Letters to Various Correspondents, Nos. 339–388

Edinburgh, SOth May 1844.

MY DEAR AND VENERABLE FRIEND, — I cannot adequately ex press the interest which I feel in the relic of Edwards, which you have had the goodness to bestow upon me. Him I have long esteemed as the greatest of theologians, combining in a degree that is quite unexampled, the profoundly intellectual with the devotedly spiritual and sacred, and realizing in his own person a most rare, yet most beautiful harmony between the simplicity of the Christian pastor, on the one hand, and on the other, all the strength and prowess of a giant in philosophy, so as at once to minister from Sabbath to Sabbath, and with most blessed effect, to the hearers of his plain congregation; and yet, on the high field of authorship to have travelled in a way that none had ever done before him, the most inaccessible places, and achieved such a mastery as had never till his time been realized over the most arduous difficulties of our science.

There is no European divine to whom I make such frequent appeals in my class-room, as I do to Edwards — no book of human composition which I more strenuously recommend, than his “Treatise on the Will,” read by me forty-seven years ago,

inform rne, as to the degree of indulgence and favour with which that great and good man was pleased, in the large benignity of his nature, to regard my humble efforts in the great cause to which his life was devoted, and can truly say that I still cherish his memory with the sincerest love and veneration.

I am much struck with the appeal in behalf of the Holyrood Church, which you enclose for my consideration, and beg leave to annex a cheque for a small sum, as a contribution for its completion. — I have the honour to be, dear Sir, your obliged and faithful, &c. &c. F- JEFFREY.

To the Rev. W. Hanna.

with a conviction that has never since faltered, and which has helped me, more than any other uninspired book, to find my way through all that might otherwise have proved baffling and transcendental and mysterious in the peculiarities of Calvinism.

You will not wonder, then, at my value for the memorial which, through my friend Dr. Cunningham, you have put into my hands. I will place it beside the autograph sermon of Edwards, which I received from his grandson, Mr. D wight, a good many years ago, and which, along with the autograph in my possession of Brainerd and the Missionary Elliot, I cherish as the most precious of my literary treasures.

It is my earnest prayer, venerable father and friend, that yours may be an evening of piety and peace, and that the manifestations of light and love from the upper sanctuary may descend upon your soul; so that while drawing near to death, you may be ripening for eternity.

But whatever your experiences may be, and they are exceedingly various even with the most experienced Christians, may you at all times be enabled from looking inwardly upon your self, to look upwardly and outwardly on the great object of revelation — the Sun of Righteousness — so that, like an eminent countryman of yours, when asked on his death-bed about his frames and feelings, you might be enabled to make the constant and confident reply, — “that there is mercy with God in Christ Jesus.” — I ever am, my dear Sir, yours most cordially and gratefully, THOMAS CHALMERS.

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No. CCCXL. — To THE EEV. DR. MERLE D’AUBIGNE.

Edinburgh, 2±th March 1845.

MY VERY DEAR SIR, — Excuse my employing an amanuensis, which is better for you, as I have a very illegible handwriting, which, in conjunction with my English, might make it all the more difficult for your perusal.

I very much rejoice in having heard from you. I have been meditating a letter to you for months, to intimate the eager expectancy of the Christian public here for your fourth volume, and also to communicate with you on the all-important subject of Christian union. But I do hope we shall have the pleasure of meeting with you in Edinburgh, when we can talk at large over both these subjects.

Before addressing myself to your special inquiries, let me first state the high sense I have of the Christian and theological importance of your work on the Reformation. It is not of its interest as an historical record that I alone speak; but, over and above this, I have read no didactic or even devotional human work more fitted to impress upon the reader the precious doctrine of justification by faith, or endear to him what was so dear to the mind of Luther — the sentiment of “The Lord our righteousness,”

I rejoice in the commencement of our correspondence. May the Giver of all grace pour on you and yours His best blessings; and let me entreat you to believe me, my very dear Sir, yours with the utmost esteem and regard, THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. CCCXLI. — To THE KEV. DR. MERLE D’AUBIGNE.

Morninyside, 3d June 1845.

MY VERY DEAR SIR, — You asked me to point out the most interesting objects for a small western excursion from Glasgow. It delights me to hear that our Moderator, who is far better acquainted with the localities of that region than myself, is willing personally to undertake your guidance through Argyleshire, and to one or two of our most interesting islands. I should have liked that, as an ecclesiastical historian, you could have seen St. Andrews, the ancient ecclesiastical metropolis of Scotland, and seat of our Scottish Reformation, and I do hope that you will make out lona, the place of the great St. Columbus, and noted as a religious asylum from very ancient times.

It would have gladdened my heart could I have accompanied you: but I confess myself to be fairly worn out; and, after my exertion in Glasgow on Sunday, will stand urgently in need of repose.

I need not say how much both yourself and Madame d’Aubigne have grown upon the affections of us all. My own family, in particular, have the utmost desire for intercourse with you both, and should indeed rejoice in it as a great privilege could we obtain a quiet day or two of your and her society in the charming retreat of Fairley, in Ayrshire. The lady whose house we occupy there (Miss M’Call) desires us to invite you; and my four daughters, whom you have not seen, and who are there before us, have been put into a state of greatest expectancy; and I feel assured that matters could be so arranged as to fall in with your other movements, and secure you needful rest, as well as expedite your journey.

There is nothing I would more prize than leisurely and uninterrupted converse with you for as long a time as you can possibly spare. — I ever am, my dearest Sir, yours with the utmost esteem and regard, THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. CCCXLIL — To THE EEV. DR. MERLE D’AUBIGNE.

Edinburgh, 7th February 1846.

MY VERY DEAR SIR, — I should have replied to yours of the 19th of January sooner; but I cannot regret the delay, for only a few minutes ago has your new volume been put into my hands, and I have just read its noble preface, so wrell fitted to silence and to shame all adversaries. My family are now devouring it, and I expect myself to achieve its perusal in a fewdays. I have already seen some of the proof-sheets, and was much pleased with the spirited and impressive style of the translation.

Many thanks to you, my dear Sir, for your deeply affecting details on the subject of your mother’s death. They forcibly

REV. DR. MERLE n’AUBIGNE. 447

reminded me of my own mother’s death, which took place in February 1827. She died in the triumphs of the faith.

I observe that the Yaudois Free Church is not without its perplexities, especially on the subject of a Confession. We may get involved in difficulties, too, on the question of the Evangelical Alliance, about which some of our Presbytery are beginning to make a stir. It will not be the knowledge that puffeth up, but the charity which edifieth, that will practically resolve this question.

I beg my best regards to Madame d’Aubigne’, in which all our family most cordially join. May I beg that you will also offer my friendly and respectful acknowledgments to Monsieur Gaussen. I read with great interest the opening of your winter session. — I ever am, my dear Sir, yours with great esteem and affection, THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. CCCXLIII. — To THE EEV. DR. MERLE D’AUEIGNE.

Edinburgh, )4th February 1840.

MY DEAR SIR, — I have now finished the reading of your fourth volume, and cannot sufficiently express my interest and admiration. In point of narrative, I believe that the latter half of it will prove the more attractive to the general public. The Swiss Reformation was very much unknown in its details to the people of this country, and I never was more rivetted in my life to any book than when engaged in the perusal of it.

But, while the latter half of your volume is full of interest on the subject of the Church’s spiritual independence, and the danger of mixing up the secular with the spiritual, I should hold that the former half of your volume will be still more prized by theologians. The Confession of Augsburg, and the conference between Luther and Zwingle at Marburg, arc truly splendid and memorable passages. Go on and prosper, my dear Sir, and be assured that your present volume, with the anticipations which it holds out as to the subject of the one that comes next, will raise very high the interest and the expectancy of the British public.

My very best regards to Madame d’Aubigne, in which, as well as in regards to yourself, one and all of my family most heartily join. — I ever am, my dear Sir, yours with the utmost regard, THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. CCCXLIV. — To Miss BREWSTER.

Anstruther, IQtJi May 1845.

MY DEAR Miss BREWSTER, — I cannot take leave of this place, which I quit in an hour or two, without conveying to you the expression of my very sincere regret in not having had the good fortune to meet with you on Saturday. The disappointment was all the more cruel that you left only a few minutes after our arrival, when we found that you had got quite beyond our reach.

I cannot express in an adequate manner the interest I felt in my conversation with Sir David on Thursday. I know well how alive you are to the moral glories that irradiate a church or a nation; and I do hope that you are not insensible to the glories even of the material heavens which now beam upon us in larger and brighter revelation than ever; and in proportion to which I think our conceptions should rise of that spiritual economy under which we sit, both being under the control and comprehensive government of Him who sits aloft from view., and gives birth, and movement, and countenance to all things.

It is my fondest hope and prayer that both of us shall have an interest and a part in the yet undeveloped blessedness of that high and holy administration.

With kindest regards to Sir David and Lady Brewster, ever believe me, my dear Madam, yours affectionately and truly, ISTo. CCCXLV. — To Miss BREWSTER.

19, York Place, 2Sth May 1845.

MY DEAR Miss BREWSTEK, — I can imagine nothing more monstrous than the stupidity into which I fear I must have fallen, if it was really you who sat near the moderator’s chair this evening, and on whom I speculated in my own mind for hours as one whom I ought to have known. It is far the most mortifying instance, though very many such have occurred, of my utter want of the organ of individuality; but I never could have fancied it possible that it ever could have happened in the’ case of one, in whom (forgive me for saying it) I feel so much interest.

It would comfort me effectually if you would have the goodness to let me know where and when it is that I may have the pleasure of waiting upon you. — Ever believe me, my very dear Madam, yours most affectionately and truly, No. CCCXLVL — To MRS. WILLIAMSON.

Edinburgh, 21st May 1845.

MY DEAR MRS. WILLIAMSON, — I must not suffer myself to plunge into other scenes and occupations without making the grateful acknowledgment of all your kindness to me during the happy days I spent under your hospitable roof. Mr. Mackenzie most cordially joins me in this feeling; and we both agree in this, that we never spent a week where, both within doors and without, there was so much to regale and to gratify, and that without so much as one taint or particle of alloy from the beginning to the end of it. I cannot adequately express the enjoyment I felt both in the revival of the images and recollections of other days, and in the unexcepted cordiality and good-will of my fellow-citizens.

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I have had particular satisfaction in Mr. Ferrie. I think that all his appearances, both in public and private, were in the highest degree creditable; and I no longer wonder at the general good liking felt for him by the families of Anster. We have been reading his account of our Fife excursion, and there is a great deal of good feeling in it, as well as lively description. Will you tell him how much we were all amused at the reference which he made to the palmy days of my boyhood? He has misnamed, however, my old friend Lizzy Geens. I had forgot that she was adverted to by Mr. Tennant.

I trust that we may see Dr. Williamson on our side of the water before he leaves Burntisland; and it is my earnest hope and prayer that he may be long spared to you. May the Giver of all grace pour the richest spiritual blessings on you and yours. I was much delighted with the manifest improvement that has taken place in the spirits of the people, and in the relish felt by so many of them for sacred things. May there be a descent of living water from above on all the households of the town and neighbourhood. — Ever believe me, my dear Madam, yours most affectionately, THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. CCCXLVIL — To Miss MARSHALL, GLASGOW.

Fairleij, llth June 1845.

