DR. CHALMERS
From John Brown's HORAE SUBSECIVAE
WHEN, towards the close of some long summer day, we come
suddenly, and, as we think, before his time, upon the broad sun, 'sinking down
in his tranquillity into the unclouded west; we cannot keep our eyes from
the great spectacle, and when he is gone, the shadow of him haunts our sight
with the spectre of his brightness, which is dark when our eyes are open;
luminous when they are shut: we see everywhere, upon the spotless heaven, upon
the distant mountains, upon the fields, and upon the road at our feet, that
dim, strange, changeful image; and if our eyes shut, to recover themselves, we
still find in them, like a dying flame, or like a gleam in a dark place, the
unmistakable phantom of the mighty orb that has set,-and were we to sit down,
as we have often done, and try to record by pencil or pen, our impression of
that supreme hour, still would IT be there. We must have patience with our eye,
it will not let the impression go,- that spot on which the radiant disc was
impressed, is insensible to all other outward things, for a time: its best
relief is, to let the eye wander vaguely over earth and sky, and repose itself
on the mild shadowy distance.
So it is when a great and good and
beloved man departs, sets - it may be suddenly - and to us who know not the
times and the seasons, too soon. We gaze eagerly at his last hours, and when he
is gone, never to rise again on our sight, we see his image wherever we go, and
in whatsoever we are engaged, and if we try to record by words our wonder, our
sorrow, and our affection, we cannot see to do it, for the 'idea of his life '
is for ever coming into our study of imagination - into all our thoughts, and
we can do little else than let our mind, in a wise passiveness, hush itself to
rest
The sun returns - he knows his rising -
To-morrow he
repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky;
but man lieth down, and riseth not again till the heavens
are no more. Never again will he whose 'Meditations are now before us,
lift up the light of his countenance upon us.
We need not say we look
upon him as a great man, as a good man, as a beloved man? We cannot now go very
curiously to work, to scrutinize the composition of his character, - we cannot
take that large, free, genial nature to pieces, and weigh this and measure
that, and sum up and pronounce; we are too near as yet to him, and to his loss,
he is too dour to us to be so handled. 'His death, to use the pathetic
words of Hartley Coleridge, 'is a recent sorrow; his image still lives in eyes
that weep for him. The prevailing feeling is, - He is gone - he has gone
over to the majority, he has joined the famous nations of the dead. It is
no small loss to the world, when one of its master spirits - one of its great
lights - a king among the nations - leaves it. A sun is extinguished; a great
attractive, regulating power is withdrawn. For though it be a common, it is
also a natural thought, to compare a great man to the sun; it is in many
respects significant. Like the sun, he rules his day, and he is 'for a sign and
for seasons, and for days and for years; he enlightens, quickens,
attracts, and leads after him his host - his generation.
To pursue our
image. When the sun sets to us, he rises elsewhere - he goes on rejoicing, like
a strong. man, running his race. So does a great man: when he leaves us and our
concerns - he rises elsewhere; and we may reasonably suppose that one who has
in this world played a great part in its greatest histories - who has through a
long life been pre-eminent for promoting the good of men and the glory of God -
will be looked upon with keen interest, when he joins the company of the
immortals. They must have heard of his fame; they may in their ways have seen
and helped him already.
Every one must have trembled when reading that
passage in Isaiah, in which Hell is described as moved to meet Lucifer at his
coming: there is not in human language anything more sublime of conception,
more exquisite in expression; it has on it the light of the terrible crystal.
But may we not reverse the scene? May we not imagine, when a great and good man
- a son of the morning - enters on his rest, that Heaven would move itself to
meet him at his coming? that it would stir up its dead, even all the chief ones
of the earth, and that the kings of the nations would arise each one from his
throne to welcome their brother? that those who saw him would 'narrowly
consider him, and say, 'Is this he who moved nations, enlightened and
bettered his fellows, and whom the great Taskmaster welcomes with Well
done!
We cannot help following him, whose loss we now
mourn, into that region, and figuring to ourselves his great, childlike spirit,
when that unspeakable scene bursts upon his view, when, as by some inward,
instant sense, he is conscious of God - of the immediate presence of the
All-seeing Unseen; when he beholds 'His honourable, true, and only Son,
face to face, enshrined in that 'glorious form, that light unsufferable, and
that far-beaming blaze of Majesty, that brightness of His glory, that
express image of His person; when he is admitted into the goodly fellowship of
the apostles - the glorious company of the prophets - the noble army of martyrs
- the general assembly of just men - and beholds with his loving eyes the
myriads of 'little ones, outnumbering their elders as the dust of the
stars with which the galaxy is filled exceeds in multitude the hosts of heaven.
What a change! death the gate of life - a second birth, in the
twinkling of an eye: this moment, weak, fearful, in the amazement of death; the
next, strong, joyful, - at rest, - all things new! To adopt his own words: all
his life, up to the last, 'knocking at a door not yet opened, with an earnest,
indefinite longing, - his very soul breaking for the longing, - drinking of
water and thirsting again ' - and then - suddenly and at once - a door opened
into heaven, and the Master heard saying, 'Come in, and come up hither!
drinking of the river of life, clear as crystal, of which if a man drink he
will never thirst, - being filled with all the fullness of God!
