persuasion. The secret feeling of that man's heart who lives without prayer is, being expressed in words,-I have my head, my hands, my faculties; the world is before me; what more is needed? I can get on well enough without God; I need not to take him into my counsel, and to crave his help. I have got my faculties and a standing-place in this world from him. I thank him for these. Having these, I need and ask no more. If such a one be a Christian, how strange!

But you say you revolt from such sentiments, and judge them profane. The reason you do not pray is, not that you think yourself independent of God. Very far from that. Your reason is, that God cannot be profited by any service of yours; and in regard to praying to God, and in prayer, requesting bless ings from him--you consider that as very superfluous, since the Lord is perfectly acquainted with your wants, and, being merciful, will supply them as he sees best, without your asking.

Every one knows the truth of these two statements-that our services cannot be profitable to God; and that he knows perfectly all that we need. But they have nothing to do with the matter as regards prayer. If God be pleased to require and to command the service of his people, their duty is plain; and the question whether that service is profitable or not, is one quite beside the purpose. If God reveals himself to mankind as the hearer of prayer, and if he is pleased to ordain that, through the channel or medium of prayer, his blessings shall descend upon his people, it is utterly futile to say that there can be no duty lying upon us to pray, in consideration of the divine omniscience. Such objections are infidel, not Christian. They are as strong against every other divinely appointed duty as they are against prayer; which any one may see who chooses to point them against any other duty. To live without prayer, on any such pretence, is to manifest very plainly that one is not a believer.

Prayer, like other divinely-appointed ordinances, is for the good of believers. The advantage is theirs. Grant that your services are nothing to God, yet are they nothing to you? Is it nothing to be kept continually mindful of what we owe to God; nothing to have our minds, by meditation and prayer, made familiar with the infinite purity and holiness of God, and with the exceeding and amazing depravity of our own hearts; nothing to be stirred up (which believers often are in prayer) to longings, aspirations, and most earnest desires after a more humble and holy life-a closer walking with God? The relation between God and his people, in all its aspects and bearings, is brought before and impressed upon the mind in this ordinance of prayer. Of what value it is that it should be so, and how intimately connected with and conducive to progress in holiness and growth in grace, let any one who is competent judge. God can do without you, but can you do without him? You are dependent upon him for all things: for no created being can be otherwise. But are you to make to God no acknowledgment of His goodness, and no humble earnest request, that if it please him he may continue to bestow upon you a share of such blessings as you stand in need of; and that, not

withstanding of an express commandment from God, that you do both the one and the other. To pretend to be a believer and yet to live without prayer, is it not preposterous?

It is true that your services add nothing to the essential happiness and glory of God. Yet is it nothing to God whether his creatures are obedient or disobedient, lovers of Him or haters of Him, submitting themselves to him in godly fear, or living in rebellion and blasphemy? Are heaven and hell alike to God, angels and devils, saints and reprobates? The thought is revolting.

You endeavour, perhaps, to defend yourself in the neglect of prayer by another argument. It is, that though you do not pray in words, yet your heart is so habitually under a sense of your obligation to God and dependence upon him, you have a sense so distinct of gratitude to him, that of your heart it may be said, it is habitually in the spirit of prayer. If you are sincere in this admission, we cannot help being convinced that you are labouring under a very gross error of judgment, and indeed, though uncon sciously to yourself, practising a delusion upon yourself. In fact, we believe, that what you state is an impossibility. As the heart is, so will the conduct be. Words are the symbols or exponents of thought, and without words or some other symbol, there can be no communication of thought. We are aware that thought may be expressed, as for example in painting, statuary, &c., without words, but some kind of symbol is always necessary. And in the communication of thought and feeling between one person and another, language is the medium of expression. The experimenting of it would teach how difficult it is, if not altogether impossible, to form even to yourself any thing like a distinct knowledge of the state of emotion or feeling in which your mind at any time is, without endeavouring to express it in words. It will be found that our most abstract mental processes are carried on in words, not only when we are conversing, discoursing, or writing, but also when we are musing and are farthest retired within ourselves. Words are not thoughts, as our bodies are not our spirits. As the spirit can only manifest itself by the body, so thought requires for its manifestation the integument of one kind of language or another. God makes his communications to men through language, and except through the same medium men cannot communicate with God. It is true that the written Word of itself is not effec tual to salvation without the enlightening influences of the Holy Spirit. But these influences (or, in other words, the teaching of the Spirit) are needful in order to the conveying to the mind the truths contained in the written Word. Still the written Word is the medium of conveyance. The Spirit does not convey to the mind any thing not contained in the Word, but makes us understand, feel, and believe what is contained there. It must also be admitted, that there are sometimes felt by believers in their heart, in particular circumstances, longings, desires, and aspirations towards God and divine things, which cannot find words for the adequate expression of them. "The Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we

