518 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF THE LATE REV. DR CHALMERS. 
recent movement of our country,—the Disruption of a National Church, with all 
its accompanying excitements,—its breaking up of old associations,—its contend- 
ing opinions and hasty sayings,—without running counter to the opinions of many 
early admirers, without partially, at least, alienating himself from former friends, 
and separating himself from former coadjutors. On such points it were vain to 
expect a concurrent judgment on all he has done and said. But of this I feel as- 
sured, that none who have had favourable opportunities of personal acquaintance 
with his character and disposition,—that none who have deeply entered upon a 
study of his writings, so as fully to appreciate the lofty and benevolent spirit of 
their sentiments and tendencies, will hesitate to admit that he was both a good 
and a great man,—that he was imbued with the spirit of Christian philanthropy, 
—that he had a fervent mind, keen sensibility, and indomitable energy. His 
highest praise, but, at the same time, his just eulogium is, that his fervency of 
spirit, his sensibility, and his energy, were all exercised’ and called forth in the 
one great and magnificent cause,—promoting the glory of Gop and the welfare of 
Mankind. In all his meditations, and in all his labours, he had ever distinctly 
before his eyes the advancement of his fellow-creatures, in their best and truest 
relations to this world and the world to come. 
His greatest delight was to contrive plans and schemes for raising degraded 
human nature in the scale of moral being,—the favourite object of his contempla- 
tion was human nature attaining the highest perfection of which it is capable: 
and, as that perfection was manifested in saintly individuals, in characters of great 
acquirement adorned with the graces of Christian piety. His greatest sorrow was 
to contemplate masses of mankind hopelessly bound to vice and misery by chains 
of passion, ignorance, and prejudice. As no onemore firmly believed in the power 
of Christianity to regenerate a fallen race,—as faith and experience both conspired 
to assure him that the only effectual deliverance for the sinful and the degraded 
was to be wrought by Christian education, and by the active agency of Christian 
instruction penetrating into the haunts of vice and the abodes of misery ;—these 
acquisitions he strove to gain for all his beloved countrymen ; for these he laboured, 
and for these he was willing to spend and be spent. From the fields of earthly 
toil and trial he has been removed, and he has entered into his rest. The great 
business of Christian benevolence, and the contest with ignorance and crime, are 
left in other hands. But Ats memory will not die, nor his good example in these 
things be forgotten. His countrymen will do his memory justice. Of the thou- 
sands who were assembled to witness the funeral procession which conveyed his 
earthly remains to the tomb, all felt conviction on that day that a Great Man had 
fallen in Israel,—that a Scotchman had gone to the grave, of whom Scotland 
might be proud,—a Scotchman who had earned a name in his country’s annals, _ : 
and a place in his country’s literature, which will not pass away. 