Dr.
Chalmers was a ruler among men: this we know historically; this every man who
came within his range felt at once. He was like Agamemnon, and with all his
homeliness of feature and deportment, and his perfect simplicity of expression,
there was about him 'that divinity that doth hedge a king. You felt a
power, in him, and going from him, drawing you to him in spite of yourself. He
was in this respect a solar man, he drew after him his own firmament of
planets. They, like all free agents, had their centrifugal forces acting ever
towards an independent, solitary course, but the centripetal also was there,
and they moved with and around their imperial sun, - gracefully or not,
willingly or not, as the case might be, but there was no breaking loose: they
again, in their own spheres of power, might have their attendant moons, but all
were bound to the great massive luminary in the midst.
There is to us a
continual mystery in this power of one man over another. We find it acting
everywhere, with the simplicity, the ceaselessness, the energy of gravitation;
and we may be permitted to speak of this influence as obeying similar
conditions; it is proportioned to bulk - for we hold to the notion of a bigness
in souls as well as bodies - one soul differing from another in quantity and
momentum as well as in quality and force, and its intensity increases by
nearness. There is much in what Jonathan Edwards says of one spiritual essence
having more of being than another, and in Dr Chalmerss question, 'Is he a
man of wecht?
But when we meet a solar man, of ample nature - soul,
body, and spirit; when we find him from his earliest years moving among his
fellows like a king, moving them whether they will or not - this feeling of
mystery is deepened; and though we would not, like some men (who should know
better), worship the creature and convert a hero into a god, we do feel more
than in other cases the truth, that it is the inspiration of the Almighty which
has given to that man understanding, and that all power, all energy, all light,
come to him, from the First and the Last - the Living One. God comes to be
regarded by us, in this instance, as He ought always to be, 'the final centre
of repose ' - the source of all being, of all life - the Terminus ad quem and
the Terminus a quo. And assuredly, as in the firmament that simple law of
gravitation reigns supreme - making it indeed a lcosmos - majestic, orderly,
comely in its going - ruling, and binding not the less the fiery and nomadic
comets, than the gentle, punctual moons - so certainly, and to us moral
creatures to a degree transcendently more important, does the whole intelligent
universe move around and move towards and in the Father of Lights.
It
would be well if the world would, among the many other uses it makes of its
great men, make more of this, - that they are manifestors of God - revealers of
His will - vessels of His omnipotence - and are among the very chiefest of His
ways and works. - As we have before said, there is a perpetual wonder in this
power of one man over his fellows, especially when we meet with it in a great
man. You see its operations constantly in history, and through it the Great
Ruler has worked out many of His greatest and strangest acts. But however we
may understand the accessory conditions by which the one man rules the many,
and controls and fashions them to his purposes, and transform them into his
likeness - multiplying as it were himself - there remains at the bottom of it
all a mystery - a reaction between body and soul that we cannot explain.
Generally, however, we find accompanying its manifestation, a capacious
understanding - a strong will - an emotional nature, quick, powerful, urgent,
undeniable, in perpetual communication with the energetic will and the large
resolute intellect-and a strong, hearty, capable body; a countenance and person
expressive of this combination - the mind finding its way at once and in full
force to the face, to the gesture, to every act of the body. He must have what
is called a 'presence; not that he must be great in size, beautiful, or
strong; but he must be expressive and impressive - his outward man must
communicate to the beholder at once and without fail, something of indwelling
power, and he must be and act as one.
You may in your mind analyse him into
his several parts; but practioally he acts in everything with his whole soul
and his whole self; whatsoever his hand finds to do, he does it with his might.
Luther, Moses, David, Mahomet, Cromwell - all verified these conditions.
And so did Dr. Chalmers. There was something about his whole air and
manner, that disposed you at the very first to make way where he went-he held
you before you were aware. That this depended fully as much upon the activity
and the quantity - if we may so express ourselves - of his affections, upon
that combined action of mind and body which we call tempera. ment, and upon a
straightforward, urgent will, as upon what is called the pure intellect, will
be generally allowed; but with all this, he could not have been and done, what
he was and did, had he not had an understanding, in vigour and in capacity,
worthy of its great and ardent companions. It was large and free, mobile, and
intense, rather than penetrative, judicial, clear, or fine, - so that in one
sense he was more a man to make others act than think; but his own actings had
always their origin in some fixed, central, inevitable proposiion, as he would
call it, and he began his onset with stating. plainly, and with lucid calmness,
what he held to be a great seminal truth; from this he passed at once, not into
exposition, but into illustration and enforcement-into, if we may make a word,
overwhelming insistance. Something was to be done, rather than explained.
There was no separating his thoughts and expressions from his person,
and looks, and voice. How perfectly we can at this moment recall him!