know not what to pray for as we ought; but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered." This happens in the experience, not of prayerless persons, but of those who are in their minds most conformable to God-and in an eminent degree praying people. It will be, however, admitted by those who really and seriously consider such matters, that language, articulate speech, is so much the ordinary medium of thought, and the communication of it from one person to another, that to talk of a heart habitually in the spirit of prayer, and at the same time to neglect the specific act of prayer in articulate words, is a delusion, and, as we are constituted, contrary to nature and the truth of things. Such a plea cannot stand. To a

reasonable mind it has no force in it. Sift the matter, and you will discover, and must confess, that the true reason of your living without prayer is indifference and unbelief. An indifferent and unbelieving

believer is a contradiction.

That prayer should be the means or channel by which spiritual blessings are conveyed to the hearts of believers, is analogous to the method of the divine operation in other matters. It is God who gives the increase of the earth. He is the author of that adaptation by which the seed draws its nutriment from the soil, from the light, and warmth, and showers; and by which these give nourishment to the seed. The seasons of the year are a divine arrangement, and they are an arrangement by which the earth is fertilized, and by which the herbs and fruits necessary to support animal life are made to germinate, spring up, and come to their maturity. If all be thus dependent upon God, why the labour of the husbandman? Not because God stands in need of it-not because he cannot work without it. What hinders but that he should cause the earth to yield spontaneously, and cover it with harvests unsown by man? Yet he does not do this. If men do not cultivate the earth, and sow, and dress, neither shall they gather the harvest nor the vintage. Whilst the fruits of the earth are the gift of God, the labour of the husbandman is the channel through which these gifts come. The Lord could bestow on us all the spiritual blessings we stand in need of without our asking them. Nothing hinders except his own appointment, that it shall not be so. There is no natural obstacle in the way; and how could there be, for what can resist the divine power? He has appointed that these blessings shall come to us through certain channels of conveyance. Prayer, as has been said, is one of these, and an important one. The beneficent ends which this appointment serves have been hinted at, and might be largely shown. But the point of immediate concern is the appointment itself. Neglect the appointment, and how can you reasonably expect the blessing? It is ordained to come to you through certain channels. You refuse to let down your pitcher and draw at these channels. How, then, can you expect to get the living water? To neglect the express appointment of God, on any pretence whatsoever, what is it but to despise God, the divine author of the appointment? And, if any one be a despiser of God, how can he be a believer?

MEMOIRS OF DR CHALMERS.* No. I.

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THE chosen biographer of a great man occupies a very critical, and, in some respects, an unenviable position. He runs a most serious personal risk. His name is for ever linked with his subject-he comes in for a chief share of the light that streams from the luminary which he exhibits. But it depends entirely on his own competency, whether the immortality to which he thus dooms himself shall exalt him as an object of envy, or convert him into a mere beacon of warning. He is like the sculptor entrusted with the marble from which is to be chiselled out the face and figure of a great public benefactor, of whom a grateful and admiring community wishes to preserve some enduring memorial. The statuary comes at length to be erected, but it depends altogether on the execution, whether, as it stands for centuries in the market-place, it will serve as a monument to the great man's honour, or to the sculptor's disgrace. Instances are not awanting of an unfortunate author, who, doing his best to build a monument to another, has succeeded only in erecting a pillory for himself-a result not so much to be deprecated for the sake of the biographer, as for that of his unfortunate victim, and of the community or the Church which suffers from his incapacity.