MY DEAR Miss MARSHALL, — It is a precious effect of a few days’ domestication in a house that it draws so much closer one’s intimacy with all its inmates; and I have a* very great value for the revival that has thus taken place of our old acquaintanceship with your household, as well as the formation of a new acquaintanceship with the younger members of the family. Every additional opportunity I have of observing Mr. Buchanan and his doings, enhances all the more the esteem I have ever felt for his Christian worth and patriotism.

Should you see Miss Watson, will you have the goodness to let her know that I am quite ashamed of having had so imperfect a recollection of her so long as we were together in your house? But Mrs. Chalmers has refreshed my decaying memory; and I can now recognise her as the daughter of that kind, cordial, and most respectable old lady, who, though a Dissenter, looked most benignantly on the good Churchmen who differed from her. But what is still more interesting to me, she is the sister of George Watson, whom I visited on his death-bed, and whose case I have often quoted as one of the most delightful I had ever witnessed, of one who, on the stepping-stone of a simple faith, attained to a clear and confident sense of a reconciled God, and the assured prospect, through Christ, of a blessed immortality.

With best regards to Mr. and Miss Buchanan and your two nephews, ever believe me, my dear Madam, yours very affectionately and truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. CCCXLVIIL — To CHARLES SPENCE, ESQ.

Morningside, 2(jth January 184&.

MY DEAR SIR, — Though I am not able to attend your public meeting on the 30th, you know that I feel no want of interest in its object. The truth is, that I look on the Christianization, I will not say of the poor only, but of the general population, as the highest cause of our day — the enterprise which, with the aid and countenance of Divine grace from above, will be prolific of the greatest blessings to the greatest number of our fellow-men.

I do hope that your labours will have the effect of laying more open to the public observation, the fearful destitution which prevails of all adequate means and adequate methods for the religious instruction, and so for the social, the moral, and the spiritual wellbeing of countless thousands, I should even say of the great mass of our city families. May the minds of men be made more alive to the urgent necessity of some thing being done far more effectual than has ever yet been attempted, at least on a large scale, or than has yet been scarcely thought of. And be assured that I shall rejoice in it as of one of the best results attendant on your present effort, should it have the effect of uniting in one common work of Christian charity the wise and the good of all denominations.

I have particularly to thank you for your kind expressions and good wishes in reference to my own more limited doings in the West Port. You know my partialities for the local system, and have been made aware of my belief that, for a thoroughly pervading operation, the whole territory should be broken up into districts, each small enough to be undertaken by a distinct and separate agency of its own — a system of operation this which I think should be encouraged to the uttermost. I am therefore glad to find, that in the operations of the City Mission this principle has been so far proceeded on, and should rejoice if, by the extension of your resources, you were enabled to carry it forward, even till you have reached the desirable consummation. Meanwhile, if, by the assumption of successive districts on the part of myself and others, your present field shall be so encroached upon as to leave a continually decreasing remainder in your hands, I am sure you will find that the diminution of extent will be amply repaired by the comfort and the efficacy of a more intense concentration. It is thus that the local and the general might be made to work most beautifully into each other’s hands: and there is nothing which I more desiderate than a combination of that union and authority which are secured by the latter, with the activity and busy interest, and thorough operation that can only be secured by means of the former.

While I have thankfully to express my acknowledgment for the friendly countenance and repeated civilities of the City

Mission from the very commencement on the West Port, allow me again to thank you for your present friendly allusion to it. — I ever am, my dear Sir, yours with great regard,

THOMAS CHALMEHS.

No. CCCXLIX. — To CHARLES SPENCE, ESQ.

Morningside, 26th January 1846.

MY DEAR SIR, — My letter to you was prepared before I re ceived your note requesting that I should address it to the Lord Provost. On this and on other grounds I greatly prefer addressing it to yourself. Of course the whole of it will be read, as I wish my testimony in favour of the Local System to be made as distinct and as public as my testimony in favour of the City Mission. It is well to have begun with the one, but I hope it will end with the other, — yours being the way in which you have nobly taken the lead, and ours being the ultimate landing-place. — I am, my dear Sir, yours very truly, No. CCCL. — To CHARLES SPENCE, ESQ.

Morningside, 28th February 1846.

MY DEAR SIR, — My experience hitherto of general bodies of superintendence makes me afraid of them, lest, in the first instance, they should be satisfied with a superficial instead of a thorough operation, which, I believe, can only be eifectcd by distinct district agencies; and lest, in the second instance, they should, by a system of rules and forms, with the view of harmonizing all, lay an incubus upon each. I could not join in such a combination but on the principle, that the poorest of the poor should be as much looked after, and be as fully provided with the means of Gospel instruction as the middle and upper classes in society. And therefore I hold, that a system which would stop short and be satisfied with any provision beneath schools for all and churches for all, is but an apology for the thing, and not the thing itself.

At the same time, I am not insensible to the good of some sort of general surveillance, if it did not too much interfere with the independence and sovereignty that each district management should have over its own processes. For example, would they attempt only to aid and encourage, without aught like jurisdiction or control, I should think that great good might be effected by such an overseership as this. Suppose they were to collect a general fund for the purpose of aiding and supplementing the local funds raised in behalf of those districts whose management and whose objects they approved of, this would stimulate and extend the system of local cultivation without any of those hamperments and complications which I have hitherto so abundantly experienced as the fruit of my connexion with general directorships. Were such a system adopted, I think we should all hand in the reports of our proceedings and progress to you, and if we needed money, should apply to you, which of course you would only give if you approved of our doings. I can imagine too, that in course of time we might thus feel our way to a greater harmony of action than we ought to attempt laying down at the outset by authoritative rules.

Be assured that I am utterly misunderstood, if these views are conceived to have in them the least of sectarianism. It is with me a pure question of what may be called spiritual tactics, or the most effectual method of pervading our plebeian families with the lessons and influences of the Gospel. So little of a sectarian am I, that I look on the distinction between Presbyterianism and Independency, or even between your Adult and our Pa3do-baptism, as a downright bagatelle when compared with the moral and Christian good of the population. My experimental feeling is, that it is impossible to act with any degree of comfort or efficacy when overborne by the restraints of a cumbrous and unwieldy committeeship. You mistake me if you think I do not want some such general supervision as I have now described, I fear, very imperfectly. I should rejoice if, under its canopy, but without being subject to its control, all the evangelical denominations of Edinburgh could be brought out to this great and good work. I believe that no thing would tend more rapidly and surely to the formation of a real union amongst us, than our being thus engaged in similar works; yet meeting together upon the occasion of your general meetings, and there provoking each other to love and to all that is good. — I am, my dear Sir, yours very truly, No. CCCLI. — LETTER TO M. DESCOMBAZ, LAUSANNE.

Edinburgh, 2St7i February 1846.

MY DEAR SIR, — I can assure you it is from no want of sympathy in your great cause that I have not written sooner, but from extreme occupation, — and occupation, let me add, greatly beyond my strength and time satisfactorily to overtake. Though I should not write much, then, or should not write often, I beg you will put the right interpretation upon it, and ascribe it to anything rather than an indifference either to the magnitude of your wrongs or the nobleness of those pure and high principles by which you are actuated. The same reasons which have compelled me to retire from the public business of our own Church, have also made it necessary for me greatly to limit the work of correspondence. Everything, in fact, which involves in it additional effort, or the withdrawment of my mind from more immediate duties and cares, I must now devolve on abler and younger men.

But while I have thus to state, and I do it with extreme regret and reluctance, the utter impossibility of complying with your wishes for a regular or frequent correspondence, I can not, even within the limits of this necessarily brief communication, refrain from adverting to the difficult, as well as high and honourable distinction of the position in which you now stand; and it is my earnest prayer, that by grace and guidance from above, you might be enabled to maintain it. It were well if all Christians but knew how to combine the utmost dependence on God with the utmost diligence in the busy use and employment of means, and so as to reconcile the wisdom of piety with the wisdom of experience. Otherwise, under the guise of trusting in God there might be a tempting of God; and therefore let me urge with all earnestness upon your consideration the necessity of speedily adopting such methods as might best conduce, with the Divine blessing, to the stability and extension of your Free Church. You may have heard the saying of our missionary Elliot, who laboured for years, and with such marvellous success, among the American Indians: He did not trust to prayer without performance, neither did he trust to performance without prayer — he was super-eminent in both; and as the fruit of the experience of a whole life time, he left behind him the memorable lesson — that it was in the power of prayer and of pains, through faith in Christ Jesus, to do anything. What I should regard then as the first and firmest guarantee for the prosperity and strength of your Free Church, were the growth and effusion of serious, spiritual religion and vital godliness among your ministers and congregations. This is the object which, of all others, is mightily to be laboured and mightily to be prayed for. No organization, how ever skilfully devised, will supply the want of this. The best of all machinery requires to be worked; for the attainment of its end, to be rightly and well worked. Behold then the limits of human ingenuity and power. “VYe can set up the framework and mechanism of a church, but we are wholly dependent on the Spirit of God for the men, and should therefore pray with out ceasing to the Lord of the harvest, that He might send forth unto His harvest labourers, according to His own heart, who might feed his people with knowledge and spiritual understanding. But both are best. We must not neglect the rearing of a right terrestrial apparatus below; because without a celestial influence from above, it were the mere barren architecture of a church with none of that living spirit which should actuate, and which can alone give efficacy to all its services. It is most true that, except the Lord build the house they labour in vain that build it; but this should not discharge the builders from their work — a work to which they should put forth their hands with all diligence while looking for the indispensable grace from on high, without which all the wisdom of man is but foolishness, and all the work of man is but as labour in the fire, and for very nought.

March *Zth. — I had got thus far when I was obliged to suspend this whole communication for a whole week by the pressure of other business, and that pressure still continues; nor have I any hope of being relieved from it for an indefinite time. I am unwilling, however, to delay any longer the answering of your letter, and can only now assure you of my readiness to obtain all the information which our experience might enable us to collect, and which might be of use for the support or extension of your Free Church. In particular, let any advice or opinion be required of us on the subject of church economics, let your wish be specifically stated, and I think I might help you to a specific answer in regard to it.

My earnest prayer is for the maintenance and spread of vital godliness amongst you — a spirituality unalloyed by any political or worldly ingredient — a real desire for the moral and Christian good of the people under your charge; so that your

2 Q interesting section of the great vineyard might, with the descent of the indispensable grace from on high, become like a well-watered garden, abounding with the fair and pleasant fruits of righteousness. — I ever am, my very dear sir, yours with the greatest esteem and regard, THOMAS CHALMERS

[23, Bain’s Place, Renfrew Street, Glasgow, llth May 1846. — REVEREND AND DEAR SIR, — I would take the liberty of shortly expressing to you my desire that you would use your influence in the ensuing General Assembly for the foundation of a Free Church College in this city, which, I think, is immediately called for, in order to the advancement of the Free Church of Scotland in the west of Scotland. — I am more and more convinced that the magistrate should be a keeper of loth tables of the law, and is bound to endow and protect the Church of Christ. May the Lord hasten this in his time. With God nothing shall be impossible. — I am, yours with much esteem, JOHN CRAIG.

The Rev. Thomas Chalmers, Edinburgh.]

No. CCCLIL — To MR. JOHN CRAIG.

Burntisland, Wth May 1846.

DEAR SIR, — Accept of my grateful regards for your expressions of kindness to myself. I am very glad to observe what your opinion is in regard to the duty of the magistrate, to endow and protect the Church of Christ.

