are substantially valid in argument, and | a substantial argument is very effectivethey may with entire confidence be used for ly and powerfully presented. Yet, in purposes of popular instruction; we mean they may be put into the hands of intelligent and Christianly trained young persons; but they must not be brought forward when we have to do with those who are acute, accomplished, and thoroughly instructed. fact, available as these chapters are, (IV. and V.) it would be needful, if we were directing the studies of well-informed young men, or of those who intend to become well-informed, to show them that the line of reasoning pursued by Chalmers, when he undertakes to be the critic of In the first chapter of this treatise Hume, may be presented in a manner "On the distinction between the ethics of which is much less open to exception, and Theology, and the objects of Theology," which may be brought within less coma true distinction is well stated and insist-pass. This, in fact, has been done by seed upon. But a few pages might have veral recent writers. sufficed for conveying it to the intelligent In the fifth chapter, on "the Hypothereader with precision. The illustrative sis that the World is eternal," hat want comparison between the mathematics of of severe analytic reasoning which damastronomy, and the observed facts of the ages the preceding portion of the arguscience, is indeed pertinent; but the four ment, leads the author to risk the whole or five ideas which this distinction and of it by stepping upon ground which must this illustration bring together, are, in be judged to be at the best very precathis chapter, turned over and over again rious. The theistic argument, as it stands with so unsparing a profuseness, that they opposed to Hume's sophism, is good, irreare made to fill as many as fifty-six pages! spectively of any determination of the This prefatory chapter, therefore, would question concerning the world's origin in at once discourage a reader whose habits time, or its alleged eternity. We may of thinking are scientific, and whose liter- state the case thus: a book which hapary taste is at all fastidious. A passage in pens to be just now under my eye, may the next chapter, which Chalmers quotes have been produced last season, or a thoufrom John Foster, exhibits all the differ- sand, or five thousand years ago; or its ence between his own order of mind and origination may stretch out into the infinithat of one who could be philosophical, tude of past time; nevertheless, and even when rhetorical; and who, when he whichsoever of these suppositions I asamplifies, does so by exhausting his sub- sume to be true, its pages-let me open ject-not by holding up some of its consti- the book where I may-bring me at once tuent ideas in twenty aspects that are into correspondence and communion with nearly identical. The second chapter re- another mind, namely, the mind of the auiterates the argument of the first, and thor, and I find it to be a mind like my own might be listened to with pleasure as a in its constitution; it is the same in its rasermon and indeed it would read well if tional structure; and it is like my own condensed within the compass of three also as to its tastes and as to its sensibilities. paragraphs, prefatory to a philosophical The mind of the author, with which his book essay. It is after making our way through has brought me into this vivid correspondnearly a hundred pages that we come upon ence, must have been greatly superior to the real argument of the treatise. my own, as to its range of knowledge, and as to its powers, and as to the compass and elevation of its moral sentiment, for I cannot imagine myself to have written a book such as this; and yet, now that it is written, and now that it has come into my hand, every page, every par agraph, and each line of it, is intelligible to me: and it is so, although I dare not flatter myself so far as to think that I could have written it; nevertheless, I may at least take to myself the consciousness of knowing that, as the reader of it, I am such a reader as the author himself would have wished for. In reply to my eager in Nor have we gone far before we meet with evidence of the author's peculiar powers of mind; as, for instance, in his exposition of the illusory quality of the à priori argument, as propounded by Dr. S. Clarke. In this chapter, as well as in the next, wherein Hume's atheistic doctrine is considered, the instructed reader may perhaps desire a stricter process of analytic reasoning; but undoubtedly it is robust good sense which is here brought to bear upon a specious sophism; and, bating some redundancies, and some repetitions of reasoning which occur elsewhere, quiry, Who was the author? or when But further: Chalmers risks more than did he live? you may tell me perhaps that he should have risked, when he goes about no one knows; or that he lived and died to make the theistic evidence of the origin a million years ago; or you may say of the world rest upon the chronology of that the book itself has always been in ex- the Mosaic books. In doing this he misistence, and is eternal. You do not mean states the case as to the Modern Geology. the paper and the ink, for these are perish- Instructed persons who maintain, as well able, and are even now, as it appears, in they may, the truth of the Bible, geolocourse of decay. That, then, which is eter-gy allowed, carefully abstain from a pugnal, must be the thoughts-the feelings- nacious style, as if they felt themselves, the tastes-which are therein embodied. while standing on their own ground, to be What I hold in my hand-the paper-is confronted with "geologists." They recent, is perishable, for it is material; well know, that what they have to do but that which is imperishable is the sym- with, and what they should make room for bolized mind and soul of