Thundering, flaming, lightening in the pulpit; teaching, indoctrinating,
drawing after him his students in his lecture-room; sitting among other public
men, the most unconscious, the most king-like of them all, with that broad
leonine countenance, that beaming, liberal smile; or on the way out to his
home, in his old-fashioned great-coat, with his throat muffled up, his big
walking-stick moved outwards in an arc, its point fixed, its head
circumferential, a sort of companion and playmate, with which, doubtless, he
demolished legions of imaginary foes, errors, and stupidities in men and
things, in Church and State. His great look, large chest, large head, his
amplitude every way; his broad, simple, childlike, in- turned feet; his short,
hurried, impatient step; his erect, royal air; his look of general goodwill;
his kindling up into a warm but vague benignity when one he did not recognize
spoke to him; the addition, for it was not a change, of keen speciality to his
hearty recognition; the twinkle of his eyes; the immediately saying something
very personal to set all to rights, and then sending you off with some thought,
some feeling, some remembrance, making your heart burn within you; his voice
indescribable; his eye - that most peculiar feature- not vacant, but asleep -
innocent, mild, and large; and his soul, its great inhabitant, not always at
his window; but then, when he did awake, how close to you was that burning
vehement soul! how it penetrated and overcame you. How mild, and affectionate,
and genial its expression at his own fireside!
Of his portraits worth
mentioning, there are Watson Gordons, Duncans - the Calotypes of
Mr. Hill - Kenneth MLeays miniatures - the Daguerreotype, and
Steells bust. These are all good, and all give bits of him, some nearly
the whole, but not one of them that fiery particle - that inspired look - that
'diviner mind .' - Watson Gordons is too much of the mere clergyman - is
a pleasant likeness, and has the shape of his mouth, and the setting of his
feet very good. Duncans is a work of genius, and is the giant looking up,
awakening, but not awakened - it is a very fine picture. Mr Hills
Calotypes we like better than all the rest; because what in them is true, is
absolutely so, and they have some delicate renderings which are all but beyond
the power of any human artist; for though mans art is mighty,
natures is mightier. The one of the Doctor sitting with his grandson
'Tommy, is to us the best; we have the true grandeur of his form - his
bulk. MLeays is admirable - spirited - and has that look of
shrewdness and vivacity and immediateness which he had when he was observing
and speaking keenly; it is moreover, a fine, manly bit of art. MLeay is
the Raeburn of miniature painters - he does a great deal with little. The
Daguerreotype is, in its own way, excellent; it gives the externality of the
man to perfection, but it is Dr. Chalmers at a stand-still - his mind and
feelings 'pulled up for the second that it was taken. Steells is a
noble bust-has a stern heroic expression and pathetic beauty about it, and from
wanting colour and shadow and the eyes, it relies upon a certain simplicity and
grandeur ; - in this it completely succeeds - the mouth is handled with extra.
ordinary subtlety and sweetness, and the hair hangs over that huge brow like a
glorious cloud. We think this head of Dr. Chalmers the artists greatest
bust.
In reference to the assertion we have made as to bulk forming one
primary element of a powerful mind, Dr. Chalmers used to say, when a man of
activity and public mark was mentioned, 'Has he wecht? he has promptitude-has
he power? he has power - has he promptitude? and, moreover, has he a discerning
spirit?'
These are great practical, universal truths. How few even of our
greatest men have had all these three faculties large - fine, sound, and in
'perfect diapason. Your men of promptitude, without power or judgement,
are common and are useful. But they are apt to run wild, to get needlessly
brisk, unpleasantly incessant. A weasel is good or bad as the case may be, -
good against vermin - bad to meddle with ; - but inspired weasels, weasels on a
mission, are terrible indeed, mischievous and fell, and swiftness making up for
want of momentum by inveteracy; 'fierce as wild bulls, untamable as
flies. Of such men we have now- a-days too many. Men are too much in the
way of supposing that doing is being; that theology and excogitation, and
fierce dogmatic assertion of what they consider truth, is godliness; that
obedience is merely an occasional great act, and not a series of acts, issuing
from a state, like the stream of water from its well.
'Action is transitory - a step - a
blow,
The motion of a muscle-this way or that;
'Tis done - and in the
after vacancy,
We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed.
Suffering (obedience, or being as opposed to doing) 'Suffering is
permanent, -
And has the nature of infinity?
Dr. Chalmers was a man of genius - he had his own way of
thinking, and saying, and doing, and looking everything. Men have vexed
themselves in vain to define what genius is; like every ultimate term we may
describe it by giving its effects, we can hardly succeed in reaching its
essence. Fortunately, though we know not what are its elements, we know it when
we meet it; and in him, in every movement of his mind, in every gesture, we had
its unmistakable tokens. Two of the ordinary accompaniments of genius -
Enthusiasm and Simplicity - he had in rare measure.