I have all along said, that once our Church were sufficiently extended by means of adequate funds, that I saw no reason why we should not have as many collegiate institutions as ever the Establishment had. — I am, dear Sir, yours truly, [The following letter was in an answer to a very interesting communication from Mr. Barclay, in which he proposed that, instead of annual payments into the Sustentation Fund, an endowment of £100 per annum should at once be secured for every Minister of the Free Church. Tables and calculations were offered for Dr. Chalmers’s consideration, from which it appeared, that if all the members of the Free Church were to give a tithe of their income for a single year, a capital sum would be realized sufficient to yield such an endowment.]

No. CCCLIIL — To J. BARCLAY, ESQ., TONGUE.

Edinburgh, Qth June 1846.

DEAR SIR, — I received your valuable packet from Mr. Mackenzie of Farr. I appreciate very highly the zeal, intelligence, and labour in behalf of the Free Church, of which these documents give such abundant evidence. I shall lodge them with the Convener of our Sustentation Committee, to be kept by him in retentis till it shall be judged expedient to act upon them. Meanwhile, our great effort is to bring up the Associations; and we are fearful of every new subscription for a new object, lest it should distract the attention of the Free Church public from the necessary means for upholding and augmenting the Sustentation Fund. After the habit of supporting it is sufficiently established and elevated, then, I think, will be the time for giving effect to your magnificent proposal. I have no doubt of the capabilities of our people. They are equal to a tenfold greater achievement than all that has yet been done by them.

Allow me to say, that I doubt the expediency of ministers being employed in the work of estimating the resources of their people.

I have again to thank you for your noble suggestions, which I trust you in good time will find are not to be thrown away upon us. — I ever am, my dear Sir, yours truly, No. CCCLIV.

Edinburgh, 17th September 1846.

SIR, — I received both your letters. The first I laid aside, because of my great aversion to any direct application for my autograph; and in virtue of which it is my general practice to leave all such requests unanswered.

Your second letter of May 6th, I placed among the letters to which I might reply; because I felt a wish at the time to let you know the grounds of my antipathy to a practice which I think is not in accordance with good taste.

I find, however, that I have not time for the full statement of these grounds; and shall only say in the general, that I feel as if, on the one side, the making of such a request implies a certain degree of indelicacy; and on the other side, that in the granting of it there must be a certain sense of awkwardness, as the very act involves at least the semblance of vanity.

And yet the desire of having autographs is legitimate and natural; but the right way to go about the formation of a collection is to seek, and not from the person himself, but from any of his correspondents, such letters or fragments of his handwriting as can anywhere be found. I should imagine that to every man who feels as he ought, a naked request for his autograph must be extremely distasteful. In sending you this autograph, it is a relief that I should have something to write about; and all the more so, that along with the autograph you have my testimony against the method in which they are some times sought after both by individuals and by such public bodies as you represent. — With best wishes for the prosperity of your museum, I have the honour to be, Sir, yours truly, {Bombay, 25th June 1850. — DEAR DR. HANNA, — I have just finished the perusal of the first volume of the “Memoirs of Dr. Chalmers,” which, like his “Posthumous Works,” not only maintains, but elevates the high position which his name and character occupy in the admiration and veneration of Christendom. It has suggested the propriety of sending to you a copy of a very touching and affectionate letter addressed by him to my young friend

Dhanjibhai on his leaving Scotland on his return to India, and also of a copy of an introductory note to M. F. Monod, which he had intended him to deliver had he taken Paris on his way. Dr. Chalmers took a very special interest in the wellbeing of Dhanjibhai from the time of their first interview, and he was greatly attached to him. At the conclusion of the session of 1843-4, he addressed to me a note of the following tenor: — “My dear Sir, I must do myself the pleasure of informing you that I have been greatly pleased with the interesting pupil whom you have brought to me from the far East. His appearances in his examinations and exercises have been of a first-rate character throughout the session.” I felt much his kindness to me in voluntarily tendering to me this testimonial which he knew would be very gratifying to my heart.

With much sympathy with all the family of Dr. Chalmers from Dhanjibhai and myself, I am, my dear Dr. Hanna, yours very truly,

JOHN WILSON.]

No. CCCLV. — To KEV. DHANJIBHAI NOWROJI.

Morningside, 14tk December 1846.

MY DEAR SIR, — The three enclosed letters are to friends in Paris, which you may deliver or not, just as you find convenient. If you have not the opportunity of these being useful to you in Paris, I beg that you will keep and open them, and an occasion may cast up when you might shew these as the testimonials of my friendship and esteem for you. I wish I could recollect any of my acquaintances in Bombay to whom I might write aught that could be of service; but you will, at all events, oifer my best regards to Mr. Nesbit and Mr. Ilislop when you meet with them.

And now, my very dear Sir, let me commend you to the providence and grace of our common Father in heaven. May He be your guide and guardian amid all the perils and perplexities of your great enterprise. He has promised that He will not suffer His faithful servants to be tried beyond what they are able to bear, but will provide a way of escape that they might be able to bear it. May the aids of His Spirit never be wanting to comfort, and strengthen, and sustain you, and richly may you experience the truth of our blessed Saviour’s declaration, that though in the world you shall have tribulation, in Him you shall have peace; and may you abundantly prosper in that work and labour of love upon which you have entered. May you have many souls for your hire, and the precious foretastes of that bright and happy period when the Sun of Righteousness shall arise over the face of a regenerated world. It is my earnest prayer for you, that after a life of great Christian usefulness here you may be admitted to the city that hath foundations, and obtain a crown of glory that fadeth not away. Let me entreat a part and interest in your prayers; I have great need of them, and beg that you will remember me in your intercessions at the Throne of Grace. “The Lord bless thee and keep thee: the Lord make His face shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee: the Lord lift up His countenance upon thee and give thee peace.”

With the heartfelt regards and wishes both of myself and family, ever believe me, my very dear Sir, yours most tenderly and truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. CCCLVL — To Miss MACKEAN.

Edinburgh, 2d January 1847.

MY VERY DEAR Miss MACKEAN, — I return you my most cordial thanks for your donation in behalf of the West Port.

I have great reason to bless God for the liberality which He has put into the hearts of His people in behalf of that great object, of which I am most thankful to say that hitherto it has prospered and is promising.

I had received copies of Dr. Edgar’s tract, which expresses what I have long thought the only hopeful method of dealing with Ireland. What an incubus is their Popery on the territorial system and everything that is good!

But what fearfully harrowing accounts there are of want and extreme agony in that unhappy land to be yet aggravated tenfold ere the seasons come round again, and not even then, unless the Lord of the seasons shall open His liberal and ever giving hand. — Ever believe me, my dear Madam, yours most gratefully and truly, THOMAS CHALMERS

No. CCCLVII. — To REV. ALEXANDER ANDERSON, ABERDEEN.

Edinburgh, 20th March 1847.

MY DEAR SIR, — I shall be at all times happy to see you on the subject of your proposed gymnasium. But do come to breakfast, for it is only then that I can answer for being disengaged. Do persevere in your good work. The greatest amount of philanthropic service is secured by leaving each man to ride his own hobby. Your object is one of vital magnitude; and I would much rather that you concentrated your whole energies upon it than that you should become a man of all works — the tendency to which I look upon as a very great failing. There is little good done by your mere universalists. Do therefore persevere, and may God prosper you. — I ever am, my dear Sir, yours very truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.

Claydon House, Bucks, 28th April 1847. — MY DEAR SIR, — Am I taking too great a liberty with you, and presuming too much on my former acquaintance with you, if I request some information as to your views on the Government Education Scheme 1

I have read with much interest the speeches of Dr. Candlish and Mr. Begg in the Free Presbytery of Edinburgh, on the 7th inst., as reported in the “Scottish Guardian” of the 13th, and especially your letter of the 3d, read at that meeting.

In paragraph No. 1, you say, — “I believe that there are modifications upon their scheme which might be made, and which would give no other character to the movement on the part of the State, than a desire for the elevation of the people in general intelligence and scholarship; an object which we should no more resist,” &c. &c.

Am I trespassing too much on you, if I ask you to tell me what those modifications are ‘? I desire to know whether any suggestions could be made to the Government which, if adopted, would render their plan unobjectionable in your opinion. — I am, my dear Sir, yours very faithfully and trul7> HARKY VERNEY.

To Rev. Dr. Chalmers.]

No. CCCLVIIL-To SIR HARRY VERNEY.

Edinburgh, 4tlt May 1847.

MY DEAR SIR HARRY, — I have read your letter with the greatest interest, and regret that, on the eve of setting out upon a distant journey, I cannot reply to it at any length. The modifications that I should like, would be that the Government were to drop the requisition of any certificate from the managers of the school, that they were satisfied with the religious progress of the scholars; and I should further like that there was no power granted either to the Church of England, or to any other denomination, to force their peculiar Catechism upon scholars against the will of their parents, and still less to force attendance against that will on their own places of worship. — I am. my dear Sir Harry, with the greatest esteem, THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. CCCLIX. ON VISITING A FAMILY IN WHICH A SUDDEN DEATH HAD OCCURRED.

MY DEAR SIR, — I am so particularly taken up by previous arrangements to-day, and, I fear, also to-morrow, that I shall not be able to see you again so soon personally as I could wish. But the scene of last night makes me very desirous of communicating with you some way or other. I was very thankful you invited me to witness it, for it was a truly impressive one, and eminently fitted to stir up in the heart of every beholder a salutary feeling of the vain and transient character of our present pilgrimage; and I trust I felt that it is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting, for that is indeed the end of all men, and that the living may lay it to heart. In a disaster so big, and at the siime time so sudden and unlocked for as that which has come upon yourself and family, it is impossible to minister any effectual consolation without you go to the root of the matter — everything short of that argument which embraces the great elements of religion, and eternity, and the soul, and its meetness for the enjoyment of God in Heaven, is but superficial and vain. The healing influence of time will bring round the mind of an afflicted man even without Christianity to its wonted tone; but how desirable that our comfort should be secured on a better foundation, that it should come to a place in the heart not by the mere wearing away of sorrow, but by the firm suggestions of an understanding exercising itself on the realities of faith, and fetching from the Divine Word such considerations as will bring peace and the peaceable fruits of righteousness along with them. You feel now what you never felt so nearly and so experimentally before, that the world ought never to be counted a place of rest. It is indeed a great delusion ever to feel otherwise; but still it is a delusion which is always hanging about us, and that attaches to the fallen and estranged state of our natures from God. At this moment the delusion is in your case for a time broken up. I prophesy that it will again return if there be no visitation of grace from on high — no anointing which remaineth — no favourable and abiding demonstration of the Spirit of God to advance your present feeling into a practical habit and principle of the soul. You are at this moment made most intimately and effectually to understand, that to lean upon the world is to lean upon a foundation of dust; that to build your tabernacle here, is to build your house upon the sand; and that nothing will fill and satisfy the soul and enable it to stand all the changes and vicissitudes of this eventful pilgrimage, but a renouncing of the world as our home, and taking the inheritance that endureth for ever as our portion. I know nothing that more effectually hinders a man from venturing his all on Christ than that divided state of affections in either of which he would like to reserve a portion to himself. “You will not come unto me that you may have life.” You never, my dear Sir, were in more favourable circumstances for an unqualified resignation of all into His hands than at this moment; to whom else, alas, can you go? you never got so buried to the world as now when the dearest of all its objects has been torn away from you — when the desire of your heart has been cut down by a stroke — when your family are all in sad grief, desponding under the pressure of a great unlocked for and overwhelming visitation. Do improve the favourable season with all your might to be a new creature in Christ Jesus; let all old things be done away, and all things become new; the very retirement will animate and bear you up under the heaviness of your present circumstances, and present calamity will indeed be a blessing in disguise if it lead you to a close alliance with Him who, though a God, is also a Saviour. — I am, &c., THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. CCCLX. — To MRS. M’CORQUODALE.

