the feelings of the people of Glasgow at this moment. Poor Dr. Balfour was seized with apoplexy on Monday upon George Street, and taken into the nearest house, where he still lies, and is not expected to live another day.

I received your manuscript a few weeks ago, and have read it, I assure you, with great satisfaction. To pronounce upon it critically would require a more elaborate examination than I can possibly afford; but I can at least say that I never read James with a more entire impression of the unity of what at one time appeared disjointed, of the significancy of what at one time appeared dark, of the pertinency of what at one time appeared irrelevant, than I have done through the medium of your translation. There is a light, and a power, and a moral impression about your performance that there is not about the version of the apostle in our authorized Scriptures; and if you can substantiate on good philosophical grounds all the reformations that you propose, you will indeed offer a very valuable, as well, I am persuaded, as a very acceptable contribution to biblical literature. If you have confidence in the soundness of your various renderings, I regard the work as altogether worthy of publication.

You have certainly succeeded in sustaining a more continuous process of argument and reflection by your version than one can discover to be in the common one.

You will confer a great favor upon me by an occasional letter. What I feel the need of is, that power of faith which must ever accompany the reality of faith, and which, if wanting, may well lead us to suspect the reality. What I have long experienced of my own mind is, that it is quite possible to describe the whole range of Christian doctrine in the terms of a consistent and satisfying argumentation—to make use of all the terms in theology, and bring them into good logical arrangement, just as you make use of the symbols of an algebraical process, and conduct that process in a way that is unexceptionable, while the quantities represented by the symbols are not at all present to the mind throughout the whole

process of the investigation. I long for more of the life and freshness of an actual contact with these things for the kingdom of God as abundantly in power as it is in word-in short, for such manifestations of the first and elementary ideas as, I am persuaded, no play or performance of natural talent can ever conduct me to. It is here that I feel my helplessness— it is here, I believe, where the accomplished philosopher is on a footing with the most untaught and illiterate of the peasantry-it is here, I am persuaded, where light must be created and sent into our hearts by the immediate hand of God, instead of being excogitated by the laboring of the human faculties. I am awake to a sense of necessity and dependence; and I await the performance of the promise, “Awake, O sinner, and Christ shall give thee light." It is given to prayer, while it is withheld from presumption—it is given often to the intercessions of others, while it is withheld from all that a man can ask or do for himself; and believing as I do, that when a man goes in quest of Christian truth in proud dependence upon himself, he gives an ungodliness to the very outset of his inquiries; that God must be acknowledged in this way, as well as in every other, ere He direct our path. I have too high an opinion of prayer as an engine of mighty operation, not to feel a desire that I may have a part and an interest in your prayers, that God may visit me with such communications of light and of love, as to give me a distaste for the world, and a spiritual relish of Him as the strength of my heart and my satisfying portion.

I am in the press just now with a volume of Congregational sermons. I feel the poorness and the barrenness of them all; and yet somehow or other I have prevailed upon myself thus to come forward with them. I see a mighty and untrodden interval between the state of my own mind and the spirituality of other Christians; but I have the hope of being the more confirmed by all this in the attitude of the apostle who had no confidence in himself, but, rejoicing in the Lord Jesus, was enabled to serve God in the spirit.

I shall return your manuscript to Mr. Stirling. I hope I have not done wrong in showing it to a neighbor who takes an interest in these things, but who, I am persuaded, will read it with a simple view to his own edification. It is my prayer that you may be useful, and eminently so, in the Church of Christ. What we want is laborers, with or without ordination either may wield the instrument of God's word, and in the hands of neither will it return void. Have you seen Edwards' "Treatise on Prayer?" A season of revival in the Church is generally preceded by a season of prayer. I stand sadly in need of your devotional frame all the day long-of the religion of feeling-of a real sensibility toward Him who is both a just God and a Savior-who has so wondrously blended in one demonstration the infinity of His love with the infinity of His holiness. Believe me, my dear sir, yours most truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. CCXLIX.-To T. ERSKINE, ESQ.

