to say, in the words of Æschines, "What would you have said if you had seen him discharge all this thunder-storm of eloquence?" They were published at the commencement of 1817; and the avidity with which they were read is shown by the fact, that 6000 copies were disposed of in a month, and nearly 20,000 within the course of the year. Nothing like it had occurred in the publication of sermons either in England or Scotland; and while the most illiterate were charmed with the production, the learned, the scientific, and the critical, read, admired, and were convinced. London would not rest until it had seen and heard the living man; and Dr. Chalmers was invited to preach the anniversary sermon for the London Missionary Society. Thither he accordingly went, and delivered a discourse in Surrey chapel, on the 14th May. The service was to commence at eleven, but so early as seven in the morning that vast building of 3000 sittings was crowded, while thousands of disappointed comers were obliged to go away. An account of what followed, written home by Mr. Smith, one of his friends, who accompanied him from Glasgow, is thus expressed: "I write under the nervousness of having heard and witnessed the most astonishing display of human talent that perhaps ever commanded sight or hearing. Dr. Chalmers has just finished the discourse before the Missionary Society. All my expectations were overwhelmed in the triumph of it. Nothing from the Tron pulpit ever exceeded it, nor did he ever more arrest and wonder-work his auditors. I had a full view of the whole place. The carrying forward of minds never was so visible to me: a constant assent of the head from the whole people accompanied all his paragraphs, and the breathlessness of expectation permitted not the beating of a heart to agitate the stillness." Other demands for sermons followed; for, in the words of "Wilberforce's Diary," "all the world was wild about Dr. Chalmers." Even Canning, who was one of his hearers, and who was melted into tears by his sermon for the Hibernian Society, declared that, "notwithstanding the northern accent and unpolished manner of the speaker, he had never been so arrested by any kind of oratory." "The tartan," he added, "beats us all." But the best and most valuable testimony was that of the Rev. Robert Hall, himself the Chalmers of England, whose generous heart rejoiced in the eclipse which he had just sustained by the arrival of his northern brother; and in writing to him, after his return to Glasgow, he says: "It would be difficult not to congratulate you on the unrivalled and unbounded popularity which attended you in the metropolis. . . . . The attention which your sermons have excited is probably unequalled in modern literature; and it must be a delightful reflection, that you are advancing the cause of religion in innumerable multitudes of your fellow-creatures, whose faces you will never behold till the last day."
It is now time to turn from Dr. Chalmers in his study and pulpit, to Dr. Chalmers in his hard-working life of every-day usefulness. And here we shall find no dreaming theorist, contented with fireside musing upon the best plans of ameliorating the evils of society, or daunted midway by the difficulties of the attempt. Considering what he had already done, there was none who could more justly have claimed the full privileges of literary leisure and retirement. But when he threw off the throng of extraneous occupation that surrounded him, it was only that he might have room for equally arduous employment, in which the "full proof of his ministry" more especially consisted. It was not enough that he should see and address his congregation; he must visit the houses, examine the families, and become acquainted with the individuals of
