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186

THE

NORTH BRITISH REVIEW.

NOVEMBER, 1856, AND FEBRUARY, 1857.

VOLUME XXVI.

AMERICAN EDITION, VOL. XXI.

NEW YORK:

PUBLISHED BY LEONARD SCOTT & CO.,

79 FULTON STREET, CORNER OF GOLD STREET.

1857.

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THE

NORTH BRITISH REVIEW,

No. LI.

FOR NOVEMBER, 1 8 5 6.

ART. I.-Dr. Chalmers' Works.
five Volumes, 12mo.
2. Posthumous Works. Nine Vols.
Edinburgh: T. Constable & Co.

Twenty- will always be many who will draw from certain portions of them a large amount of 8vo. their spiritual and theological aliment, and I who will think themselves well and sufficiently disciplined, and kept safely orthodox, and evangelical, so long as they are content to sit at the feet of this revered teacher.

But when we come to think of English literature at large, and to think of it as influenced or favoured by no special or national feelings, it is quite certain that the "WORKS" will undergo a severe sifting. Portions-large portions, of the mass, we cannot doubt, must subside and at no distant date, will cease to be often asked for, or popularly read. The works of the very best writers (if voluminous) have undergone the same discerptive process. Nor has any human reputation hitherto been of such plenary force as might suffice for immortalizing every paragraph or treatise that a man has written and printed. Assuredly Chalmers will not stand his ground as an exception to this almost universal doom-a doom which has consigned to oblivion a half-a threefourths-or a nine-tenths of the products of even the brightest minds; especially if they have been, in their day, teeming and industrious minds, and if such writers have mixed themselves at large with the social and political movements of their times.

THE high place which Thomas Chalmers occupies in the religious history of Scotland, he holds securely; it is a position which he will not lose, unless a time shall come when John Knox and other worthies of the like stamp shall have ceased to be thought of in their native country with reverential gratitude. But the rank which his writings will ultimately hold in the body of English lite. rature is a point yet to be determined; and at present it can be only conjecturally spoken of, and this on the ground of considerations of quite a different order from those which affect his place in the regards of his countrymen. Nevertheless, on this ground we do not hesitate to profess the belief that, as a religious writer and as a theologian, he will live. A distinction, however, must here be made:-The "Works," entire, of Dr. Chalmers, will, no doubt, continue to be sought after, through a course of many years, and will often be reprinted in their mass for the use of Scotland, and of England too, buoyed up, as one might say, by his immortal renown, as one of the best and the ablest, and the most useful of the great men whom Scotland has in any age produced. The grateful and religious Scot- At this time-and if we are looking to tish people at home as well as those thou- the volumes now before us, it is not Chalsands of the "dispersion," who are scatter-mers as the great, the good, and the emied over the face of the earth, will (so we nently useful man of his age and country imagine) for generations yet to come re- whom we have to do with:-it is not Chalgard it as a sacred duty to possess them-mers as related to those religious and eccleselves of the Works Entire of their own siastical movements of which Scotland is now Chalmers. And, moreover, among these reaping the fruits ;-but it is the same dispurchasers and readers of the Works, there tinguished man, considered simply as D-1

VOL. XXVI.

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