ally to enlarge his conceptions upon the subject, so that more than twenty years after, when the work reappeared in his "Institutes of Theology," it was with the internal evidences added to the external. In this way, he surrendered a long-cherished and beloved theory to more matured convictions, and satisfied, while he answered, the objections which the first appearance of his treatise had occasioned.
These were not the only literary labours of Chalmers at this period. About the same time that his article on Christian evidence appeared in the "Encyclopædia," he published a pamphlet, entitled, "The Influence of Bible Societies upon the Temporal Necessities of the Poor." It had been alleged, that the parochial associations formed in Scotland in aid of the Bible Society, would curtail the voluntary parish funds that were raised for the relief of the poor. This argument touched Chalmers very closely; for he was not only an enthusiastic advocate for the relief of poverty by voluntary contribution instead of compulsory poors'-rates, but also an active agent in the multiplication of Bible-Society associations over the country. He therefore endeavoured to show, that these different institutions, instead of being hostile, would be of mutual aid to each other; and that Bible Societies had a tendency not only to stimulate and enlarge Christian liberality, but to lessen the amount of poverty, by introducing a more industrious and independent spirit among the poor. This was speedily followed by a review of "Cuvier's Essay on the Theory of the Earth," which was published in the "Christian Instructor," and in which Chalmers boldly ventured to call in question the generally received chronology which theologians have ventured to engraft upon the Mosaic account of the creation. They had asserted hitherto that the world was not more than six thousand years old, and adduced the sacred history as their warrant, while the new discoveries in geology incontestibly proved that it must have had a much earlier origin. Here, then, revelation and the facts of science were supposed to be completely at variance, and infidelity revelled in the contradiction. But Chalmers boldly cut the knot, not by questioning the veracity of Moses, but the correctness of his interpreters; and he asked, "Does Moses ever say that there was not an interval of many ages betwixt the first act of creation, described in the first verse of the book of Genesis, and said to have been performed at the beginning, and those more detailed operations, the account of which commences at the second verse? Or does he ever make us to understand, that the genealogies of man went any further than to fix the antiquity of the species, and, of consequence, that they left the antiquity of the globe a free subject for the speculations of philosophers?" These questions, and the explanations with which they were followed, were of weight, as coming not only from a clergyman whose orthodoxy was now unimpeachable, but who had distinguished himself so lately in the illustration of Christian evidence;—and, perhaps, it is unnecessary to add, that the solution thus offered is the one now generally adopted. The subject of "Missions" next occupied his pen, in consequence of an article in the "Edinburgh Review," which, while giving a notice of Lichtenstein's "Travels in Southern Africa," took occasion, by lauding the Moravian missionaries, to disparage other missions, as beginning their instructions at the wrong end, while the Moravian brethren had hit upon the true expedient of first civilizing savages, and afterwards teaching them the doctrines of Christianity. Chalmers showed that, in point of fact, this statement was untrue; and proved, from the testimony of the brethren themselves, that the civilization of their savage converts was the effect, and not the cause—the sequel rather than
