they were without joy; for such already was the glory of the British navy, through Nelson's surpassing genius, that it scarcely seemed to receive any addition from the most signal victory that ever was achieved upon the seas; and the destruction of this mighty fleet, by which all the maritime schemes of France were totally frustrated, hardly appeared to add to our security or strength; for, while Nelson was living to watch the combined squadrons of the enemy, we felt ourselves as secure as now, when they were no longer in existence. There was reason to suppose, from the appearances upon opening his body, that in the course of nature he might have attained, like his father, to a good old age. Yet he cannot be said to have fallen prematurely whose work was done; nor ought he to be lamented, who died so full of honours, and at the height of human fame. The most triumphant death is that of the martyr; the most awful, that of the martyred patriot; the most splendid, that of the hero in the hour of victory; and if the chariot and the horses of fire had been vouchsafed for Nelson's translation, he could scarcely have departed in a brighter blaze of glory. He has left us, not indeed his mantle of inspiration, but a name and an example which are at this hour inspiring thousands of the youth of England-a name which is our pride, and an example which will continue to be our shield and our strength. Thus it is that the spirits of the great and the wise continue to live and to act after them. XII. DR CHALMERS. He THOMAS CHALMERS was born in 1780 at Anstruther, a small fishingtown on the coast of Fife. At an early age he was sent to the University of St Andrews, where he went through the usual curriculum of study; and, though under the age at which licence was ordinarily conferred, a special exemption was made in his case, as he was (to use his own words) "a lad of pregnant pairts." He was at this time enthusiastically devoted to the study of mathematics and the physical sciences; and after prosecuting his favourite study in Edinburgh, he became assistant to the Professor of Mathematics in St Andrews. was also appointed pastor of Kilmany, a small parish near the university, and discharged his clerical duties with characteristic vigour, though other pursuits evidently lay nearer his heart. He lectured on chemistry, served in the volunteers, speculated in political economy, and published an " Enquiry into the National Resources." In 1809 a dangerous illness led him to think more seriously of the responsibilities of his solemn office, and his energies were from that time forward unceasingly devoted to his official duties. His growing reputation as a pulpit orator led to his removal in 1815 to a more important sphere of labour in Glasgow, where his eloquence attracted round him crowds from all quarters, and where his untiring zeal for the amelioration of the poor found a wide scope for exercise. In 1823 THE TRANSITORY NATURE OF VISIBLE THINGS. 467 he removed to St Andrews where he had been appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy; and in 1828 he was transferred to the Chair of Divinity in the University of Edinburgh. This post he continued to hold till the secession of the Free Church party, who appointed him to the same office in their Theological College. He was found dead in bed May 31, 1847. The works of Dr Chalmers are very numerous : the chief are Natural Theology" (one of the Bridgewater Treatises); Christian Evidences;" "Astronomical Sermons ;" Lectures on the Romans;' "Commercial Discourses; various volumes of sermons and works on " Parochial Economy," ," "Church Extension," &c. Since his death, "Sunday Readings" and "Daily Scripture Readings" have also appeared. His works are on the whole valuable rather to the general reader than to the theological student; they are remarkable not so much for their profoundness or originality, as for their vigour of thought, force of language, and variety of illustration. What, however, most commends him to the reader is the sincerity of his religious convictions, and that broad catholic spirit and ardent desire for the benefit of his fellow-men which will long perpetuate his name in Scotland. 1. THE TRANSITORY NATURE OF VISIBLE THINGS. Even those objects which men are most apt to count upon as imperishable, because, without any sensible decay, they have stood the lapse of many ages, will not weather the lapse of eternity. This earth will be burnt up. The light of yonder sun will be extinguished. These stars will cease from their twinkling. The heavens will pass away as a scroll: and as to those solid and enormous masses which, like the firm world we tread upon, roll in mighty circuit through the immensity around us, it seems the solemn language of revelation, of one and of all of them, that from the face of Him who sitteth on the throne, the earth and the heavens will fly away, and there will be found no place for them. Even apart from the Bible, the eye of observation can witness in some of the hardest and firmest materials of the present system the evidence of its approaching dissolution. What more striking, for