the prelude of Christian teaching. They had first tried the civilizing process, and most egregiously failed; they had afterwards, and at hap-hazard, read to the obdurate savages the account of our Saviour's death from the Evangelists, by which they were arrested and moved in an instant; and this process, which the Moravians had afterwards adopted, was the secret of the wonderful success of their missions. These were subjects into which his heart fully entered, as a Christian divine and a lover of science, and therefore he brought to each of these productions his usual careful research and persuasive eloquence. It is not, however, to be thought that amidst such congenial occupations the intellectual labour necessary for the duties of the pulpit was in any way remitted. On the contrary, many of his sermons, prepared at this period for the simple rustics of Kilmany, were afterwards preached before crowds of the most accomplished of our island in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and London, and afterwards committed to the press, almost without any alteration. The highest eloquence is the utterance of a full heart that cannot be silent. And such was the eloquence of Chalmers. During three years he had been intensely occupied with the most important and soul-engrossing of all themes: they brought to his awakened perceptions the charm of a new existence; and these sermons were but the expressions of love, and wonder, and delight, which every fresh discovery of that new existence evolved from him. And where, in such a state, was the need of listening thousands, or the deep-muttered thunder of popular applause? He must thus write though no eye should peruse the writing, and give it utterance although it were only to the trees or the winds. And when such productions are spoken before living men, the orator, while his auditors appear before him in glimpses and at intervals, does not pause to gauge their intellectuality, their rank, or their numbers. He only feels that they are immortal beings, and that he is commissioned to proclaim to them the tidings of eternity.
But the time had now arrived when this training, in the course of Providence, was to be turned to its proper account, and such powers to find their proper field of action. His renown as a preacher, by which all Fifeshire was stirred, had gone abroad, while his literary reputation and intellectual powers were stamped by his published productions beyond the possibility of doubt or cavil. In this case, too, as was most fitting, he did not seek, but was sought. Dr. Macgill, minister of the Tron church, Glasgow, had been translated to the divinity chair of the university of that city, and the task of finding a successor to the vacant pulpit devolved upon the town-council. The name of the minister of Kilmany was forthwith heard, and, after due consideration, the usual overtures were made to him to accept the charge of the Tron church. But tempting though such an offer might be, the rural minister demurred and held back. He could not persuade himself to abandon a people whom his lately-awakened spirit had inspired with a kindred sympathy, and who were wont every Sabbath to throng their long-deserted pews with such eager solicitude, and listen to his teaching with such solemn interest. But, above all, the secularities of a great city charge, and the inroads which it would make upon his time and attention, filled him with alarm. "I know of instances," he wrote in reply, "where a clergyman has been called from the country to town for his talent at preaching; and when he got there, they so belaboured him with the drudgery of their institutions, that they smothered and extinguished the very talent for which they had adopted him. The purity and independence of the clerical office are not sufficiently respected in great towns. He comes among them a clergyman,
