come about, affecting not this country only, but Europe, America, the world, which few or none of the men of that time had dreamed of, and which, if they had lived to witness them, must have compelled them to abandon some of their favorite dogmas, and greatly to modify others. always upon that mountain mass of popu- | years social and commercial changes have lar inertness which he must break his way into and overturn; and he is slow to believe that, after all, he has done his work efficiently. He has his eye fixed upon certain rigid and inveterate formalities, trebly fenced against assault; and after he has carried the outworks, he is doubtful of his own success, and returns upon the ground ever and again, and is fain to look back anew to assure himself of his conquest. Throughout the early years of his course, and indeed throughout the whole of that period in which his style was in process of formation, his office, his calling, was that of the champion intent upon achieving a victory, and maintaining the RIGHT against all comers. Although the entire Works, as now before us, are susceptible of the classification above stated, no purpose which we have in view in this Article requires a strict adherence to it. We intend nothing more than to take a glance at the mass, commencing with those of its constituents which, in our opinion, possess the least of an enduring quality, and going on to those of which it may be thought that they will take a permanent place in English religious literature. We therefore take up first the volumes on Chalmers' economic writings give evidence of a masculine energy, a power of holding and of dealing with those intricately related abstractions which constitute the materials of the argument in this department. Whether right or wrong in his doctrine, he swayed his argument this way and that with ease. In the logic of the science he was expert, with its methods he was familiar, and he had affixed for himself a determinate meaning to its principal terms. We may believe him to be wrong, but we do not find him bewildered, or crushed under a burden that is too heavy for his shoulders. Smitten as he was with the charms of an hypothesis which started the world, (Malthus' Essay,) but which has had its day, and yielding himself too readily to its parade of demonstration-to its partial array of facts-to its conclusions so hastily concluded, he instantly saw how well this doctrine concerning population might be built upon for POLITICAL ECONOMY.-To enter here giving support to those further inferences upon any questions belonging to this of which his instincts and his principles as science would be quite out of place, and a moralist, and as a Christian minister, ill-timed also, as related to Chalmers' and as a warm philanthropist, impelled treatment of the subject. The volumes him to make himself the champion. Whatnow named, and others of the series, bear-ever there is in these economic writings ing upon kindred subjects, should be which approves itself to our convictions looked into as exponents of his power of on grounds of mere humanity, and of mind-his logical force, and that statesman-like breadth of view and capacity which distinguished him as a controversialist. But these treatises can scarcely be regarded as having taken a place permanently among authorities in the science. We are far from affirming that he has not, in these and other of his writings, won some lasting repute in establishing certain points; but we believe there are few, if any, who are conversant with these subjects, that would now care to vindicate for him a claim to a foremost rank among the masters and teachers of this branch of philosophy, still in course of development as it is. The years that have elapsed since Chalmers first took up these questions have not only been marked by the appearance of works of the highest merit; but more than this, during these eventful Christian feeling, is true so far; but these things are legitimately available as a basis for the inferences which the author builds upon them, only when they have been brought into their place as modified by considerations which Chalmers in his earnestness quite overlooks, or is not aware of, or which he misunderstands. Who can find fault with anything that is indeed moral in what he urges and reiterates about the usefulness of the "moral restraint," considered as a force counteractive of the law of increase ?-but when we come to the question of "early marriages," and of protracted or absolute celibacy, an even-handed morality has something else to say on this point; and besides, there are facts physiological and ethicophysiological, which also demand to be well thought of and considered. If it were to be alleged that Chalmers was a one-sided thinker, we should affirm, on the contrary, the breadth and grasp of his intellect, and we could adduce many convincing instances of his aptitude in planting himself on opposite sides of a subject. But when, at the bidding of his own powerful feelings, he surrendered himself to a particular dogma, he did not always hold himself free from that species of entanglement which so often drags able logicians far astray from the fields of a tranquil and a true philosophy. Nothing is so little to be trusted to as 66 demonstrations which you cannot answer;" nothing is more fallacious than "tables;" nothing is more to be suspected than "facts admitted on all sides;" nothing so like a broken reed as 66 an established axiom in political science." The great man before us was often led away by his "tables" and his "facts;" but more often was he snared in his own massive logic. The great ends he aimed at in concerning himself with politics or political economy, were those higher purposes relating to the well-being of the lower classes, which, as a Christian moralist and a Christian