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ART. X.-Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Thomas Chalmers, D.D. By his Son-in-Law, the Rev. W. HANNA, LL.D. Constable. 1852.

THE publication of the fourth and last volume of these "Memoirs" gives us the opportunity of fulfilling an intention which we expressed on a former occasion-that of making some general remarks on the character of Dr. Chalmers, which appears to us one of the most instructive histories of modern times both to the minister of the Gospel and to the private Christian-to the minister as an example of diligence in preparing for the arduous duties of his important office, and of most unfeigned humility and most unwearied patience in carrying out these acquirements and bringing them home to the souls of his flock; and to the private Christian as exemplifying that which the minister and flock must hold in commonas men realizing the saving truths of the Gospel: for the foundation of the minister must be laid in the man, and it is only as preaching from faith to faith that the Gospel becomes effectual for the salvation of the souls of others.

We remarked on a former occasion that Dr. Chalmers was very young when he was ordained and commenced his ministerial duties; and he had then nothing more than an intellectual apprehension of the truths of the Gospel-he had not experienced their saving power in his own heart. On the contrary, those topics which formed the delight of his maturer years, and were the constant themes on which he dwelt in those discourses by which he will be known to posterity, were repulsive to him at that time; and his ministrations were comparatively unprofitable.

By a series of family afflictions first-such as the loss of his brother George and his sister Barbara, and subsequently by his own severe and protracted illness-the heart of Dr. Chalmers was softened and opened. He saw in these relatives an exemplification of the power of vital Christianity to sustain the soul through the dark valley of the shadow of death, and how it could infuse a hope full of immortality; and his own illness brought these lessons home to himself in his own individual experience, so that he arose from the bed of sickness an altered man, not by any fresh acquisition of knowledge, but by a change of heart.

Dr. Chalmers now discovered not only the difference between the mind and the spirit of man, but discovered also the special peculiarity of the Gospel-a peculiarity that renders it good

news to all men-not only to the intellectual but to the unlettered peasant-namely, that it is addressed to the spiritual part of man, in which all mankind are on a level; and not to the mental faculties, in which they so greatly differ from each other. Systems of philosophy are adapted to the learned, and according to their mental superiority they make proficiency therein; but it is the boast of Christianity that the poor have the Gospel preached to them, and it is the poor in spirit who enter the kingdom of heaven. God hath chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom. It is in proportion to our faith that we attain proficiency in the school of Christ, and this it is which fits Christianity to be the religion of all mankind. It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save

them that believe.

This truth, concerning the spirituality of the Gospel, must be felt in order to be apprehended; for, although there is in every man a spiritual capacity, it is by nature dormant and needs to be roused. The Gospel is calculated to awaken this spiritual consciousness; but then it must be received in simplicity, and the prejudices engendered by education and mental culture too often prove hindrances instead of helps to its reception. It was the perception of these impediments that made our Lord declare to his hearers, that unless they were disabused of their prejudices, and thus became as little children, they could not enter the kingdom of heaven. And Paul the Pharisee, who had felt these prejudices in all their force, writing to the Corinthians, the most intellectual people of that time, takes that occasion to show how God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and how it is that the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

In confirmation of this it often happens that one far inferior in mental power, and deficient in learning and artificial advantages, may be used as the instrument for awakening the spiritual consciousness of another far superior to himself according to human estimation. And so it was in Dr. Chalmers' case: his brother George, much his junior, had spent all his life at sea, and knew little beyond the management of a ship; but he was open-hearted and pious, and, when stricken with consumption and pronounced irrecoverable, he not only received it with the manly indifference characteristic of a sailor, but with entire resignation to the divine will and using such means of preparation for death as his habitual piety would suggest.

"Every evening, at George's own request, one of Newton's 'Sermons'

was read at his bed-side by some member of the family in rotation. It was one of the very books which a short time previously Thomas had named and denounced from the pulpit. Bending over the pulpit, and putting on the books named the strong emphasis of dislike, he had said Many books are favourites with you which I am sorry to say are no favourites of mine. When you are reading Newton's 'Sermons,' and Baxter's 'Saints Rest,' and Doddridge's Rise and Progress,' where do Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, go to ?' As he now read one of these books to his dying brother, and witnessed the support and consolation which its truths conveyed, strange misgivings must have visited him. He was too close, too acute, too affectionate an observer, not to notice that it was something more than the mere manly indifference of his profession-something more than a mere blind submission to an inevitable fate which imparted such calmness and serene elevation to George's dying hours. He was in his room when those pale trembling lips were heard to say- I thank thee O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou had hid these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them unto babes.' Perhaps, as the words were uttered, the thought arose that in his own case, as compared with that of his brother, the words might be verified” (i. 102).

The very sentence uttered by his brother, which is taken. from the Gospel of John, was calculated to convince Doctor Chalmers of the injustice he had done to Newton in placing his "Sermons" in contrast with the Gospels; and it must have led him to suspect that he knew at that time little more of the real meaning of the Gospels than of the works of Newton, Baxter, and Doddridge; and the death of his sister Barbara, followed by a long illness to himself, deepened these convictions, subduing at the same time the pride of intellect natural to every distinguished man, and opening the heart to the balmy and consolatory influences of the Gospel.

