THOMAS CHALMERS, 1780-1847.

THOMAS CHALMERS, the distinguished Scottish divine, was born at Anstruther, in Fifeshire, in April, 1780, and prosecuted his literary and theological studies at the University of St. Andrews. Two or three years after leaving the university, he obtained the church of Kilmany, in his native county. Here he continued to prosecute his scientific studies, and, in addition to his parochial labors, he lectured in the different towns on chemistry and other subjects, wrote many pamphlets on the topics of the day, and contributed the article " Christianity" to the "Edinburgh Encyclopædia," edited by Sir D. Brewster. This was afterwards published separately, under the title of "Evidences of the Christian Revelation."

In 1814, he removed to the new church of St. John's, in Glasgow, and while there, rose to be the greatest preacher of the day-his fame extending not only over Great Britain, but throughout all Europe and America; and no visit to the country was deemed by any one complete unless he heard Chalmers preach. But he was not content with his distinguished rank in theology, for in 1817 he entered the scientific arena, and published his celebrated "Discourses on Astronomy." In 1818 appeared his "Commercial Discourses;" in 1819 his "Occasional Discourses in the Tron Church and St. John's Church;" and in 1821 his "Civic and Christian Economy of Large Towns."

After laboring for some years in Glasgow, he was appointed, in 1824, to the professorship of moral philosophy in the University of St. Andrews. His arrival there gave an impulse to that ancient seminary, which brought back much of the glory of its former days. The next year he was invited to take a chair in the then projected London University, but declined. During the period of his settlement at St. Andrews, he published his works "On Church and College Endowments," on "Political Economy," his "Bridgewater Treatise," and his "Lectures on the Romans." His published works form twenty-five volumes, and they have been widely circulated. In addition to these, he has made many and important contributions to periodical literature.

In 1828 he was removed to the chair of theology in the University of Edinburgh, the highest academical distinction which could be conferred, and here, undisturbed by any change, he prosecuted his labors for many years, and concentrated upon himself a deeper interest than any other clergyman of the religious world either in Great Britain or America. Then came the memorable year 1843, when a very large and influential number of the clergy and their congregations seceded from the Established Church of Scotland, in defence of their right to have only such pastors as were their own choice, and not such as dukes and lords might thrust upon them at pleasure. Dr. Chalmers led the seceding party, and consequently resigned his professorship in the university-a noble instance of sacrificing all worldly advantage for the cause of truth!

"Few scholars had accumulated so many academic honors as Dr. Chalmers. He received the degree of LL.D. from the University of Oxford, and was elected a corresponding member of the Royal Institute of France, honors never before awarded to a Presbyterian divine, and seldom to a Scotsman. In fine, while living he received all the homage and respect usually accorded to great men when dead, and this mainly because, while living, he was a good man as well as a great man. With him religion was not a mere theory on which he could expatiate with a wondrous grasp of intellect, illustrate with the most vivid imagination, and set before an audience in all the perspicuity and clearness that a complete mastery of his subject could accomplish. It was a living faith that mingled with all his thoughts, imparted a tone to his language, and moulded his actions; it was realized in his whole course of conduct. His attainments in science, his genius, his life seemed devoted to one end-to raise his country by the lever of religion."

Dr. Chalmers retired to rest on the evening of Sunday, May 30, 1847, apparently in perfect health, and died calmly during the night, the bedclothes being found undisturbed about his person. The news of his death caused a most profound sensation throughout Great Britain and America, for it was felt that one of the brightest lights in the literary and religious world had gone out.

VIRTUE AND VICE CONTRASTED.

Virtue is not only seen to be right-it is felt to be delicious. There is happiness in the very wish to make others happy. There is a heart's ease, or a heart's enjoyment, even in the first purposes of kindness, as well as in its subsequent performances. There is a certain rejoicing sense of clearness in the consistency, the exactitude, of justice and truth. There is a triumphant elevation. of spirit in magnanimity and honor. In perfect harmony with this, there is a placid feeling of serenity and blissful contentment in gentleness and humility. There is a noble satisfaction in those victories which, at the bidding of a principle, or by the power of self-command, may have been achieved over the propensities of animal nature. There is an elate independence of soul in the consciousness of having nothing to hide, and nothing to be ashamed of. In a word, by the constitution of our nature each virtue has its appropriate charm; and virtue, on the whole, is a fund of varied as well as of perpetual enjoyment to him who hath imbibed its spirit, and is under the guidance of its principles. He feels all to be health and harmony within; and without, he seems as if to breathe in an atmosphere of beauteous transparency, proving how much the nature of man and the nature of virtue are in

unison with each other. It is hunger which urges to the use of food; but it strikingly demonstrates the care and benevolence of God so to have framed the organ of taste as that there shall be a superadded enjoyment in the use of it. It is conscience which urges to the practice of virtue; but it serves to enhance the proof of a moral purpose, and, therefore, of a moral character in God so to have framed our mental economy that, in addition to the felt obligation of its rightness, virtue should of itself be so regaling to the taste of the inner man.

