to supposed insult amounted to a kind of possession, and any attempt to restrain him from the vindication of his wounded honour threw him into fits of wildness. Some members of his Presbytery thought his mathematical engagements at St. Andrew's incompatible with his clerical duties at Kilmany, and his pleading before the Presbytery is nothing short of raving, and very juvenile raving

"Unfortunate misunderstandings arose, which it is neither for you to hear nor for me at present to explain. I shall only say that I was deserted both by my employer and the University, and my career as the Mathematical assistant was at last closed by the ignominy of a dismissal from my employment. I was now disposed of. I was consigned to the obscurity of the country. I was compelled to retire in disgrace, and leave the field to my exulting enemies. They had gained their object-a name expunged from the list of competition-no further disturbance from interlopers-no literary upstart to emulate their delicious repose, or to outstrip them in public esteem-no ambitious intruder to dispel our golden dreams of preferment, or to riot along with us in the rich harvest of benefices. I have few friends-no patronage to help me forward in the career of an honourable ambition. All that I had to trust in was my academic reputation and the confidence of an enlightened public. But where is the enlightened public to which a slandered mathematician may appeal? There is no more such an enlightened public in St. Andrew's than there is in the interior of Africa.I know nothing from which religion has suffered so severely as from the disgrace of its teachers. Compel me to retire from my classes, and you give a blow to the religious interests of my parish which all the punctualities of discipline will never restore. You render me the laughing-stock of the country; you cover me with infamy; you render me the object of public contempt and public execration. Compel me to retire, and I shall be fallen indeed. I would feel myself blighted in the eyes of all my acquaintances. I would never more lift up my face in society. I would bury myself in the oblivion of shame and solitude. I would hide me from the world. I would be overpowered by the feeling of my own disgrace. The torments of self-reflection would pursue me; they would haunt my dreams; they would lay me on a bed of torture; they would condemn me to a life of restless and never-ceasing anxiety. Death would be to me the most welcome of all messengers. It would cut short the remainder of my ignominious days. It would lay me in the grave's peaceful retreat. It would withdraw me from the agitations of a life that has been persecuted by the injustice of

enemies, and still more distracted by the treachery of violated friendship."-Vol. I. p. 85.

On another occasion he thus speaks before the Presbytery, of the brother clergyman who brought forward the motion against him :

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"I will defy him to find a single individual who will say that I have been outstripped by any of my predecessors in the regularity of my ministerial attentions, or who will say that he has discovered anything in my conduct which betokened a contempt for religion or indifference to its sacred interests. What more will the gentleman require of me? Has he any right to control me in the distribution of my spare time? I maintain he has none. I spurn at the attempt as I would at the petty insolence of a tyrant; I reject it as the interference of an officious intermeddler. To the last sigh of my heart I will struggle for independence, and eye with proud disdain the man who presumes to invade it."

Yet the man who could rant in this vein against compulsion, concedes of his own accord all that was required, confines himself in the second year to the chemical lectureship, which we suppose was not in competition with a University class, and then quietly retires to the duties of his parish. It was some time however before he wore off the ambition of being a teacher of Science. He was successively a candidate for the Professorship of Natural Philosophy at St. Andrew's, and of Mathematics at Edinburgh. His first publication originated in the competition for the Mathematical Chair at Edinburgh. Professor Playfair had stated that the successful pursuit of science was inconsistent with clerical duties and habits, and Chalmers put forth anonymously a vehement reply, in which he says "the author of this pamphlet can assert, from what to him is the highest of all authority, the authority of his own experience, that after the satisfactory discharge of his parish duties, a minister may enjoy five days in the week of uninterrupted leisure for the prosecution of any science in which his taste may dispose him to engage." This shows his indiscretion, and his slight estimate, at the time, of the preacher's and the pastor's office. A time came when he found every moment he could command but too little to satisfy his own feelings of their duties,

and when he sought in shame and sorrow to suppress this rash publication.

His next publication, which followed shortly after, and before the spiritual absorption of his mind began, was on the Stability of National Resources. Bonaparte had issued his Berlin Decree closing the ports of the Continent against British vessels, and Chalmers undertook to demonstrate, "that the whole loss which the country should suffer, even if the measures of Bonaparte were to succeed, would be the loss of those luxuries which foreign trade suppliednot any diminution of that general fund out of which these luxuries were paid for, and by which all our manufactures were upheld; and, if that fund remained entire, then, with less to do in ministering to personal enjoyment, it would have more than ever to offer to Government for the upholding of national independence." He forgot that without the stimulus of foreign trade the articles of home manufacture, that pay for these luxuries, would not be brought into existence, or, if brought into existence, would not be the articles that were wanted, and would find no purchasers.