Glasgow, 6th October 1817.

DEAR MADAM, — I should have replied long ago to your kind letter, but I have of late been a good deal occupied. It gives me sincere pleasure to be informed of your earnest desire after that which is right, and more particularly of your high sense of the necessity of religiously training your young family. I pi-ay that you may be directed by Him who is the Father of Light, and will give wisdom to all who believingly ask it.

There is a very leading and prominent doctrine of the Bible, without the belief of which, and influence of which, I fear that all our longings after excellence will turn out to be vain and impotent aspirations, — I mean the doctrine of salvation by a crucified Saviour. To think of obtaining this favour of God by mere unaccompanied exertion, and that too in the face of God’s own declaration, that without Christ we can do nothing, is in fact to insult Him by a vain and polluted offering.

Let us accept of forgiveness on the footing that is held out to us — even that Christ died for our offences; and let us render obedience in the strength of that Spirit which is ever in readiness to be given to the prayer of believers, and we shall serve God with a holiness, and a love, and a spirituality that do not enter as ingredients at all into the tasteful morality of the world; and the whole course, and motive, and character of our virtue will be so different from what it was before, that all old things will be done away, and all things will be come new.

I beg your indulgence for these observations; they conic from one who is deeply sensible of his shortcomings from what is right. But I trust that through earnest attention to the Bible, and prayer for that Spirit who alone can enlighten us in the discernment of its doctrine, and above all, steadfast confidence in Him who casteth out none who come unto Him, we shall each of us be enabled to maintain that walk of faith and of holiness which leads to the Jerusalem above.

Give my best compliments to Mr. M’Corquodale, in which Mrs. Chalmers joins; and with best wishes for yourself and family, believe me, my dear madam, yours most truly, 4C8 CORRESPONDENCE OF DR. CHALMERS.

No. CCCLXL — To MRS. M’CORQUODALE.

St. Andrews, 17th October 1827.

MY DEAR MADAM, — I very sincerely condole with you on the heavy bereavement which you have been called upon to suffer, the first loss I understand in your family, and which, in the absence yet of all personal experience myself upon the subject, I should regard as far more trying to nature than the dis solution of any other relationship. Affection points more strongly downwards — as from a parent to children — than in any other direction; and when I think of the suddenness of your daughter’s death, her interesting age, and the many cares and attentions which the delicacy of her health has required from you, and which all go to strengthen affection and add to its tenderness — the shock you have experienced must be of no common severity. And what other comfort has one liable to the same visitations to offer, but those considerations which are familiar to all, though practically felt by few, even the evanescence of our present world, and the bliss and brightness of that invisible Heaven, where sorrow and separation are unknown.

We hear on these occasions of melancholy of the healing influence of time, and refuge is often taken in such expedients, as business, variety, and entertainments. These may soothe, but they do not sanctify. They drown the painful recollection; whereas the recollection should be kept alive and made the instrument of weaning our desires and expectations from a scene so transitory. The worldly would stifle the thought — the Christian softens it by pointing his eye upwards to God and forwards to eternity. — I am, yours, &c., 4G9

No. CCCLXIL — To Miss M’CORQUODALE.

Morningside, 21th December 1843.

MY DEAR Miss M’CoRQUODALE, — It is of great consequence to me that I should remain all this week in the country; but I am unwilling that it should pass without converse of some sort with your family.

I am very far from wishing to overtask Mrs. M’Corquodale with too much in quantity. Such is the preciousness of Bible truth, and such its power of application, that a single verse might often suffice for a sustaining and comforting exercise to the mind for hours together; and I think I cannot do better than draw up a brief list of texts for you to read, and for her to dwell upon. — Matthew xi. 28, 29, 30. She might lean the full weight of her dependence on a Saviour who thus calls upon her. — Matthew xxiii. 37. “Who can doubt after this His longing desire after all who have any desire towards Him? — Matthew xxviii. 5. It is not a sentiment of terror, but of confidence and comfort that we should associate with the thought of a Saviour, and with the attempt to seek an interest in His sal vation. — Mark x. 14. Such an exhibition of our Saviour as should lead us to place all reliance on His benignity and grace. — Lukevii. 13. Another most attractive representation of the Saviour, and fitted to assure our hearts of His feeling for the distresses of men. — Luke xi. 10, 11, 12, 13. A mighty encouragement to prayer, and that whether for ourselves or for those near and dear to us. — Luke xv. 20. A most striking demonstration of God’s willingness for our salvation, and of the welcome from Him which awaits all His returning children. — John i. 29; iii. 14, 15, 16, 17. A most inviting call onus to look to the Saviour on the cross; and His errand, which was not to condemn but to save, should dissipate all our fears. — John xi. 25, 26. John xiv. 1, 14. Romans x. 13. 2 Cor.

v. 19, 20, 21. Hebrews iv. 16; vi. 18, 19. James i. 17. 1 John i. 7, 9; iv. 8, 9; 10, 14, 16, 18, 19.

It is my earnest prayer that the heavy trials which now lie upon your family may turn out to be blessings in disguise; and that though for the time not joyous but grievous, they may prove to be those light afflictions which are but for a moment, and which work out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.

With best regards to Mr. and Mrs. M’Corquodale, and to all of your household, I am, my dear Miss M’Corquodale, yours very truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.

P. S. — The fifty-third and fifty-fourth chapters of Isaiah. — T. C.

No. CCCLXIIL — To Miss M’CORQUODALE.

Edinburgh, 19th January 1845.

MY DEAR Miss M’CORQUODALE, — I beg to return my best acknowledgments for your New Year’s letter. It was very acceptable to me.

I am particularly glad that these Scripture texts should be so much prized by you. We are on safe and sure ground when dealing honestly and rightly with those words of which it is said, that Heaven and earth shall pass away ere they can pass away.

It gives me great pleasure to hear of your sister’s restoration to health. May she ever have great peace and joy in believing, and attain to that perfect love which casteth out fear. When the great question between us and God is settled, all is well; and the ills of life may annoy, but they will not sink us to despair.

Let me commend you to that Bible from which I rejoice to observe that you derive so much comfort.

Were I asked in one sentence to describe the likeliest process for becoming wise unto salvation, I should say that it was a prayerful reading of the Bible. Let the Spirit but open our understandings to understand the Scriptures, and then shall we be enabled to draw water out of the wells of salvation, for there, and there alone, have we the words of everlasting life. Give my best regards to both your sisters, and to your brother, whom I have not seen for a long time; as also to your father, now well stricken in years. May He, whose providence has spared him to a good old age, shower down upon him the blessings of His grace, that every hour bringing us all so much nearer to death may find us meeter for that eternity on which we are so soon to enter. — Believe me, my dear Miss M’Corquodale, yours very truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. CCCLXIV. — To Mus. KUTHERFORD OF EDGERSTONE.

Glasgow, 8th November 1822.

MY DEAR MADAM, — I should have acknowledged your great kindness to me long ago, and have given some expression to those feelings wherewith the truly memorable visit* which I paid to Edgcrstone has inspired me. They ought to be the feelings of deepest seriousness; but it is woful to think of our obstinate tendencies to earth and earthliness; and how soon it is that the solemnity awakened by death, even in its most appalling form, goes into utter dissipation.

This melancholy experience of our own heart should teach us our dependence on that grace by which we arc forgiven, and on that Spirit by which we are sanctified.

It demonstrates the utter vanity of trusting to our own righteousness, and ought to humble us down into the attitude of being clothed upon with the righteousness of another.

It is delightful to think, that he on whom the Saviour per- * See Memoirs, vol. i. p. 3G5.

formed a remarkable cure, was not only found clothed but in his right mind. And in like manner there is still an inseparable union between our being covered with the righteousness of Christ, and our being cleansed by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost. Let us not however wait till we are made holy ere we trust in the Saviour; but a better and more encouraging process for the helpless sinner, is first to let us trust in the Saviour, and then shall we be sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, (Eph. i. 12.) What a precious freeness and fulness does this view confer on the Gospel! How near does it bring salvation even to those who are farthest off in alienation from God, who calls upon us even in this stage to have confidence in Himself as God in Christ reconciling the world! This confidence would in fact put a new spiritual feeling into our hearts — it would emancipate them from the servile spirit of bondage — it would draw them freely and affectionately out to God as our reconciled Father. It would implant love where before there was jealousy, hatred, and distrust. And under the impulse of this heaven-born affection, will we go spontaneously forth on the walk of new obedience.

Let us therefore hold fast the faith whence all these blessings flow, not casting away our confidence which hath great recompense of reward. — I have the honour to be, my dear Madam, yours with the greatest esteem and regard, No. CCCLXV. — To MRS. USHER.

Glasgow, Wth November 1822.

MY DEAR MRS. USHER, — I have been desirous of writing you ever since I saw you last at Courthill; and indeed, upon that occasion would have wished to talk to you, and to sympathize with you alone, entering, as I do, into your deep sorrow with all the feeling of a most devoted friend, and anxious, if I could, to contribute anything to lighten the visitation wherewith it hath pleased a good but mysterious Providence to exercise yourself and your dear family.

And the great alleviation in all our calamities is, that God reigncth, and that, if we bow in resignation to Him, He will raise us up again. It is often a good thing to have our hearts rent asunder from the world, even though it should have cost us the pain of a most violent laceration. He who wounds can heal, and be assured that there is no depth of wretchedness from which He cannot lift us up, and set our feet again on a sure place, and establish all our goings, and put a new song into our hearts, even glory to God.

This is a vale of tears, and you have had full experience of it. Look onward to a bright and peaceful termination. In a few years, and we shall all lie mouldering in our graves. But, meanwhile, a pitying Saviour calls upon us to approach Him, and announces to us the power of His sacrifice, and bids us trust in His atoning blood for the forgiveness of all our trespasses, and offers to put a spirit into our hearts whereby they may both be consoled and purified, and invites us to enter through Himself into reconciliation with God, and promises that, if we will abide in Him, He will abide in us, and make all tilings, even the darkest events of our history, work together for our good. This is a way which lies open to us all, and great will be our peace, whenever our feet are established therein; and we shall even count it all joy when we fall into divers tribulations — looking onward to the calm and smiling haven where all sorrow and sin and separation are unknown.

It is indeed my earnest prayer that God would both sweeten and sanctify to you the cup of discipline. There is a great work before us ere we die — to become holy here, that we may be meet for being happy hereafter. Christ will enable us to do this work if we rely upon Him, and it is in the perception

2 R
of its readiness for eternity that the soul finds its best refuge
from the sorrows of time. — Believe me, &c.,
No. CCCLXVI. — To MRS. HENRY WOOD, EDINBURGH.

St. Andrews, 13th September 1826.