He was an
enthusiast in its true and good sense; he was 'entheat, as if full of
God, as the old poets called it. It was this ardour, this superabounding life,
this immediateness of thought and action, idea and emotion, setting the whole
man agoing at once - that gave a power and a charm to everything he did. To
adopt the old division of the Hebrew Doctors, as given by Nathanael Culverwel,
in his 'Light of Nature: In man we have - the senstive soul, that which
lies nearest the body - the very blossom and flower of life; 2nd, sparkling and
glittering with intellectuals, crowned with light; and 3rd, the vigour and
energy of the soul - its temper - the mover of the other two - the first being,
as they said, resident in hepate - the second in cerebro - the
third in cords, where it presides over the issues of life, commands the
circulation, and animates and sets the blood a-moving. The first and second are
informative, explicative, they 'take in and do ' - the other 'gives out.
Now in Dr. Chalmers, the great ingredient was the indicating animae et
vitae, - and in close fellowship with it, and ready for its service, was a
large, capacious a voir, and an energetic, sensuous, rapid (Greek). Hence his
energy, his contagious enthusiasm - this it was which gave the peculiar
character to his religion, to his politics, to his personnel: everything he did
was done heartily - if he desired heavenly blessings, he 'panted for them
- his soul broke for the longing. To give again the words of the
spiritual and subtle Culverwel, 'Religion (and indeed everything else) was no
matter of indifferency to him. It was a certain fiery thing, as Aristotle calls
love; it required and it got, the very flower and vigour of the spirit - the
strength and sinews of the soul - the prime and top of the affections - this is
that grace, that panting grace - we know the name of it and that 's all -
tis called zeal - a flaming edge of the affection - the ruddy complexion
of the soul.
Closely connected with this temperament, and with a
certain keen sensation of truth, rather than a perception of it, if we may so
express ourselves, an intense consciousness of objective reality, - was his
simple animating faith. He had faith in God - faith in human nature - faith, if
we may say so, in his own instincts - in his ideas of men and things - in
himself; and the result was, that unhesitating bearing up and steering right
onward 'never bating one jot of heart or hope so characteristic of him.
He had 'the substance of things hoped for. He had 'the evidence of things
not seen.
By his simplicity we do not mean the simplicity of the head
- of that he had none; he was eminently shrewd and knowing - more so than many
thought; but we refer to that quality of the heart and of the life, expressed
by the words, 'in simplicity a child. In his own words, from his Daily
Readings, -
'When a child is filled with any
strong emotion by a surprising event or intelligence, it runs to discharge it
on others, impatient of their sympathy; and it marks, I fancy, the simplicity
and greater naturalness of this period (Jacobs) that the grown-up men and
women ran to meet each other, giving way to their first impulses - even as
children do.
His emotions were as lively as a
childs, and he ran to discharge them. There was in all his ways a certhin
beautiful unconsciousness of self - an outgoing of the whole nature that we see
in children, who are by learned men said to be long ignorant of the Ego -
blessed in many respects in their ignorance! This same Ego, as it now exists,
being perhaps part of 'the fruit of that forbidden tree ; that mere
knowledge of good as well as of evil, which our great mother bought for us at
such a price. In this meaning of the word, Dr.Chalmers,considering the size of
his understanding - his personal eminence - his dealings with the world - his
large sympathies - his scientific knowledge of mind and matter - his relish for
the practical details, and for the spirit of public business - was quite
singular for his simplicity; and taking this view of it, there was much that
was plain and natural in his manner of thinking and acting, which otherwise was
obscure and liable to be misunderstood. Man in a state of perfection, would no
sooner think of asking himself - am I right? am I appearing to be what inwardly
I am? than the eye asks itself - do I see? or a child says to itself - do I
love my mother? We have lost this instinctive sense; we have set one portion of
ourselves aside to watch the rest; we must keep up appearances and our
consistency; we must respect - that is, look back upon - ourselves, and be
respected, if possible; we must, by hook or by crook, be respectable.
Dr. Chalmers would have been a sorry Balaam; he was made of different
stuff and for other purposes. Your 'respectable men are ever doing their
best to keep their status, to maintain their position. He never troubled
himself about his status; indeed, we would say status was not the word for him.
He had a sedes on which he sat, and from which he spoke; he had an
imperium, to and fro which be roamed as he listed: but a status was as little
in his way as in that of a lion. Your merely 'sincere men are always
thinking of what they said yesterday, and what they may say to-morrow, at the
very moment when they should be putting their whole self into to-day. Full of
his idea, possessed by it, moved altogether by its power, - believing, he
spoke, and without stint or fear, often apparently contradicting his former
self - careless about everything, but speaking fully his mind. One other reason
for his apparent inconsistencies was, if one may so express it, the
spaciousness of his nature. He had room in that capacious head, and affection
in that great, hospitable heart, for relishing and taking in the whole range of
human thought and feeling. He was several men in one. Multitudinous but not
multiplex, in him odd and apparently incongruous notions dwelt peaceably
together. The lion lay down with the lamb. Voluntaryism and an endowment - both
were best.
