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 ofa free will entire and uncontrolled. Thus it is always 
in his writings. He is urging and reiterating, with all the fervency of an ardent 
eloquence, a great and important principle, or he is running the parallel between 
two 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 isin division. Of him it was said, that he “exhausted 
his subject.” Caumers 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 which 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 Cuaumers by Rosert Hatt, 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 CuaLmers’ 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 without 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. 6N 
