ARTICLE VII.

CHALMERS.'

By Prof. TAYLER LEWIS, LL.D, University of New York.

It has become quite the fashion to speak in disparaging terms of the religion and philosophy of the eighteenth century. Even the infidel transcendentalist, the pantheist, the Fourierite, and all the "children of the mist" join in the cry. It was a soulless age, they say. It had no faith,-none in the divinity of humanity, none in the incarnation of ideas. It had no faith in the unity of being, in the one in all, and the all in one; in the holiness and inspiration of nature; in the at-one-ment of the finite and the infinite, or in the profound trinity of law, spirit, and development. Those who have a more positive creed than this, reproach it for its latitudinarianism, its Gallio-like spirit, and, in a word, its dead religious indifference. Its philosophy, in like manner, is denounced as sensuous, its science as superficial, its ethics as utilitarian, and its preaching as little better than an exposition of the best parts of heathen morality. In one respect, however, it may claim a merit which certainly does not belong to its sister of the nineteenth. It was comparatively a modest age. If it had

The writer of this article deems it due to himself to state, that it was prepared by special request, for another periodical of a secular character, but professedly devoted to conservative principles, both in morals and politics. There being in view a class of readers somewhat differing in the main, from those of a professedly religious magazine, every effort was, therefore, made to keep the article clear of any peculiar theological language, or of any offensive manifestation of peculiar doctrines, except so far as they might be suggested by the very name of Chalmers, or might necessarily associate themselves with any expression of earnestness in religion. At the same time, it was intended to give the article as serious a tone as possible, and, in this way, make it most useful to those for whom it was at first designed. The most general grounds were taken, in which it was supposed that all serious believers on the name of Christ, however different their opinions, might cordially unite: It was, however, thought to manifest, after all, too much of a peculiar aspect for its first destination, and was, therefore, transferred to its present position.

The fact of its having been thus intended for a different class of readers, is presented as accounting for its apparent apologetic tone, and that somewhat studied use of general language, which might seem out of place under present circumstances. Reference is had mainly to what is said of Chalmers' conversion, and to the remarks about revivals of religion. It is hoped that this statement may be deemed a sufficient apology for what, under other circumstances, would seem only an uncalled for and unjustifiable attempt to clothe common religious ideas in a sort of philosophical garb, and to present so sacred a theme, as the work of Divine grace in a Christian's experience, in the light of a mere philosopical phenomenon. The writer would boldly say, that for such a species of affectation, or for any such unwarranted assumption of the philosopical in place of the religious style, no one can have a deeper contempt than himself. However much he might wish to avoid the appearance of religious cant, he has a much greater abhorrence of that most wretched thing which has been, not inaptly, styled "cant without religion."

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no great faith, it did not boast of things beyond its measure. had little to say of progress, and, yet, amid all its minifidianism, the world and the Church did make substantial advance. We were not the less carried onward in our course during this age, because it paused, as we may say, to consider the past rate of motion, and to examine carefully some part of its machinery and the line of its direction, before again dashing onward with a velocity, which, unless regulated by such retrospections of the sober, though much abused common sense, might have its only termination in universal scepticism. It might, we think, be shown, that some of the positions assumed by the philosophy and religionism of the eighteenth century were absolutely necessary to prevent the present from becoming a decidedly and universally infidel age.

No doubt, then, in some of its most prominent aspects, it is rightly characterised as exhibiting, in appearance at least, a lack of faith. Still, what there was of this divine conservative principle, was solid and sincere. It made no transcendental show; it made but little boast of its spirituality; it was too honest to preach beyond its experience. It patiently gathered up, and was thankful for all the external evidence of Christianity, while it had little to say of any illumination of faith, or of any inward sight which had no connexion with the homely world of sense, or the more ordinary and outward relations of humanity.

