"throw around the character of man," is essentially different from religion itself. "Religion has its accompaniments; and in these there may be something to soothe, and to fascinate, even in the absence of the appropriate influences of religion. The deep and tender impression of a family bereavement, is not religion. The love of established decencies is not religion. The charm of all that sentimentalism, which is associated with many of its solemn and affecting services, is not religion. They may form the distinct folds of its accustomed drapery; but they do not, any, or all of them put to gether, make up the substance of the thing itself." p. 122. “A man may have a taste for eloquence, and eloquence the most touching or sublime may lift her pleading voice on the side of religion. A man may love to have his understanding stimulated by the ingenuities, or the resistless urgencies of an argument.-A man may have his attention riveted and regaled by that power of imitative description which brings all the recollections of his own experience before him.-Now, in all these cases, I see other principles brought into action, and which may be in a state of most lively and vigorous movement, and be yet in a state of entire separation from the principle of religion." pp. 224, 225. We would gladly make more quotations from this interesting volume: but we have given enough as a specimen; and we recommend the work itself to general perusal. The Author will recommend himself to public attention in this, as well as his native country, as a man of sense, and of fancy, a man of learning, and of piety. His sermons abound in fine description, and contain a great deal of, what is called in the language of the schools, humanity. The theology is throughout evangelical, and almost always correctly expressed. We blame Dr. Chalmers, nevertheless, on several accounts; principally, indeed, for that, which we are apprehensive will give him the greatest popularity-belabouring his style too much throughout, and sometimes almost into unintelligibility. He abounds in masculine conceptions; he has great command of words; and they are generally harmoniously arranged; but he incurs, in a very high degree, what his own distinguished countrymen, the Critics of the Scottish capital, justly call "the great reproach of our modern literature."* We select, in illustration of this charge, a small portion of a sentence from page 130. For the entire sentence we cannot It is spread over two octavo pages, and completely covers them with one idea-there are limits to human knowledge. The part we quote, is long enough for analysis. spare room. "the whole face, both of nature and of society. presents him with questions which he cannot unriddle, and tells him how be neath the surface of all that the eye can rest upon, there lies the profoundness of a most unsearchable latency—" In this bit of a sentence of two pages, the Author personifies nature and society at once. To this we have no objection. It is still the simple and legitimate metaphor. The person, painted before us, has, of course, a face, a whole face, as he ought to have. But, this very face is, also, personified; and so becomes, in the picture, itself a whole man. This is a complex metaphor, and the picture is that of a monster. The new person then makes presents; for he presents us with questions; and he moreover speaks, for he tells us of the surface of all that the eye can rest upon; he tells us even what is beneath this surface, and how it is situated-there lies, not sits or stands, what?. Why the very essence of profundity, the most abstract quality imaginable, personified in a recumbent picture, "there lies the profoundness." The profoundness of what? the profoundness of latency: but what kind of latency is that of which the profoundness is seen lying down to rest. We We are told it is unsearchable, yea, "the most unsearchable" of all latencies. Let it not be forgotten, that we are introduced into this region. of unintelligibilities, beneath the surface of all that the eye can rest upon, by "the whole face of nature and society." *"He (Lord Byron) never dilutes his strong conceptions and magnificent imaginations with a flood of oppressive verbosity. In his nervous and manly lines, we find no elaborate amplification of common sentiments-no ostentatious polishing of pretty expressions-and we would fain hope he may go far, by his example, to redeem the great reproach of our modern literature-its intolerable prolixity and redundance," Edin. Review. vol. 27. p. 278, A Preacher, of Dr. Chalmers's manly sense, ought not, when treating from the pulpit a question agitated by philosophers, to permit himself to be seduced, by the false, but too prevalent, taste for splendid declamation, so far from the exercise of his own vigorous intellect, as to spend his time, in arranging upon paper, sentences which contain such incongruities. Perhaps to the same unhappy cause, the prevalence of popular taste for declamation, should be ascribed another fault-the expulsion from his sermons of those Scriptural proofs and illustrations which he has inserted in the form of an appendix. In that situation they are of little use. Few will ever read them; and fewer still will take the trouble of comparing them with the parts of the argument, in the body of the work, to which they refer. We are not, as yet, on this side the Atlantic, arrived at so high a degree of fastidiousness, in matters of literary taste, as to exclude our Bible from the number of our classics, or to esteem a sermon less for its containing some quotations