MY DEAR MADAM, — I only reached St. Andrews yesterday, and was very much affected by the intimations from Edinburgh, the melancholy subject of which was altogether new to me. Mrs. Chalmers and my family share with me in a sorrow which must well-nigh overwhelm yourself, but which, I earnestly pray, may be soothed and sanctified by the God of all comfort. My daughter Anne was particularly solemnized by the recency of our visit, and her recollections of all the kindness that we had gotten under your roof. The walk from Great King Street to the Register Office is powerfully and touchingly present to both our minds; nor do I remember, in the whole compass of my experience, a more impressive manifestation of God’s mysterious sovereignty, and of man’s duty to be humble, and watchful, and mindful of death.

To yourself this is one of those sudden and awful revulsions by which the heart is agonized, but by which the heart is often made better. When the nearest and dearest of all earthly relationships is dissolved, the soul, thrown loose, as it were, from its wonted dependence, may be led thereby to keep more tenacious hold upon an enduring relationship. How precious that Gospel by which we are invited to enter upon its privileges, and to come under its full protection. God in Christ offers himself to all in the capacity of a friend who sticketh closer than a brother: He is a husband to the widow, and a father to the fatherless who put their trust in Him. An earthly prop has fallen. Lean the whole weight of your dependence upon God. Put full confidence both in His wisdom and in

His mercy. Be thankful for all the recollections that you have of that evident interest which your husband felt in the truths of the Gospel, and let us be followers of them who through faith and patience are now inheriting the promises.

We deeply sympathize with your afflicted family, and sincerely hope that the health neither of them nor of yourself will permanently suffer by the shock which you have sustained. The same God who hath inflicted the wound can also heal it, and fill up the desolate void of this sore and sudden bereavement by a livelier faith than ever in the hopes and promises of the Gospel. We beg our most affectionate condolence to all the members of your afflicted household; and with earnest prayers for your own comfort and sanctification under this heavy calamity, I entreat you to believe me, my dear Madam, yours very affectionately, THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. CCCLXVIL — To WILLIAM BUCHANAN. ESQ., GLASGOW.

St. Andrews, llth April 1828.

MY VERY DEAR SIR, — I received our friend Mr. Brown’s letter with its most affecting intimation, by which both Mrs. Chalmers and I have been moved in no ordinary degree. The desire of your heart has indeed been cut down by a stroke, and the dreary and desolate void created there will continue an uneasiness almost insupportable till replaced by the love, and the light, and the positive consolations of the gospel.

And this, my dear Sir, is one great use of affliction — one great instrument in the hand of a loving and just Father by which to reclaim our wandering affections to Himself. The heart must have an object; and often does our wise Master in Heaven tear away the earthly object of affection that He may fill up the vacancy by Himself. It is thus that I understand John xv. 2; and it is thus that the chastening hand of God, though not joyous but grievous for the time, yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness to him who is exercised thereby.

And what rich consolation you have in the manner of the death; what gratitude you owe for the testimony that she has left behind her; what a sweet blending even of the affections of nature with the hopes of religion in the precious thought that she is now among the saints in Heaven, and that a reunion with her will be one ingredient of that blessedness which awaits you when you shall enter into rest.

I feel greatly for poor Miss Marshall — offer to her our respectful sympathies; and I do entreat, that under this heavy visitation you will know that “God is the Lord, and be still.”

I beg further to be remembered to your mother, Miss
Taylor, Mr. and Mrs. Allan Buchanan, and Mr. and Mrs.
Walkinshaw. — I am, my dear Sir, yours most truly,
No. CCCLXVIIL — To WILLIAM BUCHANAN, ESQ.

Edinburgh, Zlst January 1847.

MY VERY DEAR SIR, — We all hear received with the deepest sympathy and feeling the very melancholy intelligence of your son’s death — one of so much promise cut off so young, and to me so unexpectedly, for I had hoped that he was in the fair way of regaining confirmed health. We enter into all your grief on this truly affecting occasion; and while both Mrs. Chalmers and I are fully aware how painfully this bereavement must be felt by every one of the sorrowing relations in your household, we particularly advert to Miss Marshall as among the chief mourners and sufferers under the visitation which the mysterious yet merciful and all-wise God hath seen meet to lay upon you. We beg that you will offer our most affectionate condolences both to her and to all your family, and the assurance of’ our prayers that an event so fitted to strike and to solemnize might be sanctified to one and all of you. The chastisements of our Father in Heaven arc not for the time joyous but grievous; yet do they yield the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who are rightly exercised thereby.

Oh, that these numerous instances of mortality would at length practically and influentially tell upon us. Strange that the lesson which is the oftenest repeated should be also the oftenest forgotten, so that we nped to be ever and anon reminded that we live in the land of dying men. May the sorrow of nature be ripened and transmuted by Divine grace into the sorrow which worketh repentance unto salvation. We have only to look back on the last thirty years of our acquaintance to be impressed by the changes of a world that will soon pass away from all of us. 0 that we sat more loose to the cares and interests of time, so as to have our affections weaned from the things which are beneath, and wedded to the things which are above. There death and separation are unknown; and it might well mitigate our sorrows when we reflect in faith on that place of unfading bliss where friends shall meet to part no more, and be for ever happy with the Lord.

It is my earnest prayer that God would take unto Himself His own power and reign over our hearts; for nothing in nature, though operating with its utmost force on nature’s affection and nature’s sensibilities, will of itself arouse us from the incumbent carnality and earthliness that weigh so heavily upon our hearts. May this regenerating influence be brought to bear with effect upon us all; and then shall we be translated from the walk of sight to the walk of faith, and not only look for ward to, but live by the power of a world to come.

With all our united regards to yourself, Miss Marshall, Miss Buchanan, and the rest of your family, ever believe me, my dear Sir, yours most truly, and with great regard, 478 CORRESPONDENCE OF DR. CHALMEilS.

P.S. — I have not yet written poor Mrs. Brown. I have many intimations lying by me unanswered. This month I shall have written twenty such replies. May we be wise and understand these things, and consider our latter end. — T. C.

No. CCCLXIX. — To MRS. CAMPBELL.

St. Andrews, 3d /September 1828.

My DEAR MADAM, — I received the account of your venerable husband’s* death with great emotion. He has left few equals behind him in the Church of Scotland, and I shall ever cherish a pleasing remembrance of all the fatherly aid and kindness which I received from his hands.

As a theologian, he was distinguished by the extent of his learning and the depth of his views. I cannot forget a conversation I held with him in a stage coach from Glasgow to Edinburgh, and the admirable judgment which he evinced on some of the most arduous speculations which are ever attempted by the human understanding.

But your brightest comfort now must be in your recollection of his piety. May the God of all consolation bear up you and yours under the weight of this afflictive visitation, and may we all feel how salutary it is to be made to drink of the cup of His discipline, and to be the objects of His chastening love.

I beg my kindest regards and the expression of my sympathy to the Misses Campbell; and with every assurance of respect and attachment, I am, my dear Madam, yours most truly, No. CCCLXX. — To Miss YOUNG, BURNTISLAND.

Edinburgh, 15th October 1831.

MY DEAR Miss YOUNG, — It was the firm purpose both of

Mrs. Chalmers and myself to have made you a visit either the

* The Rev. Dr. Campbell of Edinburgh.

last or present month; but her delicacy and my sprain have prevented it. She is confined to bed, and I am under the necessity of travelling to Glasgow, so that we must postpone our visit for a time.

We often think of you, of the loss you have sustained, but of the many comforts at the same time which must bear you up under it. I never in my life witnessed a more peaceful old age than that of your father; and to me it formed always a most interesting peculiarity in his case, that amid the suspension of all his other faculties, there survived in so much freshness and feeling his sense of religion. All his natural lights grew dim with age; but that light which cometh from the sanctuary, the candle of the Lord, never was extinguished, and hence the sacredness as well as the serenity of his closing years.

Mrs. Chalmers desires me to say, that though we have not been able to make out our purpose in visiting you, we do hope that you and Miss Betsy will come to us in the course of the winter. — “With best compliments to her, in which Mrs. Chalmers joins, I am, my dear Miss Young, yours very truly, No. CCCLXXL — To Miss YOUNG.

CraigMm, 2d April 1837.

MY DEAR Miss YOUNG, — “We are here in great comfort and quietness, though we feel it a great blank that your house is shut at present; but you must not think of hastening your journey homewards; and, erring on the safe side, it were better that you made the movement later than you might, rather than earlier than you ought to do.

It is one great comfort in affliction, that it draws towards them who are exercised thereby, a greater tenderness of regard from their friends on earth; and this may well assure us of what Scripture tells, that it in like manner draws a more special regard from our kind and merciful Father who is in Heaven. And accordingly we are told that it is in love that He chasteneth — that He afflicts not willingly — that He has no pleasure in our death — that His Son, who is the express image of His own person, is touched with the fellow-feeling of our infirmities; and surely with such a Father and such a High Priest at His right hand, we may well rest in the quiet confidence that we are in good hands, and that all things will work together for good to them who love God.

The great object with you at present is not to fatigue your self with care of any sort, but to cast that care, whatever it may be, on Him who careth for you. The defects and infirmities of one’s own spirit may well grieve us; but even this cause of uneasiness is best disposed of by rolling it over upon God. “Take this heart, such as it is: make it such as it should be,” Let us commit our souls unto Him, and He will keep that which is so committed. He will bless us with a present as well as a future salvation, making us holy by grace here, as a preparation for being happy in the eternal glory that is to be revealed hereafter.

May the Bible be felt by you in all its preciousness; may its verses be more and more prized as pearls of consolation and great worth. Take in all the comfort of them; and instead of exercising your mind upon them, so as to exceed the strength of your attention, let them rather say unto you, “Peace, be still.” Thus may you enjoy the repose of a spirit that is staid upon God, and experience that in quietness and in confidence ye shall have strength.

It is my earnest prayer that He who in Christ Jesus is reconciled to all who have faith in His blood, may stablish and strengthen you, and make you perfect. — I ever am, my dear Miss Young, yours most affectionately, THOMAS CHALMERS.

P. S.- — I am reading Buchanan’s work with great satisfaction. Our elder brother was made perfect through suffering. — T. C.

No. CCCLXXIL — To CHARLES COWAN, ESQ.

Edinburgh, IQth December 1831.

MY DEAR SIR, — Mrs. Chalmers unites with me in every feeling and expression of sympathy with you and Mrs. Cowan on the occasion of this afflictive bereavement. I am glad to ob serve that you are deriving comfort from the only true source; and I cannot believe that the Saviour who evinced such attachment to children upon earth, who took them in His arms and blessed them, who rebuked the apostles for forbidding their approach to His person, who declared that of such is the kingdom of Heaven — I cannot believe that the infant flower, which so soon lies withered upon its stalk, is not transplanted into those unfading bowers where it will flourish in all the bloom and vigour of immortality.

With kindest regards and condolences to Mrs. Cowan, and to Mr. and Mrs. Menzies, if still with you, I am, my dear Sir, yours very truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. CCCLXXIIL — To THE KEY. DR. SOMERVILLE OF DRUMMELZIER.

KingTiorn, 22d August 1832.

MY DEAR SIR, — This is truly a sad visitation to you and poor Mrs. Somerville as parents of one of the best of sons, and to my self in having lost a pupil of whom I may honestly say, that none stood higher in my personal regards.