In the reaction from the high-wrought fervors of a former age, it became suspicious of any appearance of enthusiasm. To avoid the manifest dangers of false feeling, it sought to suppress even that which was rational and true. Hence there was a more secular manifestation, not because men, and literature, and philosophy, had really become much more worldly than they had been before, or than they are now, but because that which presents the opposing aspect had, after many conflicts, retired for a season within itself. There remained, however, more religion than met the eye, or ear, or was even boasted of in the writings of the Church. What there was of it, as we have said, was sincere and true. Even its infidelity was far more honest than our own, as appears from the fact that it was then willing to be called by its right name. The two sides were much more fairly marshalled in the fight. The question was openly respecting the Scriptures. One side attacked and the other defended them as the very citadel of religious truth. There was no thought, on either side, of a faith without the Bible, or more transcendental than the Bible, any more than of a rejection of the Scriptures which should, on this very account, assume to itself the name of the most transcendent faith. And so also in respect to its philosophy. Homely as we may think the system of Locke, sensual and sensuous as some may call it; false as we may believe it to be in some of its fundamental positions, yet we cannot help feeling that, after all, John

Locke was not only an honester, but also a much more truly religious man than Cousin; and that Chubb, and Hume, and even Paine, were much honester infidels than Straus and Fourier.

Still, it may be said, that in respect to the higher and warmer aspects of religion, it was a season of faintness. It was an age of great appearance of secularity. Its philosophy, whether to its credit or not, was strikingly utilitarian. The distinguishing doctrines of the Gospel were not expressly denied, yet to a great extent, they remained buried in articles and confessions, and theological writings, which had been the product of the warmer temperature of preceding centuries; whilst a distorted prominence was given to those lower aspects of religious truth which seem to have more connexion with the happiness, and order, and mere secular prudence of this world, than with the awful interests of eternity. There seemed to have been wholly reversed the position of some of the enthusiasts of preceding periods. It had been maintained that the world was solely for the Church, the kingdoms and governments of the earth only for the saints. The predominant religious principles of the eighteenth century seemed to be, the Church for the world, the Church for the state, eternal truths only a means to ends, which, though right and virtuous, were still temporal ends; or, in other words, religion a police power for the preservation of the social and political harmony.

There was a careful avoidance not only of cant, but also of the true and natural language of religious emotion and religious philosophy. There was almost an entire divorce between theology and literature. There are now freely discussed by the secular press, topics of the most serious nature, which fifty, or seventy, or a hundred years ago, would have hardly gained admission into professedly serious publications. Addison had to apologise for inserting a little religious reading of the tamest and most general kind, in some of his Saturday papers; and that too, in a series avowedly devoted to the support of virtue and morality. Now, some of the highest and most sacred truths of religion, and in their most theological aspect, are freely treated of, not only in our Blackwood, our Edinburgh, and our Quarterly Reviews, but in the light Fraser, and even the radical and rationalising Westminster.

To say, however, that the foregoing secular characteristics prevailed throughout the whole of the period aforesaid, and among all the churches, would be most unjust. There were seasons of renewed life at various times, and in various places. In regard to national churches, we may say, that although the slumber of the English had been more profound, it had also been oftener disturbed than that of the Scottish. The thunders of a Whitfield and a Wesley, were pealing through England; an Edwards and a Tennent were alarming the conscience in America; a Francke and a THIRD SERIES, VOL. IV. NO. 2.

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Spener were disturbing the dead orthodoxy of the Lutherans in Germany, while the Scottish church still slumbered on in the drowsy fit which soon succeeded the Presbyterian establishment at the revolution of 1688. Fortified in the rigidity and clearness of its articles, in the historical recollections of ancestral faith, in the remembrance of solemn leagues and covenants, it could not easily be aroused to the feeling, that in its Robertsons, and its Blairs, it had lost that overpowering faith which in a Knox, a Melville, a Henderson, a Guthrie, and a Livingston, had dethroned despotisms, endured martyrdoms, wrought righteousness, and contended, even to the death, for the eternal crown, and the kingdom promised to the saints.