In counterpart to these sweets and satisfactions of virtue, is the essential and inherent bitterness of all that is morally evil. We repeat, that with this particular argument we do not mix up the agonies of remorse. It is the wretchedness of vice in itself, not the wretchedness which we suffer because of its recollected and felt wrongness, that we now speak of. It is not the painfulness of the compunction felt because of our anger, upon which we at this moment insist, but the painfulness of the emotion itself; and the same remark applies to all the malignant desires of the human heart. True, it is inseparable from the very nature of a desire that there must be some enjoyment or other at the time of its gratification, but, in the case of these evil affections, it is not unmixed enjoyment. The most ordinary observer of his own feelings, however incapable of analysis, must be sensible, even at the moment of wreaking in full indulgence of his resentment on the man who has provoked or injured him, that all is not perfect and entire enjoyment within; but that in this, and indeed in every other malignant feeling, there is a sore burden of disquietude, an unhappiness tumultuating in the heart and visibly pictured on the countenance. It seems indispensable to the nature of every desire, and to form part, indeed, of its very idea, that there should be a distinctly felt pleasure, or, at least, a removal at the time of a distinctly felt pain, in the act of its fulfilment—yet whatever recreation or relief may have thus been rendered without doing away the misery, often in the whole amount of it, the intense misery inflicted upon man by the evil propensities of his nature. Who can doubt, for example, the unhappiness of the habitual drunkard? and that, although the ravenous appetite by which he is driven along a stormy career meets every day, almost every hour of the day, with the gratification that is suited to it? The same may be equally affirmed of the voluptuary, or of the depredator, or of the extortioner, or of the liar. Each may succeed in the attainment of his specific object, and we cannot possibly disjoin from the conception of success the conception of some sort of pleasure, yet, in perfect consistency, we affirm, with a sad and

heavy burthen of unpleasantness or unhappiness on the whole. He is little conversant with our nature who does not know of many a passion belonging to it that it may be the instrument of many pleasurable, nay, delicious or exquisite sensations, and yet be a wretched passion still-the domineering tyrant of a bondsman who at once knows himself to be degraded, and feels himself to be unhappy. A sense of guilt is one main ingredient of this misery.

THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.

Conscience in man is as much a thing of observation as the regulator in a watch is a thing of observation. It depends for its truth, therefore, on an independent and abiding evidence of its own under all the diversities of speculation on the nature of virtue. By the supremacy of conscience, we affirm a truth which respects not the nature of virtue, but the nature of man. It is that in every human heart there is a faculty, not, it may be, having the actual power, but having the just and rightful pretensions to sit as judge and master over the whole of human conduct. Other propensities may have too much sway, but the moral propensity, if I may so term it, never can; for to have the presiding sway in all our concerns is just that which properly and legiti mately belongs to it. A man under anger may be too strongly prompted to deeds of retaliation, or under sensuality be too strongly prompted to indulgence, or under avarice be too closely addicted to the pursuit of wealth, or even under friendship be too strongly inclined to partiality; but he can never, under conscience, be too strongly inclined to be as he ought, and to do as he ought. We may say of a watch that its mainspring is too powerful; but we would never say that a regulator is too powerful. We may complain of each of its other parts that it has too much influence over the rest; but not that the part whose office it is to regulate and fix the rate of going has too much influence. And just as a watch cannot move too regularly, man cannot walk too conscientiously. The one cannot too much obey its regulator; the other cannot too much obey his conscience. In other words, conscience is the rightful sovereign in man; and if any other, in the character of a ruling passion, be the actual sovereign, it is an

usurper.

THE BARBARITIES OF WAR.

The first great obstacle to the extinction of war is the way in which the heart of man is carried off from its barbarities and its horrors by the splendor of its deceitful accompaniments. There is a feeling of the sublime in contemplating the shock of armies, just as there is in contemplating the devouring energy of a tempest, and this so elevates and engrosses the whole man, that his eye is blind to the tears of bereaved parents, and his ear is deaf to the piteous moan of the dying, and the shriek of their desolated families. There is a gracefulness in the picture of a youthful warrior, burning for distinction on the field, and lured by this generous aspiration to the deepest of the animated throng, where, in the fell work of death, the opposing sons of valor struggle for a remembrance and a name; and this side of the picture is so much the exclusive object of our regard, as to disguise from our view the mangled carcasses of the fallen, and the writhing agonies of the hundreds and the hundreds more who have been laid on the cold ground, where they are left to languish and to die. There no eye pities them. No sister is there to weep over them. There no gentle hand is present to ease the dying posture, or bind up the wounds which, in the maddening fury of the combat, have been given and received by the children of one common father. There death spreads its pale ensigns over every countenance, and when night comes on, and darkness around them, how many a despairing wretch must take up with the bloody field as the untended bed of his last sufferings, without one friend to bear the message of tenderness to his distant home, without one companion to close his eyes!

I avow it. On every side of me I see causes at work which go to spread a most delusive coloring over war, and to remove its shocking barbarities to the back-ground of our contemplations altogether. I see it in the history, which tells me of the superb appearance of the troops, and the brilliancy of their successive charges. I see it in the poetry, which lends the magic of its numbers to the narrative of blood, and transports its many admirers, as by its images, and its figures, and its nodding plumes of chivalry, it throws its treacherous embellishments over a scene of legalized slaughter. I see it in the music, which represents the progress of the battle; and where, after being inspired by the trumpet-notes of preparation, the whole beauty and tenderness of a drawing-room are seen to bend over the sentimental entertain