from that book in proof of the doctrine, and even for ornament to pulpit eloquence. We lament that any of the pious sons of good old Presbyterian Scotland should be found, and that too in her own favourite Glasgow, who should deem it degrading to his style of composition to have it interwoven with the word of God, or who should be satisfied with placing his quotations from the Bible behind his own work, in a place where their principal utility is the profit they yield to the setters of types and the venders of books. We have already declared our approbation, in general terms, of Dr. Chalmers's theological doctrines. They are decidedly evangelical, so far as they are decidedly expressed: but there is one idea, repeatedly suggested, which we cannot in justice, as Guardians of the Christian Faith, permit to pass without remark. A suggestion from so popular a writer as Dr. Chalmers, merits attention. We refer to the idea, that the atonement, made in the obedience and death of Christ, expiates the sins of others than fallen Adam and his descendants. This idea is not asserted; but we censure even the suggestion, as useless certainly, and perhaps of pernicious tendency. From which we indistinctly guess at the fact, that the redemption itself may stretch beyond the limits of the world we occupy.-. It must be admitted that the Bible does not speak clearly or decisively as to the proper effect of redemption being extended to other worlds-We will not say how far some of these passages extend the proper effect of that redemption which is by Jesus Christ to other quarters of the universe-they give us a distant glimpse of something more extended-It does not tell us whether the fountain opened in the house of Judah, for sin and for uncleanness, send forth its healing streams to other worlds than our own. It does not tell us the extent of the atonement."* pp. 135, 144, 148, 149. We do not know whether, in writing these words, the Doctor had in view the inquiry of Thomas Paine or not: but, we are certain, that there is no foundation in the Scriptures for either the interrogatories of the infidel or the guesses of his antagonist. "Are we to suppose," said the author of the Age of Reason, "that every world in the boundless creation had an Eve, an apple, a serpent, and a Redeemer? In this case the person who is irreverently called the Son of God, and sometimes God himself, would have nothing else to do than to travel from world to world, in an endless succession of death, with scarce a momentary interval of life." We are far from considering Dr. Chalmers' suggestion, of extending to rebels in other worlds the expiation for sin made on earth, to be so good an answer, to the scoffing suggestion of Mr. Paine, as that which was given long before by Mr. Andrew Fuller-" Let creation be as extensive as it may, and the number of worlds be multiplied to the utmost boundary to which imagination can reach, there is no proof that any of them except men and angels have apostatized from God."* We have, moreover, proof positive, that Jesus Christ took not upon him the nature of angels; but was made of the seed of Abraham. The Scriptures exclude guessing; for, although the ransomed of the Lord be a multitude which no man can number, we know they are only the Church of God which he has purchased with his own blood. VOL. I....No. 5. * Gospel its own Witness. p. 203. The redemption of Christ is indeed the chief of the ways of God and the salutary consequences of that glorious work extending through eternity, redound to the honour of its Author, and to the good of all his obedient subjects. The extent of the atonement is defined by that covenant of which the death of Christ was the condition; but its beatific effects pervade all the ranks of intelligent beings, wheresoever they continue, throughout the universe, in the friendship and favour of Jehovah. The redemption of Israel, his peculiar people, procures a merciful dispensation in this world, by which even the reprobate sinner experiences several advantages of a temporary kind; and the knowledge of this mighty work fills with joy and gladness the inhabitants of all the celestial abodes. This consideration, if it do not, in time, silence the reasonings of heretics, and the scoffings of avowed unbelievers, is sufficient to satisfy the hearts of those who sincerely search for truth; to settle them in the faith of that sacred revelation which God has been pleased to grant us in the inspired oracles; and to render them happy throughout eternity. These Scriptures assures us that other intelligent beings, than those who dwell on earth, have a knowledge of the purpose of redemption, and of the execution of the high decree. The angels contemplate this world as the peculiar theatre upon which the riches of divine grace are exhibited to view. In the blessed effects of the exhibition, there is inconceivable joy among their elevated ranks-and the future rewards and punishments, which shall be publicly dispensed on the day of judgment, will afford, throughout every department of creation, however extensive its dimensions, sufficient discoveries of the perfect moral excellency, as well as of the grandeur, of the natural attributes of the Governor of all worlds. We conclude this Review with a remark, to which philosophical sceptics should attend. The magnitude of creation, compared with the worth of any individual, is no new idea to the saints. Every believer has felt himself as nothing, has viewed this world as nothing, before God. By multiplying, indefinitely, the number of worlds, philosophy only gives |