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 he led. And it does soften our conception of him whose hand was against every man, and every man’s hand against him, when we read of his mother’s 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 14th and 15th 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 colors of a butterfly’s wing, or the shapeless glories of evening clouds, to the eye—in reading aloud such passages as these: “Heshbon shall cry and Elealeh—their voice shall be heard to Jabez—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 gone to Aiath, he is passed to Migron; at Michmash he hath laid up his carriages: Ramath is afraid; Gibeah of Saul is fled—Lift up thy voice, O daughter of Gallim: cause it to be heard unto Laish, O poor Anathoth. Madmenah is removed; the inhabitants of Gebim gather themselves to flee. The fields of Heshbon languish—the vine of Sibmah—I will water thee with my tears, O 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 neighboring 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,—the 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 infant’s; 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,[51] and how alone we could escape—we all 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 upon 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 eloquence; 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 he 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; he was not given to frames of mind; he preferred states to forms—substances to circumstances. There is something of everything 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 politics, 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 acknowledgment 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 every thing else as barren to his reader as it has been to himself; but he looks abroad upon his Father’s 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.