EDINBURGH, 29th December, 1843. MY DEAR SIR-I read both your letter and that of Madame de Stael with much interest and affection. These are trying and sifting times, but I have the confident hope that good will come out of them. In particular, I am most happy to observe that our Free Church ministers are manifesting a vigor and a spirituality which I never before witnessed, even in them, and which, under God, I can only ascribe to their being actuated by the feeling and the conscious freedom of now emancipated Meanwhile, things are evidently converging to a crisis, which I trust will usher in a brighter day both of Christian love and Christian liberty.

men.

I most cordially agree with you in thinking that our journey through Normandy should never be forgotten. In good earnest, I assure you that I often look back upon it as the most brilliant and interesting passage of my by-gone life, though the death of the poor duchess casts a deep shade over it.

I should rejoice if we met eye to eye. I feel convinced of

a radical and essential unity between us, however diverse and distorting the media might be between our respective visions and certain of those questions on which we may chance to differ. My fatigues compel me now to write by my daughter Grace, who with Mrs. Chalmers desires kindest regards.. I ever am, my dear sir, yours most truly,

THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. CCL.-TO REV. JOHN FOSTER.

GLASGOW, 8th November, 1821. MY DEAR SIR-I lately saw Mr. Jeffrey, the editor of the "Edinburgh Review," and spoke to him at some length about the conduct and character of that widely-spread journal. I told him how much it would add to its usefulness, did he not prohibit all his general contributors from ever touching on the subject of Christianity, and, making room for a theological department, admit an occasional article on that subject from one who was soundly acquainted with it, and able to render it impressively to his readers. My time is so much occupied that I have abandoned that sort of literature entirely. But I took the liberty of suggesting you as one whose occasional contributions would be of eminent service to the work; and to yourself I add, that, through the influence and diffusion of that work, such a direction may be given to your labors as to be of the first consequence to the best of causes. Mr. Jeffrey requested me to write you, and express the pleasure it would give him could you be prevailed upon to send him an article; and I may here suggest to you, that from the very general character of that work hitherto, it were greatly better, instead of advocating one species of Christian partisanship against another, to advocate revelation in general against infidelity, or to expatiate in those more catholic tracts of thought and sentiment, where one might keep from that sort of controversy which is so often confounded by a superficial public with the narrowness of sectarianism.

Do let me know what you think of this. I shall only say,

that I would prefer to see your lucubrations in the " Edinburgh" rather than in the "Eclectic Review," because of the greater publicity and influence that they would thus attain; while I still persist in another opinion that I have long expressed on the subject of your literary labors, and that is, that I regret you do not give more of your strength to the rearing of such works as may come out ostensibly and independently from your pen-being thoroughly persuaded that you can publish nothing in this way which will not prove a permanent accession to the Christian literature of our country.

I can truly say for myself that I read no compositions with greater excitement than your own. I perused both your "Missionary Sermon" and your book on "Popular Ignorance" with unmeasured delight; and one passage more especially, of the latter, has kept a very tenacious hold of me, that in which you adventured, and with marvelous success, to portray the popular imagination of God-a description that came home so much to my own consciousness as to assure me how idolatrous and mean were all my conceptions of the Deity.

There is one thing more that I beg to propose to you ere I am done. I am aware of your taste for landscape, and of the full gratification it would find in the scenery of our Highlands. I have myself gone a very little way into that sublime and interesting region, and I would most willingly give up three weeks to the enterprise of penetrating right through to the most northerly point of Scotland, were it in the capacity of a guide and companion to you. I beg that you would think of coming to Glasgow next summer, and taking up your abode with me till we set out on this expedition.

Meanwhile, you will oblige me greatly by as speedy an answer as you can afford to this communication. Mrs. Chalmers joins in kindest regards to you. I am, my dear sir, yours very affectionately, THOMAS CHALMERS.