example, than the natural changes which take place on the surface of the world, and which prove that the strongest of Nature's elements must at last yield to the operation of time and of decay,—that yonder towering mountain, though propped by the rocky battlements which surround it, must at last sink under the power of corruption, that every year brings it nearer to its end, that, at this moment, it is wasting silently away, and letting itself down from the lofty eminence it now occupies,—that the torrent which falls from its side never ceases to consume its substance, and to carry it off in the form of sediment to the ocean,-that the frost which assails it in winter loosens the solid rock, detaches it in pieces from the main precipice, and makes it fall in fragments to its base, that the power of the weather scales off the most flinty materials, and that the wind of heaven scatters them in dust over the surrounding country,—that even though not anticipated by the sudden and awful convulsions of the day of God's wrath, nature contains within itself the rudi. ments of decay,—that every hill must be levelled with the plains, and every plain be swept away by the constant operation of the rivers which run through it, and that, unless renewed by the hand of the Almighty, the earth on which we are now treading must disappear in the mighty roll of ages and of centuries? We cannot take our flight to other worlds, or have a near view of the changes to which they are liable. But surely if this world, which, with its mighty apparatus of continents and islands, looks so healthful and so firm after the wear of many centuries, is posting visibly to its end, we may be prepared to believe that the principles of destruction are also at work in other provinces of the visible creation-and that though of old God laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of His hands, yet they shall perish; yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment, and as a vesture shall He change them, and they shall be changed. But there is another way in which the objects that are seen are temporal. The object may not merely be removed from us, but we may be removed from the object. The disappearance of this earth, and of these heavens from us, we look upon through the dimness of a far-placed futurity. It is an event, therefore, which may regale our imagination; which may lift our mind by its sublimity; which may disengage us, in the calm hour of meditation, from the littleness of life, and of its cares; and which may even throw a clearness and a solemnity over our intercourse with God. But such an event as this does not come home upon our hearts with the urgency of a personal interest. It does not carry along with it the excitement which lies in the nearness of an immediate concern. It does not fall with such vivacity upon our conceptions, as practically to tell on our pursuits or any of our purposes. It may elevate and solemnize us; but this effect is perfectly consistent with its having as little influence on the walk of the living, and the moving, and the acting man, as a dream of poetry. The preacher may think that he has done great things with his eloquence, and the hearers may think that great things have been done upon them; for they felt a fine glow of emotion when they heard of God sitting in the majesty of His high counsels over the progress and the destiny of created things. But the truth is, that all this kindling of devotion which is felt upon the contemplation of His greatness may exist in the same bosom with an utter distaste for the holiness of His character; with an entire alienation of the heart and of the habits from the obedience of His law; and above all, with a most nauseous and invincible contempt for the spiritualities of that revelation, in which He has actually made known His will and His ways to us. The devotion of mere taste is one thing, the devotion of principle is another. And as surely as a man may weep over the elegant sufferings of poetry, yet add to the real sufferings of life by peevishness in his family and insolence among his neighbours; so ON SPIRITUAL BLINDNESS. 469 surely may a man be wakened to rapture by the magnificence of God, while his life is deformed by its rebellions, and his heart rankles with all the foulness of idolatry against Him. Well, then, let us try the other way of bringing the temporal nature of visible things to bear upon your interests. It is true that this earth and these heavens will at length disappear; but they may outlive our posterity for many generations. However, if they disappear not from us, we most certainly shall disappear from them. They will soon cease to be anything to you; and though the splendour and variety of all that is visible around us should last for thousands of centuries, your eyes will soon be closed upon them. The time is coming when this goodly scene shall reach its positive consummation. But, in all likelihood, the time is coming much sooner, when you shall resign the breath of your nostrils, and bid a final adieu to everything around you. Let this earth and these heavens be as enduring as they may, to you they are fugitive as vanity. Time, with its mighty strides, will soon reach a future generation, and leave the present in death and in forgetfulness behind it. The grave will close upon every one of you, and that is the dark and silent cavern where no voice is heard, and the light of the sun never enters. 