I might expatiate on his great and interesting and superior talents as a scholar, but these are unavailing now. Your strong consolation lies in what we all know of his faith in the Saviour, and decided piety; and I do hope that these precious recollections will sweeten the cup of discipline both to you and your sorrowing family.

It is an appalling scourge that has come upon our land, and death, I am told, in its most hideous and revolting form, is the consequence.* Never than in such a peculiar case is the com fort of the following passage more applicable, and I trust your faith will prevail over sense and memory in appropriating it: — “Sown in corruption, raised in incorruption; sown in weakness, raised in power; sown in dishonour, raised in glory.” May you both rejoice in the prospect of that day when that fine form and countenance, in which you witnessed so grievous a transformation, will again be restored; when the grave will deliver up its dead; and they who, once near and dear to us, are now mouldering there shall be invested with the bloom and vigour of immortality.

Your son’s death has awakened great emotion among us all. He was a general favourite among his fellow-students; and from the first time I knew him I loved him. The grief he has left behind him in your family must be deep and tender. Nor would I have ventured to obtrude on the sacredness of your sorrow but for the sake of unbosoming my own. May He who inflicted the wound, and alone is able to heal it, pour abundantly into your hearts of the balm of His consolation, and bid you look with the believer’s eye, and the believer’s hope, to that everlasting home where sorrow and separation are unknown.

With kindest and most sympathizing regards to Mrs. Somerville, and to the other members of your deeply afflicted family, ever believe me, my dear Sir, yours most truly, No. CCCLXXIV.-To DR. SOMEKVILLE.

Edinburgh, 23d April 1843.

MY VERY DEAR SIR, — I have been much affected and concerned by the melancholy intimation of another breach in your family. * Dr. Souierville’s son was cut off by cholera.

To use the language of Paul, you have been “in deaths oft;” and God has been pleased in His sovereign wisdom to exercise you in your old age by sore and heavy bereavements. May you have ample experience of succour and support from Him who has a fellow-feeling for all our infirmities and sorrows; and in the peaceable fruits of righteousness may you realize the truth of the precious declaration, that all things will be made to work together for good to them who love God.

The two admirable young men whom you have lost were both my students, and both of them very much valued and loved by me. Were it not for the hopes and comforts of the blessed Gos pel, what a desolation would such deaths leave behind them!

God abundantly bless and sustain you, my dear Sir, under the truly afflictive dispensation. Take refuge in Christ and in His righteousness, which opens up a better and abiding world to all who believe in Him. — I ever am, my dear Sir, yours with sincerest regard and every feeling of condolence for yourself and your daughters, THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. CCCLXXV. — To Miss SOMERVILLE.

Jforningside, 12th May 1844.

MY DEAR Miss SOMERVILLE, — I heard the melancholy intelligence of your venerable father’s death with great emotion — having long had the highest respect for his character, and for his great services on the field of argument to the cause of Christianity. So long back as 1817, I was introduced to Lord Grenville, who spoke to inc of Hume’s infidelity, and of the desire he felt for an effective refutation of his sophistry on the subject of miracles. I told him of your father’s work as the best then extant upon that subject; and I afterwards saw a high-written testimony from him in its favour, he having perused it with a high estimation of its value and power. But I am sure that it is not so much the recollection of his talents or scholarship, but of his great faith and the love which he bore to the truth as it is in Jesus; it is this last which can minister the only effectual consolation in this season of your bereavement, and cause you to rejoice even in the midst of a sore tribulation. There is a sanction and a sacredness given to the sorrow of nature by the example of our Saviour, but you have great reason to sorrow not even as others who have no hope; and let the deaths of the wise and the good that are so fast thickening around us, let them incite us all the more to be followers of them who, through faith and patience, are now inheriting the promises.

You have had many and severe family trials. The first of your brothers, who was my student, and cut off while at college, was my most favourite pupil, and I had the greatest liking for him; and he, after the interval of some years, was followed by another who promised to be of great service in the Church. When to these I add dear Mrs. Somerville, you may truly be said to have been “in deaths oft.” Heaven grant that they may teach us true wisdom, that they may lead us solemnly and practically to consider our latter end, and that we all withdraw our affections from a world that passeth away to that enduring world where there is joy at God’s right hand and pleasures for evermore.

Give my best regards to your sister and brothers. May this visitation be sanctified to the mourning survivers; and with sincere and affectionate condolence for you all, I entreat you to believe me, my dear Madam, yours most truly, No. CCCLXXVI. — To MRS. CHARLES NAIRNE.

Momingside, 2$th January 1837.

MY DEAR MRS. NAIRNE, — The same infirm health which prevented me from joining in the last melancholy offices to your departed husband, has forced me out to the country, where I am now spending a Sabbath of complete retirement and repose. I feel that I cannot better spend one hallowed hour of it, than by weeping with those who weep, and telling you in particular how deeply I sympathize with you under that awful and affecting visitation, by which the nearest and dearest of all earthly relationships is broken. This is truly a sad and sudden bereavement, and fitted of all others to overwhelm the sinking spirit, were it not that we are in the hands of a God who is as merciful as He is mysterious; and of whom we may feel assured, that though clouds and darkness are round about Him, there is wisdom in all His ways, and tenderness in all His visitations.

May this, my dear Madam, be your own ample experience on this most trying of all occasions. May your refuge and resting-place be in Grod; may you be led to confide in Him as your reconciled Father through Jesus Christ our Lord, who, touched with the fellow-feeling of your infirmities and your sorrows, knows how to succour the afflicted, and is truly as willing as He is able to help you. May He open a way to your now desolated heart; and, making it alive to the charm and the efficacy of His own peace-speaking blood, may He carry forward your hopes and your affections to that enduring world, where sin, and sorrow, and separation are unknown.

May I beg that you will offer my kind and condoling regards to Mrs. Marshall; and I entreat you to believe me, my dear Madam, yours with deepest feelings of sympathy and regard, P.S. — I cannot close this letter without the expression of a forvent and heartfelt benediction on your dear boy. May he arise to manhood and call you blessed; may his progress through the world be unstained by the infection of this world’s spirit; may he be spared to bear you up under the weight of declining years — at once duteous to his surviving parent, and duteous to his God. — T. C.

No. CCCLXXVIL — To DR. BEGBIE.

9th December 1838.

MY DEAR SIR, — We all here deeply sympathize with the severe family affliction under which you labour. And our feeling is not the less sincere that we cannot speak experimentally to the depth or the pungency of that grief which is awakened by the loss of children. I can well conceive it to be one of the sorest agonies wherewith our Father in Heaven is pleased to try and to exercise the hearts of His people here below; and it is my earnest prayer that, bitter and well-nigh overwhelming as the visitation is under which you and Mrs. Begbie now labour, it may be sanctified to you both, and yield in abundance the peaceable fruits of righteousness.

It is quite wonderful that, living as we do in the midst of a most precarious world, and experiencing almost every day some new instance of the unsparing and universal law of mortality, there should still adhere to our nature such a cleaving and constant tendency to forget eternal things, and live here as if here we were to live for ever. May the Giver of all grace superadd the demonstrations of His Spirit to the warnings of His providence, and effectually teach one and all of us to consider our latter end.

I grieve to hear of your own confinement; and with my fervent wishes and supplications for the comfort and wellbeing of you all, particularly of the bereaved and suffering mother, I entreat you to believe me, my dear Sir, yours very truly, No. CCCLXXVIIL — To MRS. M’CLELLAND.

Burntisland, 4th June 1840.

MY DEAR HELEN, — You may well believe that I have been in a sad state of helplessness, both from external causes and from my own personal state of utter languor and disability, else I should have been at Kelton last week, and failing this, should have written you before now on the subject of your sore and melancholy bereavement.

The sad intelligence was received by us all with great emotion. For myself, I always had a strong liking and respect for Mr. McClelland, and that founded on his own personal qualities — a kind, friendly, generous heart, and withal an exceedingly sound and well-informed understanding, with an amount of erudition not very common among the ministers of our Church. I really do not wonder at the regrets of his neighbourhood, and the well-merited testimony which I read the other day from one of our public journals regarding him; but all this enhances the magnitude of your loss, and of our sympathies with all the grief and desolateness of feeling which you must suffer because of it.

It were well if these frequent and most affecting instances of the mutability of all that is below, would at length send our thoughts in the habitual direction of upward and heavenward, if we at length learned the wisdom of considering our latter end, and laying hold on Him who came to destroy death; if we learned to cast all our confidence on His sacrifice, and give ourselves wholly up to His keeping and His guidance during the remainder of our days. Mrs. Chalmers and I are both most anxious to know what your wishes and purposes are in regard to the future. And depend upon my help and co-operation, if spared, in all that can be of use to you. I know you will not ask me to undertake the journey to Kelton, unless some matmal service requires it; but if it should, I beg you will feel 110 delicacy in letting me know; for I shall feel it both my duty and inclination to forward your views. You of course will spend some time with us prior to any permanent arrangement that may, after proper counsel and deliberation, be fixed upon as the best. — I am, my dear Helen, ever yours most affectionately, THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. CCCLXXIX.-TO MRS. BRTCE, ABEBDOUR.

Burntisland, 23 d September 1841.

MY DEAR MRS. BRYCE, — I hesitate to intrude on the sacredness of your deep sorrow, yet cannot refrain from the expression of my sympathy both with yourself and all the members of your bereaved family on this day of solemn visitation.

May He who is at once the Husband of the widow and Father of the fatherless, be the refuge and sure portion of you all. He afflicts not willingly any of His children; and it is my earnest prayer, that this mysterious and unlooked for visitation may yield to you and yours the peaceable fruits of righteousness.

That meek and gentle Saviour who wept at the tomb of Lazarus, gave thereby a sanction and sacredness to the sorrow of nature. May He further sanctify this emotion by the Spirit of all grace, and withdraw our affections from a world, the nearest and dearest objects of which can be so speedily withdrawn from us. It is well that we have His righteousness to plead for our entrance into that better world where sin, and sorrow, and separation, are unknown. May you, my dear madam, and all of your household, obtain that precious faith which gives a part and an interest in all the blessings of His mediatorship, and unites you for ever with that spiritual family of which He is the Head, who alone hath the gift, and who alone hath the words of life everlasting.

“With best regards for one and all of your afflicted circle, in which Mrs. Chalmers most sincerely joins, and begging you will accept of our united condolence on this touching occasion, I ever am, my very dear Madam, yours with great esteem, No. CCCLXXX. — To Miss BURNS.

Edinburgh, StJt January 1843.

MY DEAR Miss BURNS, — We are much interested by your letter respecting dear Miss Edie. At present I write you rather than her, that she might be saved the trouble and fatigue of reading more than she is quite able for. You will judge how far the reading of this and such like passages as I shall recommend might be prosecuted so as not to draw too much upon her attention. She is in the hands of one who knows her frame; and I should like that her own gentle spirit reposed upon Him as all her desire and salvation. May He who has so invested her with the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, perfect the work which He has begun, and ripen her more and more for the full enjoyment of that heaven where holiness and charity shall ever reign.

The twenty-third psalm I should think well suited for her. The green pastures, the still waters, the goodness and the mercy, are all images of bliss and goodness fitted to solace and give refreshment to her soul.