As the appointed biographer of Dr Chalmers, Dr Hanna was placed in a position at once deeply responsible and peculiarly difficult. Deeply responsible, inasmuch as on the character of his biography must largely depend the measure of Dr Chalmers's permanent influence-an influence higher in its character, and fitted to be wider in its circle, and more enduring in its results, than that appertaining to the highest impersonations of literary or political greatness; and peculiarly difficult, by reason of the very mightiness of the spirit whose development, and progress, and achievements, it was his high task to portray. And therefore we regard Dr Hanna's unquestioned and pre-eminent success as fair matter both of personal congratulation, and also, and chiefly, of deep thankfulness. An inadequate or unworthy biography of such a man, would have been a signal and irreparable calamity. But tried by every test which may fairly be applied to such a work-by the sustained interest of the narrative-by the vividness with which it brings out the varied greatness of its subject, and delineates the different stages of his mental and spiritual progress-or by the sensible and involuntary impression of the lessons of his life and labours which its perusal produces on the reader's mind-tried by any, or all of these tests, the work is unquestionably entitled to take its place in the first rank of biographies. In this and succeeding Numbers we intend giving an abstract of its contents. The abstract, however, must necessarily be a meagre one; and we trust that very many of our readers will procure and peruse the volume for themselves. It is a volume destined to exert a powerful influence.

* Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Thomas Chalmers, D.D., LL.D. By his Son-in-law, the Rev. William Hanna, LL.D., Edinburgh.

Thomas Chalmers was the sixth child of his parents, and was born at Anstruther, March 17, 1780. His father, in announcing the birth to his brother-in-law, then resident in London, wrote:

"The little fellow is named Tom-I wish him as good a man as his name-father." And then, after stating that the mother had been threatened with fever, added, "But I desire to bless His great name in whose hand is the life of every creature, and of whose mercy we may sing every day, that the fever is quite gone; and though she did not sleep very well last night, I hope the Almighty will recover her to serve Him, and be helpful to bring up her own children to be His servants after we have served our generation according to His will; which will, may it be the rule of yours and mine, and all belonging to us, to live agreeably thereunto."

His infancy was clouded by the presence and persecutions of a heartless nurse, "whose cruelty and deceitfulness haunted his memory through life;" and his boyhood by the rule of a teacher, whose "sight was beginning to fail, but not so his thirst for flogging, which grew with the decline, and survived the loss, of vision." Notwithstanding, we are told that by those of his schoolfellows, few now in number, who survive, Dr Chalmers is remembered as one of the idlest, strongest, merriest, and most generous-hearted boys in Anstruther School. "Joyous, vigorous, and humorous, he took his part in all the games of the playground, ever ready to lead or to follow when schoolboy expeditions were planned and executed; and wherever, for fun or for frolic, any little group of the merry-hearted was gathered, his full rich laugh might be heard rising amid their shouts of glee. But he was altogether unmischievous in his mirth. He could not bear that either falsehood or blasphemy should mingle with it." His boyish ambition was to be a minister. The sister of one of his schoolfellows still remembers breaking in upon her brother and him in a room to which they had retired together, and finding the future great pulpit orator (then a very little boy) standing upon a chair, and preaching most vigorously to his single auditor below. He had fixed upon and was expounding his first text, "Let brotherly love continue."

In November 1791 (in the twelfth year of his age) he enrolled as a student in the United College of St Andrews-there being but one contemporary student who had enrolled at an earlier age, John, now Lord Campbell. During the first two years of his literary curriculum he made no great progress, but his third session, we are told, was his intellectual birth-time. During that session he devoted himself to the study of Mathematics, under Dr James Brown, then assistant to Professor Vilant (who was laid aside by illness) and afterwards for some time Professor of Natural Philosophy in Glasgow. Dr Chalmers always expressed himself as indebted to Dr Brown for the infusion of that academic spirit and enthusiasm by which, from this time forward, he was distinguished. Writing in 1836 to Dr Brown's widow, he said, "Of all the professors and instructors with whom I have ever had to do, he is the one who most powerfully impressed me, and to the ascendency of whose mind over me I owe more in the formation of

my tastes and habits, and in the guidance and government of my literary life, than to that of all the other academic men whose classes I ever attended." Ethics and political economy also engaged much of young Chalmers's attention.