2. ON SPIRITUAL BLINDNESS. The awakening from spiritual death calls for a peculiar and a preternatural application. We say preternatural, for such is the obstinacy of this sleep of nature that no power within the compass of nature can put an end to it. It withstands all the demonstrations of arithmetic. Time moves on without disturbing it. The last messenger lifts many a note of preparation, but so deep is the lethargy that he is not heard. Every year do his approaching footsteps become more distinct and more audible; yet every year rivets the affections of sense more tenaciously than before to the scene that is around him. One would think that the fall of so many acquaintances on every side of him might at length have forced an awakening conviction into his heart. One would think that, standing alone and in mournful survey amid the wreck of former associations, the spell might have been already broken which so fastens him to a perishable world. Oh! why were the tears he shed over his children's grave not followed up by the deliverance of his soul from this sore infatuation? Why, as he hung over the dying bed of her with whom he had so oft taken counsel about the plans and the interests of life, did he not catch a glimpse of this world's vanity, and did not the light of truth break in upon his heart from the solemn and apprehended realities beyond it? But no. The enchantment, it would appear, is not so easily dissolved. The deep sleep which the Bible speaks of is not so easily broken. The conscious infirmities of age cannot do it. The frequent and touching specimens of mortality around us cannot do it. The rude entrance of death into our own houses cannot do it. The melting of our old society away from us, and the constant succession of new faces and new families in their place, cannot do it. The tolling of the funeral-bell, which has rung so many of our companions across the confines of eternity, and in a few little years will perform the same office for us, cannot do it. It often happens, in the visions of the night, that some fancied spectacle of terror or shriek of alarm have frightened us out of our sleep and our dream together. But the sleep of worldliness stands its ground against all this. We hear the moanings of many a death-bed, and we witness its looks of imploring anguish, and we watch the decay of life as it glimmers onward to its final extinction, and we hear the last breath, and we pause in the solemn stillness that follows it, till it is broken in upon by the bursting agony of the weeping attendants; and in one day more, we revisit the chamber of him, who in white and shrouded stateliness lies the effigy of what he was; and we lift the border that is upon the dead man's countenance, and there we gaze upon that brow so cold, and those eyes so motionless; and in two days more we follow him to the sepulchre, and, mingled with the earth among which he is laid, we behold the skulls and the skeletons of those who have gone before him; and it is the distinct understanding of nature, that soon shall every one of us go through the same process of dying, and add our mouldering bodies to the mass of corruption that we have been contemplating. But mark the derangement of nature, and how soon again it falls to sleep, among the delusions of a world, of the vanity of which it has recently got so striking a demonstration. Look onward but one single day more, and you behold every trace of this loud and warning voice dissipated to nothing. The man seemed as if he had been actually awakened, but it was only the start and the stupid glare of a moment, after which he has lain him down again among the visions and the slumbers of a soul that is spiritually dead. He has not lost all sensibility any more than the man that is in a midnight trance, who is busied with the imaginations of a dream. But he has gone back again to the sensibilities of a world which he is so speedily to abandon, and in these he has sunk all the sensibilities of that everlasting world on the confines of which he was treading but yesterday. All is forgotten amid the bargains, and the adventures, and the bustle, and the expectation of the scene that is immediately around him. Eternity is again shut out, and amid the dreaming illusions of a fleeting and fantastic day, does he cradle his infatuated soul into an utter unconcern about its coming torments, or its coming triumphs. Yes! we have heard the man of serious religion denounced as a visionary. But if that be a vision which is a short-lived deceit, and that be a sober reality which survives the fluctuations both of time and of fancytell us if such a use of the term be not an utter misapplication, and whether, with all the justice, as well as with all the severity of . truth, it may not be retorted upon the head of him who, though |