The last half of the Book of Isaiah is replete with encouragement; and the forty-fifth chapter, particularly in its closing verses, is inestimably precious. And in the 8th verse there is an immense comfort in the expression of “the Heavens pouring down righteousness,” How delightful to think of righteousness as a ready-made investiture given to them who believe, and so to be exempted from all the fears of legality, and all its fruitless and fatiguing labours. It is only of such righteousness that the prophet speaks in Isaiah xxxii. 17. May the patient sufferer take up with this righteousness, so as to work peace in her heart, and with the blessed effect of quietness and assurance for ever. The next verse too (verse 18) is very soothing. The fifty-third chapter, one of the most illustrious in Scripture, is well fitted to call out in our hearts the love of the Saviour.

The whole of our Saviour’s conversation with His disciples, John xiv.-xvii., particularly xiv. 1-3, she will find to be an elixir to her soul. But she must not be overtasked. Do give her my tenderest regards. My heart bleeds for poor Mrs. Edie. Say all that is affectionate and kind both to her and to your much loved patient, both from myself and from all our family. — And with our united regards to you, I ever am, &c., No. CCCLXXXL — To MRS. ELLIOT.

Edinburgh, llth February 1844.

MY DEAR MRS. ELLIOT, — The intimation of dear Mrs. Usher’s death has awakened in my breast no common sensibilities; my acquaintance with her — on my part a constant and cherished friendship — being now of forty-three years’ standing. In 1801, 1 was a frequent visitant at Courthill, and ever treated with the utmost kindness by both of your much loved parents, whose attentions to me at my first outset in public life have never been effaced from my memory, and, I will add, have never been effaced from my heart. The maternal care which I experienced at her hand, I always felt to be peculiarly soothing; and from the days of Dr. Charters downwards, (but my intimacy with her began more than twenty years before his death,) I have never ceased, amid all the varieties through which Providence has conducted me, to cast an eye of pleasing remembrance on the place that gave you birth, or to think of your dear departed mother with every feeling of the most grateful and affectionate regard.

But far the most interesting visit I ever paid to her was in 1833, when she told me that she had reached seventy; nor can I adequately express the joy which I felt on finding that the truth as it is in Jesus was so congenial to her heart. She had quite the tone and aspect of one who was ripening for Heaven, and I trust has now entered upon its glories. Let us, my dear Mrs. Elliot, be followers of them who through faith and patience are now inheriting the promises; and then shall the friends who loved each other on earth, and loved the Saviour, hold everlasting converse together in that region of blessedness where sin, and sorrow, and separation are unknown.

Christ casts out none who come unto Him. His blood cleanseth from all sin. God through Him beseeches us to be reconciled. He says, “Turn ye, turn ye; why will ye die?” He promises that if we turn unto Him, He will pour out His Spirit upon us. These are precious sayings; and both you and I are abundantly welcome to the full benefit of their accomplishment in ourselves. Let us believe in them to the saving of our souls. Let us venture our all on that foundation which God Himself hath laid in Zion. Let us give ourselves up unto Christ to be ruled in by His Spirit — to be ruled over by His law. Give my best regards to Mr. Elliot and your brother; and ever believe me, my dear Mrs. Elliot, yours with sincerest condolence and regard, THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. CCCLXXXIL — To MRS. ANDERSON.

Edinburgh, 5th May 1844.

MY VERY DEAR MRS. ANDERSON, — This is a truly desolating stroke. God has been pleased thus to cut off the desire of your eyes, (Ezek. xxiv. 1 6,) in mercy, however, I trust and believe, and not in judgment. You have great reason, my dear Madam, to rejoice even in the midst of this sore tribulation, though one of the sorest on this side of death, it being the breach of the nearest and dearest of all earthly relationships.

All here have been saddened and solemnized by it. We feel that we have lost a much valued friend. Every recollection I have of the dear deceased enhances my sense of his worth and goodness and the greatness of your loss. Never in the whole circle of my acquaintanceship did I experience a more uniform flow of all that was kind and gentlemanly. But the greatest charm of his society then, and incomparably the most consoling now to look back upon, is the evident value he had for the truth as it is in Jesus, the ardent love he bore to the Saviour.

This is a mighty alleviation; and to the force of it I am confident you must feel alive. Blessed be God that while, with the example of His Son, who wept at Lazarus’ tomb, He has given an impressive sanction to the sorrow of nature, you have such abundant reason to sorrow not even as others which have no hope. Let us but withdraw our affections from a world the nearest and dearest objects of which can be so speedily with drawn from us, and transfer these affections to the world which endureth, where sorrow, and separation, and sin, are unknown.

It is my earnest prayer that the heavy bereavement may be blest and sanctified to you all. Give my best and kindest regards to the dear Miss Andersons and the rest of your sorrowing family. Oh that we at length learned wisdom — that the oft-repeated lesson of our mortality at length told upon us, so that instead of living here, as if here we were to live for ever, we became followers of them who through faith and patience are now inheriting the promises.

And what a comfort to think of the errand on which our Saviour came into the world, even to destroy death and him that has the power of death. Let us comfort one another with these words, — assured that all who slept in Jesus, all who loved the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, will meet again and be for ever with the Lord. In the contest between faith and sense, let faith have the victory. Take a firm confiding hold on the promises of the Gospel. Be persuaded of them and embrace them, and let them be your songs in the house of your pilgrimage. Cast your care and confidence on Him who is the husband of the widow and the father of the fatherless. And amid the changes of this eventful and ever-shifting world, let us steady our hearts upon the blessed assurance of that record which God hath given of His Son, even that God hath given to us eternal life, and that this life is in His Son.

The Bible-mark which you gave me I still use, and it is daily in my hand. The precious text that you wrought into it I often recall with the greatest interest, and I would present it now to your notice along with some others, Num. vi. 24, 25, 26; 2 Tim. i. 10; 1 Thcss. iv. 13-18; 2 Cor. iv. 14, 17, 18; Psalm xc. 12; John xi. 25, 26; 1 Cor. xv. 53, 58; Phil. i. 23; Rev. xiv. 13; xxii. 1, 5, 17.

Mrs. Chalmers and my daughters join in most affectionate condolence with yourself and the Misses Anderson; and with most affectionate and earnest prayers for Heaven’s blessings on you and yours, I entreat you to believe me, my very dear Madam, yours with the greatest esteem and sympathy and regard, No. CCCLXXXIII. — To Miss ABERCROMBIE.

Mornings ide, llth November 1844.

MY DEAR Miss BARBARA, — This striking and unlooked for death never ceases to occupy my feelings and thoughts. It is not that Dr. Abercrombie filled so large a space in the eyes of his countrymen, but it is that apart altogether from his public and general celebrity, there was so much of genuine goodness and real Christian worth; and then what a mighty influence on the side of truth and righteousness that he held out through life, and a noble and consistent testimony, and in all his publications gave such evidence of an intense affection for human souls. But over and above his claims to my reverence and regard as a religious philanthropist, there was such a uniform kindness to myself, and his offices of substantial friendship to my family have been so important and numerous, that beyond the circle of my own immediate relationship there is no removal from the world of any other acquaintance I have in life that could more affect or solemnize or warn me. It is well to speak and think of it as but a removal — not a dissolution or final breaking up. May you and all the family be enabled to realize this bright and cheering conviction, and look forward to that joyful morning of a blessed and glorious resurrection, when you shall meet again in that inheritance above which fadeth not away.

In John xv. 2, there is the intimation of a process in the spiritual husbandry of God, which I have often looked upon as especially applicable to a case of bereavement, when the nearest and dearest of all earthly relationships is broken; when a branch beareth fruit, God pruneth it that it may bring forth more fruit. The vegetable juices are made to take a more healthful direction when all the luxuriant overgrowth is taken away. And it is so in the moral and spiritual economy. Our affections are apt to run sidewards and downwards to an earthly object, and this tendency God in His wise and righteous discipline is often pleased to arrest or to shift, by dissevering the object, and so causing the stream or current of our affections to arise from the things that are beneath to those which are above. How delightful to believe that this change in the bent of yrour affections may take effect upon you all, and this without losing sight of their wonted object, but by following it upward to the place which he now occupies, thus causing you to feel as it were another tie to Heaven, an augmented interest in that eternal home which should henceforth be the grand object of all our aims and all our aspirations.

Give my most affectionate regards to your sisters, who one and all of them are the objects of my sympathies and prayers. I might have addressed this broken and imperfect effusion to Miss Abercrombie; but on her, as the eldest of the family, the main burden will fall of this sad and trying dispensation. For give me, my dear Miss Barbara, for having singled out you as my correspondent for the expression of feelings which I can not restrain, yet am unable to utter but in a way the most in adequate and feeble. — Ever yours, most affectionately and truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.

[Jluhnffls, near Inverness, 9th January 1850. — REV. Sin, — I cannot deny myself the satisfaction of saying how much I felt gratified at finding, in the first volume of Dr. Chalmers’s Memoirs, my husband’s name so remembered in connexion with a family he so greatly esteemed.*

I have often heard him, in after years, refer to the warm kindness of Captain George Chalmers, who even tried to find amusement for him when returning strength fitted him for a little exertion. A bottle would be slung at the yard-arm to serve for a mark at which the invalid subaltern might fire; nnd having been fortunate enough to hit the object several times, Captain Chalmers accounted him so expert a marksman, that he declared, should they encounter a hostile ship, he would station him “to pick off the man at the helm.” — I am, Rev. Sir, your obedient servant,

MAUGAUET MACKAY.
The Rev. Dr. Ilanna, Morningside.]

No. CCCLXXXIV. — To MRS. MACKAY.

Edinburgh, IQth March 1845.

MY DEAR MRS. MACKAY, — I received the affecting intimation from Iledgefield a few days ago, and not, I can assure you, * See Memoirs, voL i. p. 99.

without emotion. Your dear and departed husband I became acquainted with so far back as 1806, when he spent some time with me and my brother George at the manse of Kilmany, when my brother was languishing under an illness which carried him soon to his grave. At the commencement of our acquaintance neither of us was adequately impressed by the momentous realities of an eternal world; but I rejoice to think of him in a more advanced life, and of all the converse that he had with yourself, and of the love he bore to one whose works declare that she loved the Lord Jesus. I have finished, and on the last Sabbath of last year,* the perusal of your affectionate testimony and tribute to the cause of the Saviour. May the precious truths which you there deal out to others, soothe and sustain your own spirit under this heavy visitation of Providence; and by which the nearest and dearest of all your earthly relationships has been broken asunder. May He who is the Husband of the widow be your support and consolation

* Edinburgh, 2$th December 1843. — MY DEAR MADAM, — I offer you my grateful acknowledgments for your “Sabbath Musings,” of winch I mean to read one for every Sabbath of the coming year.

I am very sorry to hear of poor Col. Mackay’s severe illness.

With every prayer for the best interests both of him and of yourself, ever bebelieve me, my dear Madam, yours very truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.

In a letter to Colonel Mackay, dated llth December 1837, Dr. Chalmers referred to a previous publication of Mrs. Mackay in the following terms: —

I read the “Family at Heatherdale” with great pleasure, as did also my daughters. I think it a beautiful tale, and written in a pure and scriptural style of sentiment. Its simplicity is a great charm to me, though I would have you to be apprized, that this very property, though in my estimation a very high one, may operate adversely on the sale of the work, or on the amount of public demand for it. Such is the depraved taste now-a-days for excitement, that nothing but a story of great incident and bustle will satiate the appetite. The work, however, must have its select readers and admirers notwithstanding; and, at all events, you have obviously great reason to felicitate youi-self as being associated with one of such an accomplished, but, above all, of such a Christian mind as that manifested by its author. — With my best regards to Mrs. Mackay, I ever am, my dear Sir, yours most truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.

in tins your day of trial, and fill your sinking heart with the bright and elevating thoughts of that enduring world where sorrow, and suffering, and separation are unknown.