"In November 1795, he was enrolled as a student of Divinity. Theology, however, occupied but little of his thoughts. During the preceding autumn he had learned enough of the French language to enable him to read, fluently and intelligently, the authorship in that tongue upon the higher branches of mathematics. His favourite study he prosecuted with undiminished ardour. Not even the powerful spell of one of the ablest of theological lecturers-to whose ability he afterwards rendered so full a tribute of praise-could win him away from his mathematical devoteeism. The present venerable minister of Kilsyth, the Rev. Mr Burns, who entered the Divinity Hall along with him, writes as follows:- He had got the idea strongly into his mind, that the orthodoxy of the lecturer was formed in conformity to the Standards, rather than as the truth most surely believed. The professor had expressed the sentiment that Calvinism should not be too broadly brought forward in pulpit addresses, lest it should be repulsive. Chaliners said to me," If it be truth, why not be above-board with it?" I think he added, "You are a sincere Calvinist. There is none in St Andrews that I know. Come down to Anstruther with me on venerable elder with whom I was acquainted.) They a Saturday, and see my father and Mr Hodges, (a) all agree with you." I referred to a very able lecture which the Professor had delivered a day or two previously, as a really masterly defence of one of the deepest points of Calvinistic doctrine, upon the he said, "I was not paying attention to it, but thinkscheme of Jonathan Edwards. I was surprised when ing of something else," probably following out some mathematical problem. "Why," I said, " did you not attend to a disquisition so able?" "Because," he answered, "I question the sincerity of the lecturer." The exercise of mere intellectual power without!! heart, seemed to have no power to suspend his favourite study. He most certainly passed through that year's curriculum without making entry on the theological field, and there can be no doubt that his system did not go beyond sublime ideas of the Divine; Omnipresence, Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Goodness, and the grandeur, extent, and variety of His works, combined with some lively conceptions the author of Christianity.' of the character, the teaching, and the example of

"Though a disquisition by Dr Hill on the scheme of Jonathan Edwards was thus listened to idly and in vain, very different was the treatment which to

wards the close of the same session the writings of ing of this period, Professor Duncan says, He that great metaphysician and divine received. Speakstudied Edwards on Free-Will with such ardour, that he seemed to regard nothing else, could scarcely talk of any thing else, and one was almost afraid of his mind losing its balance.' Edwards' theory of Necessity fell in with the reasonings of his earlier favourite Godwin, and was speedily adopted; and it was no cold assent of the understanding merely which was given to it. Planting his foot upon the truth, demonstrated as it seemed to him so irresistibly by | Edwards-that fixed unalterable links bind together the whole series of events in the spiritual as well as in the material universe, he rose to the sublime conception of the Godhead, as that eternal allpervading energy by which this vast and firmly knit succession was originated and sustained; and into a very rapture of admiration and delight his spirit was

upborne. Looking back to this period, twenty-four years afterwards, he writes:

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February 26th, 1821,-O that He possessed me with a sense of His holiness and His love, as He at one time possessed me with a sense of His greatness and His power, and His pervading agency. I remember when a student of Divinity, and long ere I could relish evangelical sentiment, I spent nearly a twelvemonth in a sort of mental elysium, and the one idea which ministered to my soul in all its rapture was the magnificence of the Godhead; and the universal subordination of all things to the one great purpose for which He evolved and was supporting creation. I should like to be so inspired over again, but with such a view of the Deity as coalesced and was in harmony with the doctrine of the New Testament.'

"Alluding to this singular period in his mental history, he has told a member of his family that not a single hour elapsed in which the overpoweringly impressive imagination did not stand out bright before the inward eye; and that his custom was to wander early in the morning into the country, that, amid the quiet scenes of nature, he might luxuriate in the glorious conception.

"The magnificent vision did, however, after some months depart.