He was childlike in his simplicity: though in understanding
a man, he was himself in many things a child. Coleridge says, every man should
include all his former selves in his present, as a tree has its former
years growths inside its last; so Dr. Chalmers bore along with him his
childhood, his youth, his early and full manhood into his mature old age. This
gave himself, we doubt not, infinite delight - multiplied his joys,
strengthened and sweetened his whole nature, and kept his heart young and
tender, - it enabled him to sympathize, to have a fellow-feeling with all, of
whatever age. Those who best knew him, who were most habitually with him, know
how beautifully this point of his character shone out in daily, hourly life. We
well remember long ago loving him before we had seen him - from our having been
told, that being out one Saturday at a friend's house near the Pentlands, he
collected all the children and small people - the other bairns, as he called
them - and with no one else of his own growth, took the lead to the nearest
hill-top, - how he made each take the biggest and roundest stone he could find,
and carry, - how he panted up the hill himself with one of enormous size, - how
he kept up their hearts, and made them shout with glee, with the light of his
countenance, and with all his pleasant and strange ways and words, how having
got the breathless little men and women to the top of the hill, he, hot and
scant of breath, looked round on the world and upon them with his broad
benignant smile like the unnumbered laughter of the sea, - how he set off his
own huge 'fellow, - how he watched him setting out on his race, slowly,
stupidly, vaguely at first, almost as if he might die before ho began to live,
then suddenly giving a spring and off like a shot - bounding, tearing, how he
spoke to, upbraided him, cheered him, gloried in him, all but prayed for him, -
how he joked philosophy to his wondering and ecstatic crew, when he (the stone)
disappeared among some bracken - telling them they had the evidence of their
senses that he was in, they might even know he was there by his effects, by the
moving brackens, himself unseen; how plain it became that he had gone in, when
he actually came out ! - how he ran up the opposite side a bit, and then fell
back, and lazily expired at the bottom, - how to their astonishment, but not
displeasure - for he 'set them off so well, and 'was so funny ' - he took
from each his cherished stone, and set it off himself! showing them how they
all ran alike, but differently; how he went on, 'making, as he said, an
induction of particulars, till he came to the Benjamin of the flock, a
wee wee man, who had brought up a stone bigger than his own big head; then how
he let him, unicus omnium, set off his own, and how wonderfully ir ran! what
miraculous leaps: what escapes from impossible places: and how it ran up the
other side farther than any, and by some felicity remained there.
He
was an orator in its specific and highest sense. We need not prove this to
those who have heard him; we cannot to those who have not. It was a living man
sending living, burning words into the minds and hearts of men before him,
radiating his intense fervour upon them all; but there was no reproducing the
entire effect when alone and cool; some one of the elements was gone. We say
nothing of this part of his character, because upon this all are agreed. His
eloquence rose like a tide, a sea, setting in, bearing down upon you, lifting
up all its waves - deep calling unto deep; there was no doing
anything but giving yourself up for the time to its will. His eloquence was
like a flooded Scottish river, - it had its origin in some exalted region - in
some mountain-truth - some high, immutable reality; it did not rise in a plain,
and quietly drain its waters to the sea, - it came sheer down from above. He
laid hold of some simple truth - the love of God, the Divine method of
justification, the unchangeableness of human nature, the supremacy of
conscience, the honourableness of all men; and having got this vividly before
his mind, on he moved - the river rose at once, drawing everything into its
course - All thoughts, all passions, all delights, - Whatever stirs this mortal
frame.things outward and things inward, interests immediate and remote - God
and eternity - men, miserable and immortal - this world and the next - clear
light and unsearchable mystery - the word and the works of God - everything
contributed to swell the volume and add to the onward and widening flood. His
river did not flow like Denhains Thames, - Though deep yet clear, though
gentle yet not dull; Strong without rage, without oerfiowing full. There
was strength, but there was likewise rage; a fine frenzy - not unoften due
mainly to its rapidity and to its being raised suddenly by his affections;
there was some confusion in the stream of his thoughts, some overflowing of the
banks, some turbulence, and a certain noble immensity; but its origin was clear
and calm, above the region of clouds and storms. If you saw it; if you took up
and admitted his proposition, his starting idea, then all else moved on; but
once set agoing, once on his way, there was no pausing to inquire, why or how,
he boils - he rushes - he is borne along; and so are all who hear him.
To go on with our figure - There was no possibility of sailing up his
stream. You must go with him, or you must go ashore. This was a great
peculiarity with him, and puzzled many people. You could argue with him, and
get him to entertain your ideas on any purely abstract or simple proposition, -
at least for a time; but once let him get down among practicals, among
applications of principles, into the regions of the affections and active
powers, and such was the fervour and impetuosity of his nature, that he could
not stay leisurely to discuss, he could not then entertain the opposite; it was
hurried off, and made light of, and disregarded, like a floating thing before a
cataract.