His brother George died in 1806, his sister Barbara 1808, and another sister, Lucy, December 1810; and it was at this time that Mr. Wilberforce's "Practical View" fell into the hands of Chalmers, and it was a work which exactly met his case, as being specially intended to expose the inadequate and erroneous conceptions, regarding the leading and peculiar doctrines of Christianity, which were then generally prevalent among professing Christians. Dr. Chalmers had already become dissatisfied with himself, and had begun to suspect that his views of the Gospel scheme were at least defective and inadequate, if not altogether wrong. He was therefore prepared to answer Mr. Wilberforce's call "to examine well our foundations," and especially in the grand concern of all-" the means of a sinner's acceptance with God." On this head Mr. Wilberforce writes as follows:

There are, it is to be apprehended, not a few who, having thought little or scarcely at all about religion, have become at length, in some degree, impressed with a sense of the infinite importance of religion. A fit of sickness, perhaps, or the loss of some friend or much loved relative, or some other stroke of adverse fortune, damps their spirits, awakens them to a practical conviction of the precariousness of all human things, and turns them to seek for some more stable foundation of happiness than this world can afford. Looking into themselves ever so little, they become sensible that they must have offended God: they resolve accordingly to set about the work of reformation........ Again and again they resolve-again and again they break their resolutions. All their endeavours are foiled, and they become more and more convinced of their own moral weakness, and of the strength of their inherent corruption. These men are pursuing the right object, but they mistake the path in which it is to be obtained. The path in which they are now treading is not that which the Gospel has provided for conducting them to true holiness, nor will they find in it any solid peace.... .....The holy Scriptures call upon those who are in the circumstances now stated to lay afresh the whole foundation of their religion. The nature of that holiness which the true Christian seeks to possess is no other than the restoration of the image of God to his soul; and, as to the manner of acquiring it, disclaiming with indignation every idea of attaining it by his own strength, he rests altogether on the operation of God's Holy Spirit, which is promised to all who cordially embrace the Gospel. He knows, therefore, that this holiness is not to PRECEDE his reconciliation with God and be its cause, but to follow it and be its effect-that, in short, it is by faith in Christ only that he is to be justified in the sight of God."

Dr. Chalmers himself was accustomed to attribute the origin of vital godliness in himself to this time and circumstance; and remembered with gratitude those leadings of God's providence which had brought him first into a condition of helplessness in his old course of proceeding, and then thrown in his way a work so well calculated to put him upon the new course, which he soon found to realise all the expectations it held out, and from which he never afterwards swerved.

Writing to his brother Alexander, ten years after the event, he says, "I remember, somewhere about the year 1811, I had Wilberforce's View' put into my hands, and, as I got on in reading it, felt myself on the eve of a great revolution in all my opinions about Christianity." Again: writing to the same brother in 1825, he says, "When I meet with an enquirer who, under the impulse of a new feeling, has set himself in good earnest to the business of his eternity, I have been very much in the habit of recommending Wilberforce. This, perhaps, is owing to the circumstance that I myself, now about fifteen years ago, experienced a very great transition of sentiment in conse

quence of reading his work." The transition was in fact a total reverse of sentiment: for he had hitherto been labouring after holiness in order to render himself acceptable to God: he was now on the eve of receiving acceptance gratuitously provided in Jesus Christ, and adorning the doctrine of adoption by all the fruits it is calculated to produce-walking in holiness because we are not our own, but bought with a price, and therefore called to glorify God with body and spirit which are his.

About this time he had sent a review of Dr. Charter's "Sermons" to Andrew Thomson for insertion in the Christian Instructor. It had been written some time, while under his former impressions, and we find the following entry in Chalmers' "Journal," dated Feb. 23, 1811:-" Mr. Andrew Thomson cannot insert my review of Charter's without material alterations. This is a proof that he conceives it to be incorrect in point of doctrine; and, as I feel myself upon the eve of some decisive transformation in point of religious sentiment, I contemplate with interest everything that bears upon a subject so important." This gives an intimation of the time when this change occurred.

Writing to Mr. James Anderson, in August 1811, he says, "Viewed as an experimental Christian, I am still in my infancy. I have not yet reached that repose of heart which, in the beautiful language of one of our old prophets, is termed quietness and assurance for ever; but I am deceived if I am not feeling my way towards it; and I have to attest that the ground is never firmer under my feet than when I rest my confidence in Christ, and make him all my redemption and all my righteousness." Chalmers and his correspondent were both only at the outset-both of congenial spirits and both reading Wilberforce and other elementary works; and both were feeling the danger of drawing one's belief from anything save the Scriptures, and doubting how far it is safe to rely on "Didactic Summaries," how unexceptionable soever:-"I should even suspect (says Anderson) that a Catechism, which gives the result of a profound Christian's researches in the Bible, might be pernicious as a first mover: it wants the spontaneity and development of the immediate oracles." To which Chalmers replies: "My Christianity approaches nearer, I think, to Calvinism than to any of the isms in Church history: but broadly as it announces the necessity of sanctification, it does not bring it forward in that free and spontaneous manner which I find in the New Testament. It is laid before me as part of a system.'

This is the danger of systematic theology, and it is a snare