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 tilled with all the fulness 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, a native [Greek], 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. Chalmers's 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 kosmos—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 transforms 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 practically 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 temperament, 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 proposition, 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.