To play a little more with our conceit - The greatest man is
he who is both born and made - who is at once poetical and scientific - who has
genius and talent each supporting the other. So with rivers. Your mighty
worlds river rises in high and lonely places, among the everlasting
hills; amidst clouds, of inaccessible clearness. On he moves, gathering to
himself all waters; refreshing, cheering all lands. Here a cataract, there a
rapid; now lingering in some corner of beauty, as if loath to go. Now shallow
and wide, rippling and laughing in his glee; now deep, silent and slow ; now
narrow and rapid and deep and not to be meddled with. Now in the open country;
not so clear, for other waters have come in upon him, and he is becoming
useful, no longer turbulent, - travelling more contentedly; now he is
navigable, craft of all kinds coming and going upon his surface for ever; and
then, as if by some gentle and great necessity, 'deep and smooth, passing with
a still foot and a sober face, he pays his last tribute to the great
Exchequer, the sea ' - running out fresh, by reason of his power and volume,
into the main for many a league.
Your mere genius, who has instincts,
and is poetical and not scientific, who grows from within - he is like our
mountain river, clear, wilful, odd; running round corners; disappearing it may
be underground, coming up again quite unexpectedly and strong, as if fed from
some unseen spring, deep down in darkness; rising in flood without warning, and
coming down like a lion; often all but dry; never to be trusted to for driving
mills; must at least be tamed and led off to the mill; and going down full
pace, and without stop or stay, into the sea.
Your man of talent, of
acquirements, of science - who is made, - who is not so much educed as edified;
who, instead of acquiring his vires eundo, gets his vires eundi, from
acquirement, and grows from without; who serves his brethren and is useful; he
rises often no one knows where or cares; has perhaps no proper fountain at all,
but is the result of the gathered rain-water in the higher flats; he is never
quite clear, never brisk, never dangerous; always from the first useful, and
goes pleasantly in harness; turns mills; washes rags - makes them into paper;
carries down all manner of dye-stuffs and feculence; and turns a bread mill to
as good purpose as any clearer stream; is docile, and has, as he reaches the
sea, in his dealings with the world, a river trust, who look after his and
their own interests, and dredge him, and deepen him, and manage - him, and turn
him off into docks, and he is in the sea before be or you know it.
Though
we do not reckon the imagination of Dr. Chalmers among his master faculties, it
was powerful, effective, magnificent. It did not move him, he took it up as he
went along; it was not that imperial, penetrating, transmuting function that we
find it in Dante, in Jeremy Taylor, in Milton, or in Burke; be used it to
emblazon his great central truths, to bang clouds of glory on the skirts of his
illustration; but it was too passionate, too material, too encumbered with
images, too involved in the general melee of the soul, to do its work as a
master. It was not in him, as Thomas Fuller calls it, 'that inward sense of the
soul, its most boundless and restless faculty; for while the understanding and
the will are kept, as it were, in liberd custodid to their objects of verum et
bonum, it is free from all engagements - digs without spade, flies without
wings, builds without charges, in a moment striding from the centre to the
circumference of the world by a kind of omnipotency, creating and annihilating
things in an instant - restless, ever working, never wearied.
We may
say, indeed, that men of his temperament are not generally endowed with this
power in largest measure; in one sense they can do without it, in another they
want the conditions on which its highest exercise depends. Plato and Milton,
Shakespeare and Dante and Wordsworth, had imaginations tranquil, sedate, cool,
originative, penetrative, tense, which dwelt in the highest heaven of
invention. Hence it was that Chalmers could personify or paint a passion;
he could give it in one of its actions; he could not, or rather he never did
impassionate, create, and vivify a person - a very different thing from
personifying a passion - all the difference, as Henry Taylor says, between
Byron and Shakespeare.
In his impetuosity, we find the rationale of much
that is peculiar in the style of Dr. Chalmers. As a spoken style it was
thoroughly effective. He seized the nearest weapons, and smote down whatever be
hit. But from this very vehemence, this haste, there was in his general style a
want of correctness, of selectness, of nicety, of that curious felicity which
makes thought immortal, and enshrines it in imperishable crystal. In the
language of the affections he was singularly happy; but in a formal statement,
rapid argumentation and analysis, be was often as we might think, uncouth, and
imperfect, and incorrect: chiefly owing to his temperament, to his fiery,
impatient, swelling spirit, this gave his orations their fine audacity - this
brought out hot from the furnace, his new words - this made his numbers run
wild - lege salutis. We are sure this view will be found confirmed by these
'Daily Readings, when he wrote little, and had not time to get heated,
and when the nature of the work, the hour at which it was done, and his
solitariness, made his thoughts flow at their own sweet will; they are often
quite as classical - in expression, as they are deep and lucid in thought - .
reflecting heaven with its clouds and stars, and letting us see deep down into
its own secret depths: this is to us one great charm of these volumes. Here he
is broad and calm; in his great public performances by mouth and pen, be soon
passed from the lucid into the luminous. What, for instance, can be finer in
expression than this ? 'It is well to be conversant with great elements - life
and death, reason and madness. 'God forgets not his own purposes, though
he executes them in his own way, and maintains his own pace, which he hastens
not and shortens not to meet our impatience. 'I find it easier to
apprehend the greatness of the Deity than any of his moral perfections, or his
sacredness; and this - 'One cannot but feel an interest in Ishmael -
figuring him to be a noble of nature - one of those heroes of the wilderness
who lived on the produce of his bow, and whose spirit was nursed and exercised
among the wild adventures of the life that he led.
