BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF THE LATE REV. DR CHALMERS. 501 



and he has illustrated the agency of man's own endeavours as fully and as freely as 

 if he had been the champion of a free will entire and uncontrolled. Thus it is always 

 in his writings. He is urging and reiterating, Avith all the fervency of an ardent 

 eloquence, a great and important principle, or he is running the parallel between 

 tivo essential truths. He is sustaining, singly and conjunctly, the position of two 

 considerations, both of which are to be of supreme authority. The action of both is 

 requisite for man's moral and spiritual wellbeing ; at times they may, in theory, ap- 

 pear to be incompatible, but in action are never inconsistent. He is not, therefore, a 

 writer of subdivisions or details. He is copious, but copious in illustrating great pro- 

 positions. He offers, in this respect, a remarkable contrast to a great writer, Dr 

 Isaac Barrow, whose strength is in division. Of him it was said, that he " exhausted 

 his subject." Chalmers also exhausted his subject. But then one exhausted the 

 practical application and minute enforcement of a truth, in all its results and con- 

 sequences ; the other exhausted the various forms and illustrations by Avhich that 

 truth itself could be enforced upon the human mind. There is nothing of the 

 analytical method in his treatment of a subject. It is almost purely deductive. 

 He sets out with a great principle, and shews, in a thousand shapes, its application 

 and appropriation. One remark, however, we would make on this subject. Al- 

 though the handling is so copious and diffusive, it is seldom deficient in strength 

 and pungency. It would frequently be difficult to abbreviate without injury ; and 

 we find expressions constantly occurring of great force and point. It was said of 

 Dr Ohalmkrs by Robert Hall, after hearing him preach, that his sermon went 

 on hinges, not on wheels. Images are sometimes dangerous coadjutors. A dis- 

 course on wheels may run off the course ; but a discourse on hinges must, at any 

 rate, retain the speaker in his place, and make him exhibit the various forms and 

 phases of his subject, by turning it in every direction to his audience. 



The style of Dr Chalmers' writing partakes of the character of his mind. 

 It is copious and overflowing ; cumbrous, perhaps, at times, for the more minute 

 detail of a subject ; but the phraseology (^though occasionally somewhat eccen- 

 tric) is often powerful and beautiful in the highest degree. It is impossible to 

 illustrate these peculiarities Avithout examples. I shall only select a few. 

 Thus, to express the quick passage of time : " Time, with its mighty strides, 

 will soon reach a future generation, and leave the present in death and in for- 

 getfulness behind it." To express that the world occupies our thoughts : " Its 

 cares and its interests are plying us every hour with their urgency." A man 

 of shallow views in religion is a "man whose threadbare orthodoxy is made up of 

 meagre and unfruitful positions." The external marks of piety : "A beauty of 

 holiness, which effloresces on the countenance, and the manner, and the outward 

 path." To say that the repentance of a sinner interests the angels, is thus worded : 

 " His repentance would, at this moment, send forth a wave of delighted sensibility 

 throughout the mighty throng of their innumerable legions." Persons who take 



VOL. XVI. part v. 6 n 



