Is there no Christian, no lover of his country, who will devote himself to the extirpation of this baneful system, never ceasing his efforts till he sees it prostrate in the dust?

The Monro Medical Society lately passed a resolution, concurring with the resolutions of other medical institutions, "That intemperance, in any degree, is an alarming physical and moral evil; That the prevalent opinion, that spirit is an antidote to the diseases of our climate, is exceedingly erroneous, and in many instances fatally so; and, That persons who use spirit daily, or even occasionally, are more subject to them, and their chances of recovery are greatly diminished."

There has recently been published, for the use of the higher classes in schools, a "Political Class-book," designed to com

municate information to young persons respecting the origin of society, civil government, division of labour, rights of persons and property, political duties, the law of nations, and similar topics. We have often wished that some such work, adapted to the state of British society, and grounded on the basis of true religion, were introduced into our English schools. Why should not every National-School child learn, what we may call, the poor man's political economy,-his real, not Utopian, rights; his civil and social duties; and the general principles which affect his condition with regard to wages, poor-laws, machinery, marriage, the wisely appointed gradations of society, and other important questions? How much of rioting, combination, improvidence, and other evils, might be prevented by a well-ordered system of public instruction, embracing topics of this kind, as well as the religious principles which enforce them! Bonaparte was too wise a man in his generation not to see the use that might be made of a political catechism: better men might employ an economical catechism for better purposes.

RELIGIOUS INTELLIGENCE.

SOCIETY FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF VICE.

FOR checking the trade in licentious publications the Society, since its establishment, has instituted sixty-nine prosecutions, of which only one or two have failed of success. One man was convicted of selling an indecent publication to a pupil at a public college in the neighbourhood of London. This prosecution was undertaken at the instance of the head master, who detected the transaction. From this public establishment, and its principals, the Society in consequence has since continued to derive pecuniary support. Another man, detected in carrying on this trade at the seat of one of the Universities, was, at the instance of the head of a college, prosecuted and convicted at the local assizes, on which occasion the Society's expenses were paid by a vote of the senate. The stocks at different times delivered up for destruction-consisting of books, copper-plates, and prints-have altogether amounted to some thousands of pounds. Of the before mentioned prosecutions, nine have taken place within the last two years; and to keep the trade in check, and prevent it from reviving, to which it has a continual tendency, the Society finds it necessary to exercise unabated vigilance. Boarding schools are the peculiar objects of the miscreants engaged in this detestable traffic, and the

agents employed for these vile purposes are usually itinerant hawkers. Racecourses have frequently been the field of the Society's usefulness; and many delinquents have been prosecuted and convicted at assizes and quarter sessions who were apprehended on race-grounds, for offering for sale, and even throwing into carriages filled with ladies, the most obscene papers. As prosecutions for such offences are attended with great expense, it must be evident that the Society is entirely dependent, for the extent and success of its efforts, upon the pecuniary support of the public, which it therefore urgently solicits.

The Society has also directed its attention to the evils arising from the sale of blasphemous publications: for the prevention of which it has from time to time instituted fourteen prosecutions; in several of which, on the conviction of the parties, sentences of imprisonment followed, for two years and for shorter terms, to which, in three cases, were added two fines of 500l. and one fine of 100%. Although these prosecutions did not produce the effect of closing the principal mart for the sale of such works, yet on inquiry at thirty-three minor places of sale, promiscuously applied to, and known to be addicted to the same trade, it was found that they had caused a discontinuance of the sale of these productions; the owners

« PrécédentContinuer »