And it does soften
our conception of him whose hand was against every man, and every mans
hand against him, when we read of his mothers influence over him, in the
deference of Ishmael to whom we read another example of the respect yielded to
females even in that so-called barbarous period of the world. There was a
civilization, the immediate effect of religion in these days, from which men
fell away as the world grew older.
That he had a keen relish for
material and moral beauty and grandeur we all know; what follows shows that he
had also the true ear for beautiful words, as at once pleasant to the ear and
suggestive of some higher feelings: 'I have often felt, in reading Milton and
Thomson, a strong poetical effect in the bare enumeration of different
countries, and this strongly enhanced by the statement of some common and
prevailing emotion, which passed from one to another. This is set forth
with great beauty and power in verses 14 and 15 of Exodus xv, ' The people
shall hear and be afraid - sorrow shall take hold on the inhabitants of
Palestina. Then the dukes of Edom shall be amazed - the mighty men of Moab,
trembling shall take hold of them - the inhabitants of Canaan shall melt
away. Any one who has a tolerable ear and any sensibility, must remember
the sensation of delight in the mere sound - like the colours of a
butterflys wing, or the shapeless glories of evening clouds, to the eye -
in reading aloud such passages as these: 'Heshbon shall cry and Elealeah: their
voice shall be heard to Jahaz: for by the way of Luhith with weeping shall they
go it up; for in the way of Horonaim they shall raise a cry. - God came from
Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran. - Is not Calno as Carchemish? is not
Hamath as Arpad? is not Samaria as Damascus ? - He is come to Aiath, he is
passed to Migron; at Michmash he hath laid up his Carriages: Ramah is afraid;
Gibeah of Saul is fled. Lift up thy voice, 0 daughter of Gallim: cause it to be
heard unto Laish, 0 poor Anathoth! Madmenah is removed; the inhabitants of
Gebim gather themselvea to flee. - The fields of Heshbon languish, the vine of
- Sibmah; I will water thee with my tears, 0 Heshbon and Elealeh. Any one
may prove to himself that much of the effect and beauty of these passages
depends on- these names; put others in their room, and try them.
We
remember well our first hearing Dr. Chalmers. We were in a moorland district in
Tweeddale, rejoicing in the country, after nine months of the High School, We
heard that the famous preacher was to be at a neighbouring parish church, and
off we set, a cartful of irrepressible youngsters. 'Calm was all nature as a
resting, wheel. The crows, instead of making wing, were impudent and sat
still; the cart-horses were standing, knowing the day, at the field-gates,
gossiping and gazing, idle and happy; the moor was stretching away in the pale
sunlight - vast, dim, melancholy, like a sea; everywhere were to be seen the
gathering people, 'sprinklings of blithe company; the country-side seemed
moving- to one centre. As we entered the kirk we saw a notorious character, a
drover, who had much of the brutal look of what he worked in, with the knowing
eye of a man of the city, a sort of big Peter Bell - He had a hardness in his
eye, He had a hardness in his cheek. He was our terror, and we not only
wondered, but were afraid when we saw him going in.
The kirk was full
as it could hold. How different in looks to a brisk town congregation! There
was a fine leisureliness and vague stare; all the dignity and vacancy of
animals; eyebrows raised and mouths open, as is the habit with those who speak
little and look much, and at far-off objects. The minister comes in, homely in
his dress and gait, but having a great look about him, like a mountain among
hills. The High School boys thought him like a 'big one of ourselves, he
looks vaguely round upon his audience, as if he saw in it one great object, not
many. We shall never forget his smile! its general benignity ; - how he let the
light of his countenance fall on us! He read a few verses quietly; then prayed
briefly, solemnly, with his eyes wide open all the time, but not seeing.
Then he gave out his text; we forget it, but its subject was, 'Death
reigns. He stated slowly, calmly, the simple meaning of the words; what
death was, and how and why it reigned; then suddenly he started, and looked
like a man who had seen some great sight, and was breathless to declare it; he
told us how death reigned - everywhere, at all times, in all places; how we all
knew it, how we would yet know more of it. The drover, who had sat down in the
table- seat opposite, was gazing up in a state of stupid excitement; he seemed
restless, but never kept his eye from the speaker. The tide set in - everything
added to its power, deep called to deep, imagery and illustration poured in;
and every now and then the theme, - thé simple, terrible statement, was
repeated in some lucid interval. After overwhelming us with proofs of the reign
of Death, and transferring to us his intense urgency and emotion; and after
shrieking, as if in despair, these words, 'Death is a tremendous
necessity, - he suddenly looked beyond us as if into some distant region,
and cried out, 'Behold a mightier ! - who is this? He cometh from Edom, with
dyed garments from Bozrah, glorious in his apparel, speaking in righteousness,
travelling in the greatness of his strength, mighty to save. Then, in a
few plain sentences, he stated the truth as to sin entering, and death by sin,
and death passing upon all.