the author; this, in their religious belief, is not "the daring whencesoever it may have proceeded, allies speculations of geologists," but the inconitself instantaneously with my own mind, testable facts of geology, and that to kick and claims kindred with it irresistibly: with at geology can be no proof of wisdom. this mind and soul-with this intelligence The modern astronomy convinced our pre-with this feeling, I hold communion- decessors, that the Hebrew Scriptures are like with like commingling; and this true, if only they are interpreted under communion of spirits quickens, elevates, the guidance of common sense. The moexpands my own faculties, intellectual as dern geology repeats this same lesson, alwell as moral. But now I lay aside this though in other terms. Chalmers, in anbook, and turn toward a greater book- other mood, or if he were writing at this even the Material Universe. Is the world time, would readily have granted as much -the Cosmos-eternal? I do not know: as this; indeed he does grant it in other but whether it has had its birthday or not, places. yet let me open its pages where I mayand this is true of every page which hitherto I have been able to open and to read-it sheds light upon my reason, and gives instantaneous energy to my thoughts: it kindles the intellect, it kindles the noblest emotions; it awakens tastes: every page of this Book of the World becomes to me, as I go on to read it, a new education; the study of it is a new life to the mind, to the heart, to the imagination. In the study and contemplation of this material universe I am daily abiding in the company of a Teacher whose every word is wisdom and goodness. Where does He dwell? I know only that "He inhabiteth eternity." He is not visible as the material world itself is visible; but that HE IS, I have evidence which is more copious, a thousand times, than any which I have of the existence of other minds around me. If there be, indeed, any meaning in the noted axiom-"I think, therefore I am," there is the same meaning in this version of it-other minds around me think, and therefore they are; that they do think, I have proofs numberless, and proofs as good as that which I take as evidence of my own existence. But if other minds exist, so does that Creative Mind, with which I hold communion in the material universe. Very much of this Natural Theology, as of his other writings, would be quite proper in a popular lecture, or as a sermon, for it is substantial as well as impressive; but, in its actual form, the tendency of some parts of it is to suggest an atheistic rejoinder to the mind of any reader whose habits of thinking are exact, and who is well informed in abstract philosophy. There are young men whose atheistic surmises would become ripened into absolute atheism while reading this treatise. In the first place, the frequent repetitions are disheartening to those who easily admit an idea if it be once expressed with perspicuity, and who are offended by its recurrence a dozen times in a single chapter. A neat thinker takes all care (if he be composing a philosophical treatise) to convey his meaning, once for all, in the fewest and in the best terms. But Chalmers, when a notion or a doctrine strikes him as highly important, and especially if he regards it as subversive of some serious popular error, is never content with a first, a second, a third, presentation of it: he must say the same thing, in almost the same words, until the patience of the reader is fairly exhausted. It would be easy, but not useful, to adduce instances from the first and second chapters of the second book, more than enough of this kind. We should not now advert to it at all, if it did not seem to us seriously important to caution a certain class of readers against the mistake of supposing that well-instructed theists at this time would be content to abide by the issue of an argument conducted in the manner of Chalmers, as seen in his philosophical writings. Candid as he was, and superior to the small jealousies of mere authorship, he would himself, we fully believe it, have allowed Paley's superiority to himself, in respect of style, and as to the mode of treating a subject of this kind: his eulogy of Paley conveys implicitly, almost explicitly, a disparagement of himself. Paley, he says, "attempts no eloquence; but there is all the power of eloquence in his graphic representation of classic scenes and natural objects: without aught of the imaginative, or aught of the ethereal about him; but, in virtue of the just impressions which external things make upon his mind, and of the admirable sense and truth wherewith he reflects them back again, does our author, by acting the part of a faithful copyist, give a fuller sense of the richness and repleteness of this argument than is or can be effected by all the elaborations of an ambitious oratory." In his writings, "we have altogether a performance neither vitiated in expression by one clause or epithet of verbiage, nor vitiated in substance by one impertinence of prurient or misplaced imagination." To cite the entire passage which Chalmers generously devotes to the praises of Paley, would be to bring forward a curious sample of his own overdone style. A passage which concludes the second book of this treatise, is noticeable, as being an instance-somewhat rare, we think, in the author's works-of his sympathy with those saddened meditative speculations which sink some minds almost down to the abyss of despair. We may, perhaps, find occasion to recur to this passage. But it is when the course of his reasoning in this treatise leads him upon the ground where he was always at home, that we find his great powers of thought and expression fully expanded, and this with such energy as to induce in the reader a happy oblivion of everything but the writer's genius. In the chapters "On the