Still, as we have said, if her slumbers had been less frequently disturbed, it is also true that they had not been so deep. The religious fires of former ages had not burned down so low as among other Protestant churches in the sister kingdom, and on the continent. This was because religion had taken a deeper hold on the popular mind in Scotland, than in England or Germany. Even when the author of Douglas, and the intimate companion of David Hume, had come to be fair representatives of the great majority of the Scottish clergy, there was still, everywhere among the people, much remaining of that old faith and fervor that had burned so brightly in the long days of the Stuart persecutions. Whilst some of the preachers of Scotland were writing for the stage, others wholly engaged in secular authorship-although none were known to have sunk to the level of the Swifts and Sternes of the sister church-and; the great mass had settled down into a dead formality, preaching the morals of Seneca and Epictetus in pulpits which had once heard the thunders of Melville and Knox, there was still in thousands of cottages, the living household church; there was still preserved the devout morning and evening exercise; there were still lying upon their shelves, and often most devoutly read, not only the "big ha' Bible," but also the choice and well-worn old volumes, containing the sermons and the rigid theology of the old preachers; there was, in short, still remaining much of that patriarchal or family religion, by which the peasantry of Scotland has ever been so strikingly distinguished from that of the sister kingdoms of England and Ireland.

When, therefore, the voices of Whitfield and Wesley sounded the midnight cry, they were far less startled by it than the inhabitants of Cornwall, or Yorkshire, or Dublin. During, too, the darkest period of declension among the clergy, the Erskines and their associates had made a deep impression; yet still it may be said, that no very great or universal change had taken place in the spiritual condition of the Scottish Kirk, previous to the stirring influence of that great man, some traits of whose remarkable character, it is designed to make the subject of the present article.

The declension had gone on until the beginning of the nineteenth century; less rapidly, towards the close of this period, among the clergy, (with whom it might even be said there had been something of a return movement), but with the beginning of an accelerated tendency to irreligion among the people.

At this point, we propose to take our first survey of the character and position of Chalmers. Nearly fifty years ago, he was the clergyman of the obscure country parish of Cavers, in Roxburgh shire. At that period, as he himself avows in a production most remarkable when contrasted with his subsequent writings, he had no higher opinion of the clerical office than as a trade or em ployment in which, by means of two days in the week, at the utmost, of parochial labor, he might earn an honest livelihood, and devote the remaining five days to his favorite pursuits of natura science. In a pamphlet in reply to Prof. Playfair, he refutes, with some warmth, the idea that a clergyman, by his employment and professional modes of thinking, is unfitted for scientific studies and discoveries. He rather regards him as one who, from the little time required for his parochial duties, has even more leisure for such purposes than most other men. In short, his views on the subject are of the most exclusively secular aspect. There is in this, his first publication, an entire absence of anything that even looks like spirituality. Its whole tenor furnishes proof that any allusion to the salvation of souls as the great work of the ministry, or even the use of the expression, had he accidentally been betrayed into it, would have made the writer start back as from a sort of solemn cant involving ideas of religion too serious, too sombre, too much connected with eternity, and too condemnatory even of the highest pursuits that have relation merely to time. There may be recognized in this pamphlet, the peculiar ring of Chalmers' style, as a writer in Fraser's Magazine expresses it; but, otherwise, who would have thought it to be the production of the same man, who afterwards became the instrument of diffusing evangelical life through the National Church of Scotland, and whose numerous subsequent writings bear the stamp of earnestness, and solemnity, beyond almost anything that has proceeded from the modern pulpit?

The exceeding worldliness of Chalmers' spirit and pursuits at this time, may not have presented a fair or average specimen of the clerical character in the Church of Scotland; and yet the mere fact that he dared to use such language as descriptive of the estimation in which he himself held, and in which he must have supposed that others held, his sacred profession--the fact, that he dared even thus to think of it without rebuking himself, or expecting rebuke therefor from his associates in the ministry, certainly, shows the prevailing opinion as to the depth of secularity into which it was supposed to have generally fallen. There is no