Then he took fire once more, and enforced,
with redoubled energy and richness, the freeness, the simplicity, the security,
the sufficiency of the great method of justification. How astonished and
impressed we all were. He was at the full thunder of his power; the whole man
was in an agony of earnestness. The drover was weeping like a child, the tears
running down his ruddy, coarse cheeks - his face opened out and smoothed like
an infants; his whole body stirred with emotion. We all had insensibly
been drawn out of our seats, and were converging towards the wonderful speaker.
And when he sat down, after warning each one of us to remember who it was, and
what it was, that followed death on his pale horse and how alone we could
escape - we sunk back into our seats. How beautiful to our eyes did the
thunderer look - exhausted - but sweet and, pure! How he poured out his soul
before his God in giving thanks for sending the Abolisher of Death! Then a
short psalm, and all was ended.
We went home quieter than we came; we
did not recount the foals with their long legs, and roguish eyes, and their
sedate mothers; we did not speculate whose dog that was, and whether that was a
crow or a man in the dim moor, - we thought of other things. That voice, that
face; those great, simple, living thoughts; those floods of resistless
eloquenoe; that piercing, shattering voice, - that 'tremendous necessity.
Were we desirous of giving to one who had never seen or heard Dr. Chalmers an
idea of what manner of man be was - what he was as a whole, in the full round
of his notions, tastes, affections, and powers, we would put this book into
their hands, and ask them to read it slowly, bit by bit, as he wrote it. In it
he puts down simply, and at once, what passes through his mind as he reads;
there is no making of himself feel and think - no getting into a frame of mind;
be was not given to frames of mind; he preferred states to forms - substances
to circumstances. There is something ofeverything in it - his relish for
abstract thought - his love of taking soundings in deep places and finding no
bottom - his knack of starting subtle questions, which he did not care to run
to earth - his penetrating, regulating godliness - his delight in nature - his
turn for polities, general, economical, and ecclesiastical - his picturesque
eye - his humanity - his courtesy - his warm-heartedness - his impetuosity -
his sympathy with all the wants, pleasures, and sorrows of his kind - his
delight in the law of God, and his simple, devout, manly treatment of it - his
acknowledgement of difficulties - his turn for the sciences of quantity and
number, and indeed for natural science and art generally - his shrewdness - his
worldly wisdom - his genius; all these come out - you gather them like fruit,
here a little, and there a little.
He goes over the Bible, not as a
philosopher, or a theologian, or a historian, or a geologist, or a jurist, or a
naturalist, or a statist, or a politician - picking out all that he wants, and
a great deal more than he has any business with, and leaving everything else as
barren to his reader as it has been to himself; but he looks abroad upon his
Fathers word - as he used so pleasantly to do on his world - as a man,
and as a Christian; he submits himself to its influences, and lets his mind go
out fully and naturally in its utterances.
It is this which gives to
this work all the charm of multitude in unity, of variety in harmony; and that
sort of unexpectedness and ease of movement which we see everywhere in nature
and in natural men. Our readers will find in these delightful Bible Readings
not a museum of antiquities, and curiosities, and laborious trifles; nor of
scientific specimens, analysed to the last degree, all standing in order,
labelled and useless. They will not find in it an armoury of weapons for
fighting with and destroying their neighbours. They will get less of the physic
of controversy than of the diet of holy living. They will find much of what
Lord Bacon desired, when he said, 'We want short, sound, and judicious notes
upon Scripture, without running into commonplaces, pursuing controversies, or
reducing those notes to artificial method, but leaving them quite loose and
native. For certainly, as those wines which flow from the first treading of the
grape are sweeter and better than those forced out by the press, which gives
them the roughness of the husk and the stone, so are those doctrines best and
sweetest which flow from a gentle crush of the Scriptures, and are not wrung
into controversies and commonplaces. They will fi it as a large pleasant
garden; no great system; n trim, but beautiful, and in which there are thin
pleasant to the eye as well as good for food - flows and fruits, and a few good
suculent, wholesome food. There are Honesty, Thrift, Eye-bright (Euphrasy that
cleanses the sight), Hearts-ease. The good seed abundance, and the
strange mystical Passion-flowei and in the midst, and seen everywhere, if we
but be for it, the Tree of Life, with its twelve manner of fruit - the very
leaves of which are for the healing of the nations. And, perchance, when they
take their walk through it at evening-time, or at 'the sweet hour prime,
they may see a happy, wise, beaming old man his work there - they may hear his
well.known voice and if they have their spiritual senses exercised as the
ought, they will not fail to see by his side 'one like unto the Son of
Man.
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