What a blessed consideration that we have a Friend on high who is touched with a fellow-feeling of our sorrows. May you be filled with a realizing sense both of His power and His willingness to save you. May you enjoy the manifestations of His love, so as that you may learn to glory not only in the hope of that inheritance which He hath purchased for all who be lieve, but even to glory in tribulations also. (Rom. v. 23.) Through patience and comfort of the precious Scriptures may you have hope, nay, abound therein, through the power of the Holy Spirit. (Rom. xv. 13.) The last of these two verses is truly precious; and may you have full experience of the blessings there prayed for by the Apostle, — peace and joy in believing, even on Him whose blood clean seth from all sin; and why not from your sin? — Ever believe me, my very dear Madam, yours with great esteem and regard, No. CCCLXXXV. — To JAMES CUNNINGHAM, ESQ., EDINBURGH.

Anstruther, 18th May 1845.

MY DEAR SIR, — I should have replied much sooner to your melancholy and affecting intimation of the 2d of May. I have been advertised lately of many deaths, and some of them my own relatives. But this, though it has occupied my time, has not diverted my sympathies from you in the bereavement which you have been called upon to sustain by the tearing asunder of the nearest and dearest of all earthly relationships.

Yet I rejoice to think of your many alleviations. Our Saviour Himself has given the sacred sanction of His own example to the sorrow of nature. But what a call for gratitude that you sorrow not even as others that have no hope. What

2 T a precious consolation is the remembrance of that faith and its fruits, which give you the blessed assurance, that when she fell asleep she slept in Jesus. And what a preservative against being swallowed up of overmuch sorrow — when our affections, instead of being desolated, are only transferred from that passing and present world, the nearest and dearest objects of which are taken away from us, to that bright and enduringworld where sin, and sorrow, and separation are unknown. Let us therefore comfort one another with these words. As friends drop away from us, let us draw nearer together as the followers in one common pursuit of those who through faith and patience are now inheriting the promises.

It is my earnest prayer that this heavy affliction may be sanctified and made the vehicle of the richest spiritual blessings to you and to your children. They are deprived of a mother’s presence, but not, let us confidently hope, of the fruit and efficacy of a mother’s prayers, lifted up by her while on earth, and the reward of which is upon high. — Ever believe me, my dear Sir, yours very respectfully and truly, No. CCCLXXXVL — To FREDERIC ADAMSON, ESQ.

Gouroclc House, 25th July 1845.

MY DEAR SIR, — I am not sure if I could state so well in conversation as I can attempt to do in writing, the veiy deep interest I feel in you, and my earnest desire that these brief and casual meetings on this side of death should be followed up on the other side of it in that reign of perfect blessedness where sorrow, and sickness, and separation are unknown. Believing as I do in the solemn realities of a coming judgment and coming eternity, I beg that you will consider it to be from no other cause than the strength of my affection for you that I venture to remind you of the everlasting weal or the everlasting wo to which we are fast hastening. If I did not think that there is a patent way of transition from death to life, from a state of condemnation to a state of acceptance, I would be the last man to oifer any disturbance on a matter which, if altogether hopeless, had better be let alone; but confident as I am that there is no want of good-will on the part of our Father who is in Heaven, that He is waiting to be gracious — nay, beseeching one and all of us to enter into reconciliation, I cannot refrain from pressing the assurance upon you of the perfect readiness wherewith your very first approaches will be met and rejoiced in by Him who dwelleth above, on that throne which is at once the throne of grace and righteousness. Let us be very certain that Christ will cast out none who come unto Him, and that God will cast out none who come unto Him through Christ. It is true that He is determined, and that in the most authoritative and peremptory manner, that this is the only footing upon which He will receive us, and that there is salvation in no other way than by the name of Christ. But let us only recollect that He is the party sinned against, and that it is for Him, and not for us, to dictate the terms and the treaty of reconciliation; and so He has expressly said, that no man cometh to the Father but by the Son. It may look stern and repulsive the being told that out of this way we shall never meet with acceptance from God; but surety this is all made up for, all most fully and generously compensated, when we are further told, that in this way of it we shall never miss acceptance with God. He who out of Christ is a consuming fire, is in Christ a reconciled Father. (2 Cor. v. 18-20.) By this open door of access, the worst and ungodliest of men are invited to draw nigh, that our sins may be washed out in that blood which cleanseth from all sin, and why not our sin? He who hath the Son hath life; he who hath not the Son hath not life. The acceptance of Christ, then, may be called the turning point of our salvation; it is the great act upon the doing or not doing of which there hinges our eternity. On the one hand, if we re ceive Him by faith, we shall receive all that is needful, whether for the preparation here, or the enjoyment hereafter of life everlasting; but on the other hand, how can we escape if we neglect so great salvation? (Heb. ii. 3.)

May the Spirit, whose office it is to bring home the word to our hearts — may He open our hearts to the truth and tenderness of these sayings; they are simple but sure, and would we only place faith in the gracious promises and calls held out in the Gospel, even to the farthest off in rebellion, then should we find that according to our faith so will it be done unto us.

Do indulge me, my dear Sir, in all this, and put it down to the right cause, which is, my sense of the duty I owe to a much loved friend; for although we have not met often during half a century, I have ever entertained a very strong affection towards you. I remember well the strength of those amiable and deeply felt affinities which bound together, as with all the force of mutual instinct, our family; and which often since I have witnessed streaming forth, as first one and then another of your desolated household in St. Andrews was taken off by death. In a few years we shall all be mouldering in our coffins; then be wise and join us. May Heaven grant that we shall be found side by side, sharing together in the resurrection of the blessed; and He who saith, “I am the resurrection and the life,” now stands with open arms to receive all who come unto Him, and declaring this unto all in words of deepest pathos — grant that unto us they may prove words of power — “He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”

May the Giver of all grace pour forth His best blessings upon you and yours, upon dear Mrs. Adamson, and upon one and all of your much loved family. Farewell, my dear Sir; I leave this by Monday’s boat at eleven o’clock, and I can say truly, that far the most interesting visits I have made since I left home were those to yourself and Mr. C. I cannot ex press how much I was delighted by his state of mind — not only patient in tribulation, but rejoicing in hope. Let me die the death of the righteous, let my last end be like his. — Ever believe me, my dear Sir, yours with best and greatest regards, No. CCCLXXXVIL — To MISSES WALLACE.

Burntisland, Uth May 184fi.

MY DEAR MISSES WALLACE, — It grieved me exceedingly to hear of your brother’s death, and it grieves me still farther to hear of your sister’s illness.

Short of religion and its blessed hopes, no adequate comfort can be given under the sore and afflicting bereavement which it has pleased the Almighty God, though often mysterious in His dealings with the children of men, to lay upon you. Yet poor and ineffectual as all other considerations are, I must affirm the sufficiency of the gospel of Jesus Christ to meet the calamity which else might overwhelm you. Not that I would forbid your tears, for our Saviour himself, who wept at the tomb of Lazarus, gives to the sorrow of nature the sanction and the sacredness of His example. But let us not forget that when He went up to Heaven He took up along with Him all the sympathies and all the tenderness which He manifested upon earth. Nor can I name a passage of Scripture more endearing or more fitted to soothe and alleviate even the deepest of our sorrows than that in which He is set forth to us as touched with a fellow-feeling of our infirmities, and as having been tried in all points even as we are, and so able to succour and sustain them who are so tried.

Cast then the whole burden upon Him of this heavy visitation — “Cast thy burden upon the Lord and He will sustain thee.” It is not willingly that He afflicts the children of men; and let us assure ourselves both of the wisdom and the goodness of a Father in every chastisement that He inflicts, and every ingredient, however bitter, which He pours into the cup of discipline.

If poor Jessie can bear to be read to, I know nothing more precious than our Saviour’s last lengthened discourse to His disciples. The fifteenth chapter of John has long been a particular favourite of mine. The 2d verse is peculiarly applicable to those who mourn the death of relatives, as making known to us the purpose of the great Spiritual Husbandman in pruning the branches which have been yielding some fruit, even that they should bring forth more fruit.

Offer my affectionate condolence to Mrs. Thomas Young on this sad occasion; and ever believe me, my dear Misses Wallace, the sincere and sympathizing friend of you both, P.S. — You must know Dr. Buchanan’s work on affliction. I have more than once recommended it as a fit companion in houses of mourning. — T. C.

No. CCCLXXXVIIL — To Miss WOOD.

Edinburgh, 5th July 1846.

MY DEAR Miss WOOD, — I should have acknowledged much sooner the affecting intimation from Elie of your sister’s death, which I felt much at the time, and have borne the impression of in my heart ever since. There are not half a dozen surviving acquaintances in the world whom I have longer known, — the period of my recollections as a visitor in your house going back to very early childhood. It must have proved to you a very desolating stroke; but what precious alleviations in the blessed assurance that she was one of God’s own people, whose life throughout has been one of consistent discipleship, and who carried in her very aspect the expression of great peace and great joy in believing. May the thought of this comfort and sustain you under this heavy bereavement, and may it wean your affections still more from a world the nearest and dearest objects of which may at any time be withdrawn from us. It is thus that the great spiritual Husbandman, (John xv. 1, 2,) in the exercise of a wise and salutary discipline, draws the affections of His children upward and heavenward to Him self; and, superadding the lessons of His Providence to the lessons of His Word, teaches us a greater diligence and devotedness than heretofore, in being followers of those who through faith and patience are now inheriting the promises.

I feel quite sure that her most frequent and favourite volume must have been the Bible. I should like to know if there were any of our great old popular authors in whom she took peculiar delight. The truth is, that I am getting fonder of these every day; and the very books which formed the spiritual aliment both of my father and mother in their declining years, are now prized by me as, next to the Scriptures, the wisest and the best. I rejoice, for example, in “Marshall on Sanctification,” and am pleased to think that he was one of my father’s greatest favourites. But I have a far more vivid recollection, and had indeed the opportunity of more closely watching and observing my mother’s deathbed than his; and she died, I would not say in the triumphs and ecstasies, but in the calm and settled assurance of the faith. I never understood so perfectly as from the view of her last hours, the expression of the Prophet — the peace which is as a river.

This intimation from Elie, now lying before me, carries me back into a far retrospect of the years of my boyhood. Your father and mother, Dr. and Miss Reid, Miss Anna Wood your aunt, the venerable Mrs. James “Wood, Mrs. Peter Chalmers, her son and daughters, are one and all of them pictured on my remembrance, and I should add Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Wood and their sons, to complete my enumeration of a living society which has wholly disappeared. Truly this is not our abiding city. May we look to the city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God; and may the gracious manifestations of our reconciled Father in Jesus Christ brighten and cheer to both of us the remainders of our earthly pilgrimage.

May I beg my kindest regards to Mr. and Mrs. Walter Wood, as also to my good worthy Christian friend Mr. Archibald.

Mrs. Chalmers and all here join in kindest wishes. — Believe me ever, my dear Miss Wood, yours very truly,