"It was then the practice at St Andrews, that all the members of the University assembled daily in the public hall for morning and evening prayers, which were conducted by the theological students. The hall was open to the public, but in general the invitation was not largely accepted. In his first theological session it came by rotation to be Dr Chalmers' turn to pray. His prayer, an amplification of the Lord's Prayer clause by clause consecutively, was so originally and yet so eloquently worded, that universal wonder and very general admiration were excited by it. I remember stil,' writes one who was an auditor, after the lapse of fifty-two years, the powerful impression made by his prayers in the Prayer Hall, to which the people of St Andrews flocked when they knew that Chalmers was to pray. The wonderful flow of eloquent, vivid, ardent, deseription of the attributes and works of God, and still more perhaps, the astonishingly harrowing delineation of the miseries, the horrid cruelties, immoralities, and abominations inseparable from war, which always came in more or less in connection with the bloody warfare in which we were engaged with France, called forth the wonderment of the hearers. He was then only sixteen years of age, yet he showed a taste and capacity for composition of the most glowing and eloquent kind. Even then, his style was very much the same as at the period when he attracted so much notice, and made such powerful impression in the pulpit and by the press."

When he had finished his attendance at the Divinity Hall, instead of returning to Anstruther to be a burden upon his parents (the family there now numbering fourteen), he determined thenceforth to provide for himself. Accordingly he accepted of an opening as private tutor in a family, where, however," he was destined to find a most ungenial residence." The seven hours' labour a day formed but a slight portion of the causes of his discomfort. The pupils were unruly, the parents were haughty and unkind, treating him as an underling and a menial. The spirit of young Chalmers could not brook such indignity, and he openly resented it. Upon this Mr (Dr Hanna considerately conceals the name) charged

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him with unseemly and unseasonable pride. "Sir," said he, "the very servants are complaining of your haughtiness; you have far too much pride."—"There are two kinds of pride, sir," was the reply. "There is that pride which lords it over inferiors, and there is that pride which rejoices in repressing the inso lence of superiors. The first I have none of-the second I glory in." He soon afterwards left the family and returned to St Andrews, where he received license to preach the gospel on the 31st July 1799-being then in his twentieth year.

Immediately after license, he went off to England on a visit to his brother James, then in business at Liverpool. On the 25th August he preached his first sermon in the Scotch Church, Wigan; and on the following Sabbath he preached in Liverpool. James, writing immediately afterwards to his father, gave the following criticism :—

"It is impossible for me to form an opinion of Thomas as yet; but the sermon he gave us in Liverpool, which was the same as we had in Wigan, was in general well liked. His mode of delivery is expressive, his language beautiful, and his arguments very forcible and strong. His sermon contained a due mixture both of the doctrinal and practical parts of religion; but I think it inclined rather more to the latter. The subject, however, required it. It is the opinion of those who pretend to be judges, that he will shine in the pulpit, but as yet he is rather awkward in his appearance. We, however, are at some pains in adjusting his dress, manner, &c., but he does not seem to pay any great regard to it himself. His mathematical studies seem to occupy more of his time than the religious. I refer you to the subjoined for other particulars (if you can read them), and am, dear father, yours most sincerely,

"JAMES CHALMERS."

The two following winters he spent in Edinburgh attending the Mathematical class of Professor Playfair, that of Natural Philosophy under Professor Robison, and that of Moral Philosophy under Dugald Stuart. During that time he resided in Chessels' Court with Mr Cowan, his mother's uncle, who kindly offered him a room in his house.

In 1802, he commenced his duties as a stated preacher in the parish of Cavers, having been appointed assistant to the parish minister. There he remained for four months, greatly pleased with the place, with the kindness of the people, and with the opportunities of study which he enjoyed. Having as yet, however, no very profound or impressive sense of the dignity and importance of the ministerial office,| and finding himself much more at home in the pursuit of science than in the study of theology, he gladly availed himself of an opening by which next winter. he became assistant to the Mathematical Professor devoted his chief energies to preparing for his new at St Andrews; and, months before he left Cavers, he duties in that capacity. At the commencement of the session he threw himself into his work with characteristic enthusiasm, and conducted and closed

*These particulars were in Thomas' handwriting, which even then was somewhat difficult to decipher. It became much worse afterwards-so much so, that his father is reported to have carefully deposited the unread letters in his desk, saying, that Thomas himself would read them to them when he came next to Anstruther.