pastor, he so devoutly and so devotedly sought to realize. We find him, then, quite on his proper ground in those of his writings which naturally take their place after the Political Economy, and the cognate treatises, and which flow from these as consequences, and as practical deductions. Pursuing Chalmers' course as tending more and more toward his true position as the Christian divine, and, if not the philosopher, yet the philosophic theologian, and the bold champion of religious truth, we next take up that Essay on the CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES, which is not merely the earliest in date, but which first brought the writer into view before the English public. It is unnecessary here to recur to the circumstances under which it at the first appeared in 1813: we now take it as it stands in the series of the collected works, in which it takes its place as the third and fourth volumes. A considerable portion of this Essay consists of summary statements, or abridged recitals of the staple Christian argument --an argument which has never been refuted-such as it is found in the writings of Lardner, Paley, Blount, and others. These synopses, or condensed evidences, call for no other remark than this, that they are characteristic of Chalmers, both in mind and temper. As to temper, he had an openness and a candor which led him to admire, and freely to avail himself of, the authenticated products of other minds. There was in him a reverential feeling toward all those who might be named as the "canonized" of philosophy and literature-the few who have been unanimously voted to pedestals in the temple of fame. Free as he was from selfish ambition, and superior to the egotism of authorship, no sinister jealousies stood in his way when, in the course of an argument, he found other men's labors ready to his hand, which might be brought forward and commended, and perhaps incorporated with his own train of reasoning. It need scarcely be said that, in any such instances, he would have abhorred to act the plagiarist. In frequent instances Chalmers followed the guidance of others; but if, in any case, this sort of following was a fact of which himself was conscious, he made the reference and the acknowledgment in the most ample manner. But these legitimate borrowings are also characteristic of Chalmers' order of intellect. Bold, large in his grasp of subjects, statesman-like, business-like, prompt to seize the salient points of an argument, and singularly firm in his logical hold of whatever he held, he was not a suggestive, explorative, penetrative thinker. His intellectual habit was not that which impels, or which compels a man to pass his entire material of cogitation, even every atom of it, through his own mind, and in doing so to make it his own, whencesoever it may, in the first instance, have come to him. Whatever he believed to be sound, right, and logically available, Chalmers took up, and carried it to its place, in any discussion which for the moment engaged him. This he did, in part, as a practice, forcing itself upon a man so deeply occupied as he was in active life; but mainly (as we think) as the consequence of his individual structure of mind. In illustration of what we are here affirming, it might be enough to refer the reader to the three concluding chapters of this Essay. It would be unfair to take these chapters in hand as if they had been recently composed, and were now put forth. We must believe that, at this time, Chalmers would materially have qualified many passages which, as they stand, must give pain to those who, as preparedness will ensue, as if instantaneously and spontaneously, whenever the men, or the man, shall step forward who shall be able to command the respect and attention of the Christian community, and in presence of whom intemperate and illinformed persons shall feel abashed, and shall hold their peace. When this cause shall come on for a hearing, there must be proclaimed "Silence" in the heaven of theological debate. But we return for a moment to the volumes on the Christian Evidences. This Essay first appeared in 1813, fortythree years ago; and as to the core of the reasoning, it is as sound and as available now as it was then. Chalmers' revision and correction of the argument against Hume stands entire; and as to his own mode of refuting the flimsy sophism of the "Essay on Miracles," it is clear and unexceptionable; it is so, because Hume's cobweb may be swept away by more brooms than one; it needs no such refined process as Campbell and others had imagined to be necessary for the purpose: only bring it to the test of facts; let us see, in some half-dozen instances, which might be easily adduced, what becomes of the demonstration alleged to abate or destroy our confidence in testimony. Chalmers well states the fact that human testimony may be of such a kind, and it may be presented in such a form of complicated and intimate coherence, as would not merely carry our assent, but must compel it, even to the extent of its prevailing against our experience of the constancy of any natural phenomena whatever. All this is certain, and it is clear enough. zealous as himself for the genuine author- | dently be assumed, that such a state of ity of Holy Scripture, have thought more upon the subject of inspiration than he had done, and who have taken pains to inform themselves better as to the condition of the argument as a question of fact. The chapters to which we refer are curious specimens of that logical style which has prevailed among a certain class of theologians; as thus: a position is assumed; it is, let us grant, mainly good and valid; but it is reasoned from unexceptively, and it is pursued as if the reasoner were utterly unconscious of serious difficulties standing in his path, and which should be met or