Supremacy of Conscience," as well as those which follow on analogous subjects, Chalmers may have been more or less indebted to his predecessors, especially to Bishop Butler, to whose sermons he makes a careful reference; but the staple of thought is his own, and these chapters, occupied as they are with the weightiest moral and theistic doctrines, possess a merit which ought to give them permanence in this department of philosophic literature. Or, if this perpetuity be questionable, it must be on the ground of those interpolated discussions upon political or ecclesiastical subjects, which the author's peculiar opinions induced him to admit, and in admitting which, his vehement feelings overpowered his sense of fitness. The "English Poor Law," and the "Tithe System of the English Church," hurry him away from the prosecution of a lofty argument, and give a polemical and an ephemeral aspect to a treatise in the perusal of which one class of ideas-the moral and the theological-should, without distraction, have occupied the reader's mind. A serious and a right-minded reader, when he comes on a sudden upon a social question which is now quite obsolete, relating to the stormy controversies of times gone by, is likely to throw the book aside in a fit of disgust. Yet in giving way to any such impatience he would do himself a disservice; for the chapters which follow well deserve his careful attention. The several topics which they treat of have been ably handled by recent writers; but if by some with more precision, by none with more power. MORAL AND MENTAL PHILOSOPHY.-In all departments of thought or of action with which he concerned himself, Chalmers appeared, first as the Champion, and then, and in a secondary sense, as the Philosopher-or we might say, he was the well-instructed Philosopher, just so far as was needful to constitute his qualification as the Champion of religious principles, considered under their philosophic aspect. It was in this manner that he put forth the principal truths of the Christian system, as worthy of "all acceptation;" and thus also whatever relates to the welfare of men in society. In very few instances, as we think, has he made any noticeable contribution to science strictly speaking. But it was with instinctive sagacity, and with a robust force, that he seized upon whatever is of primary importance. As to truths already admitted, these he took up almost without scrutiny, concern- |-Calvinistic and Lutheran-his sagacity ing himself little with their constituent and his stern integrity, and his high moral elements; but he saw where they had got courage, might have brought him into a mingled with popular errors, and where position to discern the root of the mischief, they had suffered obscuration from the and to attempt a remedy; and thenceadvances of a false philosophy; and then, forward leaving "rampant infidelity" to with a high hand, he came in to the res- run out its own reckless course, and to cue: he overthrew his opponents right work its own ruin, he would have given and left; he cleared up popular misappre- his giant energy to the more hopeful task hensions, and came off with applause; and of ridding his country and its Church of it was a well-earned applause. This, as the thraldoms imposed upon them in a we venture to affirm, is the light in which dark and evil age. we should look at this great man's philosophic writings; they are powerful, common-sense pleadings for certain momentous principles, which, in his day, had become entangled, either popularly or learnedly, with errors that had crept over the national mind through a period of spiritual slumber. Chalmers, on behalf of a recovered Christianity, appears in the pulpit, and he rushes into the halls of universities, to seize and recover its own, for the Gospel. How little he had allowed himself to look into things remote from his path, and in how slender a degree he had made himself acquainted with facts out of his range, appears in that passage of the preface to the Moral Philosophy (and again in the first chapter) in which he denounces at large the German biblical criticism: he seems to have misunderstood its quality and office; yet we should keep in mind the fact, that a true discrimination, setting off the genuine German criticism from the spurious, had scarcely been effected, or even attempted, by the biblical scholars of his time. It cannot be thought a good omen when a treatise, professedly scientific, opens in the style of theologic animation, as thus: "All must be aware of a certain rampant Well and ably, in the first chapter, is infidelity which is now abroad." A feel- the important distinction between Ethical ing of this kind, however warrantable it Science and Intellectual Science, which in might be in the Preacher, ill suits the Scotland had been too little regarded, set Professor; and under its influence he will forth and defended. Throughout this fail to do, from the Chair, the work treatise, what might be called the indewhich might have been effectively done pendence of the moral element in human from the Pulpit, if the Chair had kept nature is boldly affirmed; Bishop Butler's itself to its office-namely, the conveyance doctrine is stated and elucidated, and Dr. of abstract truth, in a purely scientific Thomas Brown's signal failures on this style-condensed, unimpassioned, yet not ground are pointed out. In this respect, soulless. This "rampant infidelity," which the MORAL PHILOSOPHY has, and will conseemed ever present to Chalmers' thoughts, tinue to have, a substantial value: Chalwhence had it come to darken Scotland to mers here makes it his task to rectify the so great an extent a religiously-minded mistake of his distinguished predecessors, and piously-educated country? or how of whom he justly says, that he "does not was it that in Scotland, notwithstanding see in the writings