Dr. Chalmers' early theology was orthodox but moderate. He preached an Atonement, but declared that its necessity as a reparation of violated justice must be rejected by all free and rational inquirers. His first preaching seems to have been exclusively moral, and though he held the peculiar doctrines of his Church they had no very strong hold upon him. A long and severe illness, which threw him out of the pulpit for nearly a twelvemonth, wrought a complete change, not in his opinions, but in his spiritual state, habits, and complexion. It filled him with a vivid and abiding sense of human mortality. It opened to him this life in the sight of eternity. It gave him trembling earnestness, and a new appreciation of the responsibilities of one whose office it is, to harmonize and reconcile the temporal and spiritual aspects of existence. He came forth from the shadow of death with the feeling that all that was not immortal was unreal, and that all actions were positively sinful that were not directly animated by the love of God. Henceforth original sin became identified in his eyes with forgetfulness of God. To establish innate corruption, he held it enough to say, "God is not in

all your thoughts." Henceforth human imperfection, inability to compass an ideal, and reach a perfect standard, became identified in his eyes with a salvation conferred through the imputation of Christ's righteousness. A deeper thirst after holiness led him to a deeper consciousness of human weakness, and the fear that man who could not satisfy himself could not satisfy God, found relief in a vivid realizing of the faith that he had always nominally held, that he had not to work out a salvation for himself but only to accept that which was already wrought out for him by the Saviour of Men. And if Trust in God's love and grace as we know it through the manifestation of the Father in the Son, be but substituted for Trust in Christ's merits, this doctrine of Salvation is essentially true. No man can reach a perfect standard; no man can save himself by a Law of Holiness; nor is there any standard nor any Law so unchanging that it will not rise into new loftiness as a man spiritually ascends. Yet a man who cannot satisfy himself may be satisfying God. God's children can never reach their limit, in this world nor in any world, yet God at each moment may bless their aspiration, and approve their struggle, and mercifully distinguish between failure of strength and disloyalty of Will. To rest on God in love and humility, and aspire upwards even when we feel ourselves sinking, and to feel that without cleaving continually to Him and receiving at every moment His forgiveness and His aid, so far from having power to climb the upper heights of Heaven we could not escape the abyss even of the sins we hate,-this is essentially what Chalmers meant by accepting a Salvation that is wrought for us; and the very same spiritual necessities and conditions which he satisfies by the doctrinal expression of Atonement and imputed Righteousness, we satisfy by the truly filial relations of the Soul to a holy and a loving God, as established and illustrated by Christ. His biographer apparently dates his conversion from this illness. We too would date from it his new birth, his spiritual vitality, an infusion of holy earnestness and reality into all his thoughts, views, and purposes, but we see no sign of any changes of opinion but such as necessarily flowed out of his new hunger and thirst after righteousness. New born from the dead he was: he was now in earnest what before he was only nominally,

constitutionally, or perfunctorily,—without, at least, the entire consecration and devotion of his being. This change in the fervours of his spirit necessarily gave a different complexion and significance to the very same doctrines which before he had conventionally held.

From this time, now in his thirtieth year, his absorbing interest is the cause of religion, and the spiritual benefit of mankind. Shortly after his restoration to his pulpit we have an entry in his Journal in which, as in God's presence, he abandons all other ambitions. Yet it is curious to remark his lingering hold upon such science as he can legitimately bring into the service of his profession.

."Have conceived the idea of abandoning severe mathematics, and expending my strength upon theological studies. Eminence in two departments is scarcely attainable. Let me give my main efforts to religion, and fill up my evenings with miscellaneous literature. The sacrifice is painful, but I must not harass and enfeeble my mind with too much anxiety; and let me leave myself entire for all those discussions which are connected with the defence of Christianity, the exposition of its views, and the maintenance of its interests as affected by the politics or philosophy of the times. The business of our Courts and the dignity of our Establishment will of course afford a most animating subject for the joint exercise of speculation and activity. O my God, prosper me in all my laudable undertakings, and let Thy glory and the good of mankind be the uttermost concern of my heart. Political economy touches upon religious establishments, and a successful or original speculation in this department may throw an éclat over my ecclesiastical labours."

We have an amusing illustration of the change that now took place in his views of ministerial faithfulness and labour. There was an old parishioner, John Bonthron, who took liberties, and spoke plainly, and sorely tried the temper of his sensitive and intellectual pastor by dulness and misunderstanding, and tiresome visitations.

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"I find you aye busy, Sir,' said John, with one thing or another, but come when I may, I never find you at your studies for the Sabbath.' 'Oh, an hour or two on the Saturday evening is quite enough for that,' was the minister's answer. But now the change had come, and John, on entering the manse, often found Mr. Chalmers poring eagerly over the pages of the Bible. The difference was too striking to escape notice, and with the freedom given him, which he was ready enough to use, he said, 'I never come in now,