in his retreat. When the bitterness of the disappointment was over, he returned quietly to his employment, mended his habitation, cultivated his garden, tamed some young fawns, and sought in constant occupation to distract his thoughts for ever from the earth. Gradually, as years passed, the scenes of his childhood became like dim clouds on the far horizon, the brilliant scenes of youth as they never had been, the sounds of earth as nought, the voices of man as of no more value than silence, and the passions of the world, love, ambition, hope, joy, and sorrow as empty sounds! Instead, he loved the green herbs by the rill side, the plants and flowers became his children, the graceful fawn his companion, the cracking of the mighty bergs, and the roar of the wild beasts his daily sound, the great solitudes his world, and his busy thoughts of future life and immortality filled up the void in his bosom.

Gradually his early mists and errors had faded from his eyes. He gave free vent to the impulses of his heart, and chastened by affliction, purified by solitude, and ennobled by sorrow, he knelt before God, indeed and in truth confessing his sins, and petitioning for mercy.

So Robinson died in his lonely grotto. A whaler from England found his body and buried it among the green grass he had reared. The flowers cherished and planted by his own hands, perhaps, there bloom around his grave, and his requiem is ever sung by the babbling brook and the lashing of the waves.

We have refrained, on account of our space, from dwelling as long as we might on the progress of his religious convictions, or upon the many improbabilities of the story. There are many, but in the interest of the narrative these will be forgiven and forgotten.

ART. III.-Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Thomas Chalmers, D.D., LL.D. By his Son-in-Law, the Rev. William Hanna, LL.D. Vol. IV. Edinburgh: Thomas Constable and Co.

1852.

WE return with considerable pleasure to the Life of Dr. Chalmers,' the last volume of which, embracing the history of the most eventful portion of his course, has recently appeared. the man In 1834, new literary distinctions were conferred upon whose reputation had become co-extensive with the English

tongue. The Royal Society of Edinburgh, numbering so many of the illustrious and the good among its associates, admitted Dr. Chalmers to its fellowship, than whom no one had ever been enrolled among that learned fraternity more worthy of the honour. At the commencement of the same year, also, he received an intimation from the secretary to the French Academy that he had been elected a Corresponding Member of the Royal Institute of France, 'the proudest of his literary honours.' In the summer of the following year, the University of Oxford conferred upon him the degree of a Doctor of Laws, a dignity which that proud and exclusive University had never before conferred upon any Scottish clergyman. Although honours crowded upon him, and the public voice was unanimous in his fame, the remarkable simplicity of his character was never more conspicuous than during the years in which the most eminent guilds of letters enrolled him among their fellows. Calmly and earnestly he pursued his heavenward way, allowing no earthly dignities to withdraw his thought or to dim his sight of those eternal glories which, as the objects of hope, the Redeemer has placed before the eyes of all who fight the good fight of faith.' No ambition could lure him from the simple path of duty, and if he failed occasionally to obtain the applause of the inconstant world, he received the guerdon of the faithful, that peace of soul which it belongs not to man either to give or to take away. Mingling often in the harassing perplexities of ecclesiastical agitation, and taking, too, a leading and a painful part in some of the religious questions of the day, he yet had leisure to nurture that higher life, which is superior in all its relations to the material and the temporal, and to work out his own salvation,' to carry on his education preparatory to the citizenship of the heavenly world. Truly he wrote, towards the close of life, when surveying the rugged path by which he had attained to fame,' that the bustle of too active and varied a sphere of exertion is adverse to the growth of personal and spiritual Christianity. It was not in the agitated assembly, nor on the arena of philosophical discussion, that the true character of Chalmers was discernible; but they only rightly knew the goodness and devotedness of the man who sat by his hearth, who observed the simplicity and humility of his home-life, and who learned that no small portion of each day was passed by him in the study of the sacred Word, and in communion with that Divine Spirit who acknowledges and loves the homage of the earnest, trustful heart.

In 1836, the first spark of ecclesiastical discord fell upon materials which had long been preparing for a conflagration

-that strife in which Chalmers took no ignoble part, and which, in the issue produced disastrous results to the Scottish Establishment. It happened that a magistrate at Kilmarnock had been deprived of his office, as an elder of the church of Scotland, in consequence of his taking the chair at a meeting which had been called for the purpose of petitioning the House of Commons against the union of the church with the state. He appealed for redress to the various churchcourts, all of which concurred in the legality and propriety of his suspension, and, as a last resource, he petitioned parliament to reinstate him. The conservative party loudly clamoured for the exclusive spiritual jurisdiction of the church of Scotland, which, to quote the words of its advocate, Sir George Clerk, 'did not refuse to render unto Cæsar the things which were Cæsar's, but it would not allow of any interference with its spiritual and ecclesiastical rights . . . . . . which constituted the independence of the church-government of Scotland.' Most noteworthy in this matter is the true animus of the statechurch, which is of the same temperament, equally self-seeking and haughtily intolerant, whether it be clad in prelatical lawn, or in the sombre cloak of Geneva; for there is a remarkable similarity in all religious establishments endowed by the state, They flatter and fawn before the imperious Cæsar who sustains them, but their inner spirit is that of a supercilious autocracy. Dr. Chalmers had been for some years laboriously endeavouring to carry out his scheme of church-extension in Scotland. Reasoning from the number of those who attended the public ministrations of religion, he concluded-and his positions were often fallacious-that a very large proportion of the Scottish people were not only without the pale of the Kirk, but were utterly destitute of the means of religious instruction; and, therefore, that the crying want of the time was a vast increase in the number of the national churches.