either of Stewart or the strictly religious discipline through Brown any tendency to restore these which all men had passed in their boyhood, topics (those of Moral Philosophy) to the how came it that so many of its brightest place and the preeminence which belong and strongest intellects had forsaken the to them." A merit may also be claimed religion of their early homes, and had, for Chalmers, as compared with Brown, some of them, become the apostles of (whose proper merits he himself, however, atheism noted as such throughout fully admits,) on this ground, that whereas Europe? An inquiry of this sort had not this acute analyst is always throwing himpresented itself to Chalmers' mind: the self back among the evanescent phenomemere statement would have startled, and na of his individual consciousness, as if perhaps have angered him; but if he had to be the anatomist of his own mental been led by it to institute a comparison structure were his only calling as a philosobetween Scotland and England, (ecclesias-pher, Chalmers affirms the fact that— tically considered,) between Scotland and especially as to the emotions with which Geneva, between Scotland and Germany Ethical Philosophy has to do-the pheno mena themselves are gone, when they are | to the well-informed reader, seem out of thus subjected to scrutiny, and when the place. If, as Chalmers so often says, the proper external excitement is no longer sciences should not be allowed to interfere present. While we are analysing an emo- with each other obstructively, it is also tion, we are not feeling it-we are only true, and it is well to be remembered, that recollecting something about it. On the the several functions of public instruction ground of this incontestable fact, he de- should observe their proper limits - the mands that Moral Philosophy should be professor of philosophy not attempting to made, far more than it has been, a science preach from the chair; while the preacher of observation, and that its materials should abstain from addressing to a proshould be sought for on the great theatre miscuous Sunday audience the themes of of common life, and among the palpable abstract science. But we are willing to realities of the open and busy world- grant to Chalmers an exceptional liberty, not in the darkened closet of the recluse inasmuch as his powerful and impetuous philosopher. mind, filled with vivid conceptions of momentous truths, pursued its course, whether in the chair or the pulpit, with an earnestness which gave uniformity to his style, and to his manner of treating all subjects-regardless almost of time, place, or of conventional modes. Brown and others, although exact thinkers, have barely kept in view considerations so essential as are those which Chalmers insists upon in the first chapter of this treatise: "To learn the phenomena of moral feeling, the varieties of human life and character must be submitted to its (the mind's) contemplation. In a word, it is the mind that is most practised among externals, which is most crowded with materials for the philosophy of its internal processes; and we again repeat, that the way to be guided through the arcana of our subject is, not to descend into mind as into a subterranean vault, and then shut the door after us; but to keep open communication with the light of day, which can only be done by a perpetual interchange of notices between the world of feelings that is within, and the world of facts, and of illustrations, and of familiar experience, that is around us." Passages of this order, and they are more than a few, not merely give to this treatise a permanent value, but, on the ground of them, a claim might be advanced on behalf of the author, as entitled to special commendation, when placed in comparison with some of the leaders of the "Scotch Philosophy." The following chapters of this treatise possess much substantial merit, and if they be perused as Essays on subjects intermediate between Moral Philosophy and Christian Ethics, or as occupying a ground common to both, they will be read with much satisfaction and great advantage. They suffer disparagement in the reader's esteem only when the volume is opened on the presumption that it is a strictly scientific disquisition: viewed in this light, large portions which the plain Christian reader may think the most instructive and the most "edifying," will, CONGREGATIONAL SERMONS.-When we find this great man in the pulpit, we find him in his place we find him where his mission, as related to his country, and to his times, makes itself the most conspicuous. Chalmers was the man-every intelligent hearer felt it with force, and every such reader of his Discourses must feel it in measure-why should we hesitate in saying it ?-who was "sent from above" to revive, to restore, and to reëstablish the Christianity of Scotland. He had, in ample measure, the natural powers and the visible aspect-he had the form, the force, the vehemence, the earnestness, the boldness, and the majesty which befits a man who, without presumption, demands to be listened to, and who can always command the attention which he challenges. He was a man whom none could contemnwhom none could affect to turn away from, as if he were a fanatic, or a demagogue, or a caterer for popular applause. He seized upon the principal subjects of the Christian ministry-he did battle with those universally prevalent illusions, those fallacies and those various modes of selfdeception which are springing up always and everywhere from the ground of human nature, such as it is, and which show nearly the same front in all countries and in all ages. Chalmers, as a preacher, was a great preacher in this sense-that (for the most part) he occupied himself with First Truths, and treated them with a boldness, and a force, and a largeness of apprehension, which were in keeping with their in |