removed, sooner or later in the argument. These chapters of the "Christian Evidences," if they came before us from the pen of an inferior writer, a dogmatizing theologue, would not seem to merit any sort of notice in reply: we should leave them to be forgotten, and the sooner the better. Coming as they do from a mind such as that of Chalmers, they give weight and urgency to the demand of this present moment--that the doctrine of Inspiration should now at length be set clear of the many confusions which still attach to it; and that this work should be so done as not to leave staggering difficulties unnoticed and unheeded; while a genuine and untroubled faith in the authority of Scripture is brought to rest upon its true grounds. This is a work for the undertaking of which neither was the Christian world in his time prepared, nor was Chalmers himself specially qualified. It might be asked, Is the Christian world, even at this time, prepared for entertaining, intelligently and reverentially, freely, boldly, and religiously, that great and arduous argument which has so long stood waiting its time, and which is to determine what we mean by the hackneyed terms, Revelation, and the Inspiration of Holy Scripture? If an answer to this question were peremptorily demanded, it must be, we think, of this conditional sort: The Christian world is at this moment no better prepared to listen to a dispassionate discussion of this subject than it has been at any time heretofore it is not so, because none have come forward to take it up, and to deal with it, in whom, as to their competency, as to their freedom from entanglements, and as to the thoroughness of their religious principles, it has any well-grounded confidence. But further, it may confi If, then, the question were asked, Is Chalmers' Essay on the Christian Evidences a book proper to be now put into the hands of an intelligent young man for the purpose of confirming him in his Christian profession? we should answer, Undoubtedly it is: let him read Chalmers and Paley, with one or two other books that treat the question concisely and forcibly, and he cannot go wrong. But if such a question were put with a more discrete meaning, and if the propounder of the question had in view the case of a thoroughly informed reader, one of those, to wit, who are fully conversant with the science and with the literature of the present time, then we must make excep tions to the Essay on two or three grounds. None who were favored to have intercourse with Thomas Chalmers socially, can need to be assured that his personal dispositions were manly, cordial, generous, kind, sympathizing; but he was as strong in temper as he was robust in understanding; he fired at sophistry; he was hotly impatient of subterfuges and shams, and he was impatient toward any reasonings or difficulties of the sort with which, constitutionally, he had no sympathy, and the solidity of which he did not understand. Logic has to do with propositions -Yea and Nay: Philosophy has to do with things with the things of visible nature, and with the things of mind; and its dealings with these things go far deeper down than do those of logic. But Chalmers was the categorical logician much more than the philosopher; his intellectual destination was to the senate to the House of Commons, or to courts of law-rather than to those silent places where the human reason, and the human spirit, converse with and explore the universe of matter and of mind. Therefore it was that Chalmers' opponent, real or imagined, in any argument, was a somebody who is to be strenuously fought with and knocked down, and tumbled over the city wall as a nuisance. Besides, it behoves the reader of this great man's works at large, to keep in mind, we may say at almost every page, what was his position, and what was the feeling which he had of that position, as the notable champion of great, and then neglected principles in Scotland; or, to confine ourselves to the subject now in view, Chalmers stood forth in his time in defence of that Christianity, of the truth of which he had newly convinced himself, and of which he had been some time a minister. This Christianity was then assailed on all sides by men-some of them atheists and some deists who stood around the church of Scotland, and who, alas! had, some of them, comfortably lodged themselves within its enclosures. But as atheism and unbelief are at all times reäctions from the Christianity in and about which they arise, they take their semblance from it; they are reflections of it; they are counterparts or complements: they are negative photographs of the religion to which they oppose themselves; they show blacks for whites -- But we are whites for blacks-all over. all apt to be the most angered by that which, while it dares to contradict us, is yet, in some occult manner, a resemblance of ourselves. Hume, and the accomplished men of whom he was the leader and the idol, had formed no other conception of Christianity than that which, in their pa ternal homes, they had acquired in the course of their training, according to the religious fashion of an ill-conditioned bygone time; this fact should be considered in mitigation of the disapproval to which they may fairly be liable. Chalmers found himself on the battlefield opposed to men with whom the rejection of Christianity, such as it had always been offered to them, was, we may say, an inevitable consequence of the free development of thought in strong minds. But of this fact he had himself no distinct consciousness; we think he had no consciousness of it at all; his training and his professional feeling as a clergyman, and the non-discrete quality of his own mind, stood in the way of his coming to a perception of it. Hence it is, therefore, that the tone of this Essay, and so of many of his writings, and the cast