Dr. Chalmers and his fellow-labourers in this matter no doubt intended well. They longed to see their fatherland adorned with a sufficiency of crowded houses of prayer; but they sadly lacked judgment in their zeal. Their enthusiasm sometimes resembled fanaticism. Their orthodoxy was larger than their charity; and, in their earnestness to subserve religious interests, they seemed almost to ignore all religionists except those of their own party, and loudly to decry all who were not as eager as they to extend the cords and to strengthen the stakes of that Kirk which has been as little remarkable for the catholicity of its sentiments as for the enlightenment of its clergy. Like many other illustrious men, who have had a lofty mission to fulfil and a noble destiny to accomplish, Dr. Chal

mers was far removed from that moderation, in observing which he had, without doubt, better subserved the religious interests he so zealously and manfully advocated. That he accomplished a noble work-and which, had he not already attained to a high literary distinction, would have rendered his name great in the annals of his country-we readily admit; but we aver that he would have done more and better for the Scottish establishment had he pursued a quieter course of action, and, above all, had he not repeatedly obtruded the affairs of the Kirk in those high places in which she has ever been regarded with dislike. So loud on all sides was the cry for retrenchment, it was impossible that the government could comply with Dr. Chalmers' demand. Necessity, and not dissenting influence, as Dr. Hanna ungracefully remarks, compelled that refusal. It was not merely that Dr. Chalmers and his fellow clergymen were tories, and tories, too, of a very deep dye, nor that the Melbourne ministry had a daily decreasing majority to keep in hand, and a majority, we may add, whom the proposal to endow the Kirk would have speedily converted into a troublesome minority; but, it is probable, the government were with very good reason doubtful of the necessity of the church-extension which was so loudly clamoured for, and sceptical of the statistics which were adduced by the petitioners to show cause for such extension. At the very time when the clamour was loudest in relation to the supposed spiritual destitution of large portions of Scotland, it was notorious that many churches were but indifferently attended, excepting in the cities and larger towns, in which there had been an unprecedented increase to the population. Indeed, the church of Scotland required-speaking generally -an improved order of ministers equally with new places of worship. In many of her pulpits the perfunctory clergy droned forth their discourses, which were surcharged with a highly-flavoured orthodoxy, but which were withal, cold, formal, and dreary as the grave. Much of the preaching was mechanical and lifeless. Here and there one heard the earnest and thrilling eloquence of Chalmers, Gordon, Candlish, and a few more; but often the genius of dulness presided in the pulpits, and what was heartlessly spoken was heartlessly received. But the subsequent discussions and dissensions in the church produced, in a very few years, a far different state of things; just as tempests in the atmospheric economy, by their very agitation, prevent the formation of those noxious vapours which otherwise stagnation would produce.

After events, probably to a considerable extent, modified or mitigated his political asperity, but at the period of this agitation for church-extension Dr. Chalmers was a bigoted

Tory. It is with surprise and pain that we read his opinion, recorded in this history, of the famous Appropriation Clause of the liberal politicians :- If the Government shall carry into effect their proposed act of violence against the Episcopal. Protestant establishment of Ireland, I should certainly feel that the Presbyterian establishment of Scotland is not safe in their hands.' So does a blind adherence to a political dogma: obscure the perceptions and bias the judgment of one of the noblest minds, who, that the establishment might be preserved in Ireland, saw not the cruel wrong which the system daily wrought in that miserable land, the violence which it did to the first principles of justice and truth, the enormities it again and again perpetrated upon a people who were utterly alien to it, and the blood it had unrighteously shed, in order that a lordly hierarchy might clutch their tithes, and riot in wealth wrung from a wretched and reluctant people. The whig government, more from necessity than choice, were deaf to the entreaties of the extensionists, however eloquently urged, for a grant of money from the public purse, and Dr. Chalmers was compelled to throw himself upon the voluntary offerings of the nation; and the result should have abundantly satisfied him that the voluntary principle,' as it is termed, although feebly worked, can effect considerable results. In this instance, the success of the principle should have received from the biographer a more distinct and honorable notice than he has cared to bestow upon it; but we fear he is, even now, a disbeliever in the soundness of the principle, although he admits that the success was truly wonderful. In the space of four years, Dr. Chalmers announced to the General Assembly-and, he might have added, mainly by his own exertions-nearly two hundred churches had been added to the establishment, for the erection of which more than £200,000 had been contributed. Probably, had the government smiled upon his request, and promised a grant from the exchequer, and thus had he not cast himself upon the very voluntary principle he decried, the establishment in the issue would have been a considerable loser.

Since the passing of the Reform Bill, the policy of maintaining the huge English establishment had been often and angrily debated in the Houses of Parliament; and as the Duke of Wellington said in his place in the House of Lords, in the session of 1838, 'the real question was, church or no church.' The threatened Appropriation Clause aroused the episcopalians from their lethargy. The Reform Bill was erroneously supposed to have increased the strength of the dissenters, and the prelates were alarmed for the retention of their treasures.