of the epithets which he allows himself to use, are too pugnacious, too arrogant-they are, in fact, offensive in their apparent meaning; and therefore it is, that the Essay before us is less adapted to the present time, and to England, than its substantial merits would have made it. And yet this is not all. During the years that have elapsed since this Essay appeared, the Christian argument, as it was carried on between Christian advocates and the several classes of those who opposed themselves thereto, has moved many steps in advance toward what must be the resting-place of the controversy namely, a never-to-be-ended antagonism between Christianity and atheism in its simplest form. Historical and literary criticism have undergone much improvement of late, and these improvementsthese more exact and more erudite modes of proceeding-have wrought a great change in the feeling of well-informed men towards the books of the New Testament (and those of the Hebrew Scriptures also) which corrected feeling places these writings, in a historical sense, far beyond the range of doubt or question. Moreover, during this same period, several elaborate and highly ingenious endeavors to nullify the historical evidence, or to re- On this ground it is not the most irreduce it to a cloudy condition, have sig- fragable verbal logic that will serve us; nally failed; and these abortive attempts, it is no nicely-worded propositions, put tospurned as they are by the learned every-gether in the most approved technical where-in Germany as in England-have order, that will help us at all. It must be been handed over as a useful stock in a large, a cordial, and a genuine philosotrade to those inferior writers and popular phy: it must be a true metaphysics; and lecturers who contrive to earn a miserable this metaphysics must be inclusive of the subsistence, as the apostles of atheism, axiom that, to those who occupy a place among the common people. as we do in this world, in the midst of a system wherein evil so much abounds, the attainment of a point of view toward which all lines might be seen to converge, is an achievement which should not be thought of as possible; for, to suppose it attainable, is just to assume that disorder is only a form or a disguise of order, and that evil is good. 66 But what, now, is the consequence of this movement and of this advance? It has produced a feeling which may thus be put into words: As matter of history, your Christianity is now granted you; we do not care any more to encounter the argument on that ground; and as to what is supernatural, and the elimination of which from the historical element is, as we allow, very difficult, we abstain from expressing any distinct opinion concerning it; in fact, we do not trouble ourselves either to frame or to defend any such opinion, even if we had formed one; we are in possession of no hypothesis, thereto relating, which altogether satisfies ourselves. But granting, as we do, your Christianity in its historical aspect, and waiving the perplexed question of its supernatural accompaniments, we must claim for ourselves the right to step back, or rather to ascend to a higher position of theological speculation. You must needs allow us this liberty, because you come to us asking our submission to the Christian revelation on this very plea, namely that it follows as a legitimate inference from the principles of natural religion. Be it so; but if it be so, then we must feel our way towards it, and we must touch firm ground upon this speculative path. Until we have reasonably disposed of some formidable difficulties, and until we have secured for ourselves a position-somewhere short of atheism, and short of pantheism too, and short of a deism that rejects the moral attributes of the Creator-until we have achieved all these arduous labors, we must postpone altogether the Christian argument." This plea for an indefinite adjournment of the question may, undoubtedly, be conclusively replied to; and it may be shown to be both insufficient and irrelevant. But such a showing is indispensable; and in attempting it, regard must be had to the depth and to the difficulty of the subject, as seen from the position which cultivated minds have come into anew at this present time. It is in this sense, therefore, that Chalmers' Essay on the Christian Evidences, though it will always be popularly available, and though it may without any scruple be put into the hands of unsophisticated young persons, must fail to recommend itself to those who are conversant with the course of thought at the present time, and who have passed through the discipline of an intellectual education. But we have now to see in what manner Chalmers deals with these arduous antecedent questions. We look, therefore, to the two volumes of NATURAL THEOLOGY.-At the outset of an argument which, if it is to bring conviction to an instructed reader, should be purely scientific in its method, and abstinently concise in its style, we have to regret those faults of method and style which tax our patience even when the author is not acting as our guide in the region of abstract philosophy; we need scarcely say that we refer to his wonted method of cumulative and redundant illustration, and to his rhetorical, not to say factitious style. The pellucid stream of thought, flowing without noise in a channel that is well defined and not tortuous, is that to which the reader would willingly surrender himself in this region. mers' course of thinking whirls itself through many eddies, and hurries us onward at a stormy speed; but too often he brings us round to a spot which is at no perceptible distance from the point of departure. It is these uninviting characteristics of his style which must, as we imagine, confine his philosophical writings to a comparatively narrow sphere; they Chal |