[CLAYDON HOUSE, BUCKS, 28th April, 1847.—MY DEAR SIR-AM I taking too great a liberty with you, and presuming too much on my former acquaintance with you, if I request some information as to your views on the Government Education Scheme?

I have read with much interest the speeches of Dr. Candlish and Mr. Begg in the Free Presbytery of Edinburgh, on the 7th inst., as reported in the "Scottish Guardian" of the 13th, and especially your letter of the 3d, read at that meeting.

In paragraph No. 1, you say, "I believe that there are modifications upon their scheme which might be made, and which would give no other character to the movement on the part of the state than a desire for the elevation of the people in general intelligence and scholarship; an object which we should no more resist," &c., &c.

Am I trespassing too much on you, if I ask you to tell me what those modifications are? I desire to know whether any suggestions could be made to the government, which if adopted, would render their plan unobjectionable in your opinion. I am, my dear sir, yours very faithfully and truly, HARRY VERNEY.

To Rev. Dr. Chalmers.]

No. CCCLVIII.-TO SIR HARRY VERNEY.

EDINBURGH, 4th May, 1847. MY DEAR SIR HARRY-I have read your letter with the greatest interest, and regret that, on the eve of setting out upon a distant journey, I can not reply to it at any length. The modifications that I should like would be that the government were to drop the requisition of any certificate from the managers of the school, that they were satisfied with the religious progress of the scholars; and I should further like that there was no power granted either to the Church of England, or to any other denomination, to force their peculiar Catechism upon scholars against the will of their parents, and still less to force attendance against that will on their town places of worship. I am, my dear Sir Harry, with the greatest esteem, THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. CCCLIX.-ON VISITING A FAMILY IN WHICH A SUDDEN DEATH HAD OCCURRED.

MY DEAR SIR-I am so particularly taken up by previous

arrangements to-day, and, I fear, also to-morrow, that I shall not be able to see you again so soon personally as I could wish. But the scene of last night makes me very desirous of communicating with you some way or other. I was very thankful you invited me to witness it, for it was a truly impressive one, and eminently fitted to stir up in the heart of every beholder a salutary feeling of the vain and transient character of our present pilgrimage; and I trust I felt that it is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting, for that is indeed the end of all men, and that the living may lay it to heart. In a disaster so big, and at the same time so sudden and unlooked-for as that which has come upon yourself and family, it is impossible to minister any effectual consolation without you go to the root of the matter-every thing short of that argument which embraces the great elements of religion, and eternity, and the soul, and its meetness for the enjoyment of God in heaven, is but superficial and vain. The healing influence of time will bring round the mind of an afflicted man, even without Christianity, to its wonted tone; but how desirable that our comfort should be secured on a better foundation, that it should come to a place in the heart not by the mere wearing away of sorrow, but by the firm suggestions of an understanding exercising itself on the realities of faith, and fetching from the Divine word such considerations as will bring peace and the peaceable fruits of righteousness along with them. You feel now what you never felt so nearly and so experimentally before, that the world ought never to be counted a place of rest. It is indeed a great delusion ever to feel otherwise; but still it is a delusion which is always hanging about us, and that attaches to the fallen and estranged state of our natures from God. At this moment the delusion is in your case for a time broken up. I prophecy that it will again return, if there be no visitation of grace from on high-no anointing which remaineth- -no favorable and abiding demonstration of the Spirit of God to advance your present feeling into a practical hab

it and principle of the soul. You are at this moment made most intimately and effectually to understand, that to lean upon the world is to lean upon a foundation of dust; that to build your tabernacle here, is to build your house upon the sand; and that nothing will fill and satisfy the soul, and enable it to stand all the changes and vicissitudes of this eventful pilgrimage, but a renouncing of the world as our home, and taking the inheritance that endureth forever as our portion. I know nothing that more effectually hinders a man from venturing his all on Christ than that divided state of affections, in either of which he would like to reserve a portion to himself." You will not come unto me that you may have life." You never, my dear sir, were in more favorable circumstances for an unqualified resignation of all into His hands than at this moment; to whom else, alas! can you go? You never got so buried to the world as now, when the dearest of all its objects has been torn away from you-when the desire of your heart has been cut down by a stroke-when your family are all in sad grief, desponding under the pressure of a great, unlooked-for, and overwhelming visitation. Do improve the favorable season with all your might to be a new creature in Christ Jesus; let all old things be done away, and all things become new; the very retirement will animate and bear you up under the heaviness of your present circumstances, and present calamity will indeed be a blessing in disguise if it lead you to a close alliance with Him, who, though a God, is also a Savior. I am, &c.,

THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. CCCLX.-To MRS. M'CORQUODALE.

GLASGOW, 6th October, 1817.

DEAR MADAM-I should have replied long ago to your kind letter, but I have of late been a good deal occupied. It gives me sincere pleasure to be informed of your earnest desire after that which is right, and more particularly of your high sense of the necessity of religiously training your young family. I

pray that you may be directed by Him who is the Father of Light, and will give wisdom to all who believingly ask it.

There is a very leading and prominent doctrine of the Bible, without the belief of which and influence of which I fear that all our longings after excellence will turn out to be vain and impotent aspirations-I mean the doctrine of salvation by a crucified Savior. To think of obtaining this favor of God by mere unaccompanied exertion, and that too in the face of God's own declaration, that without Christ we can do nothing, is in fact to insult Him by a vain and polluted offering. Let us accept of forgiveness on the footing that is held out to us even that Christ died for our offenses; and let us render obedience in the strength of that Spirit which is ever in readiness to be given to the prayer of believers, and we shall serve God with a holiness, and a love, and a spirituality that do not enter as ingredients at all into the tasteful morality of the world; and the whole course, and motive, and character of our virtue will be so different from what it was be fore, that all old things will be done away, and all things will become new.

I beg your indulgence for these observations; they come from one who is deeply sensible of his shortcomings from what is right. But I trust that through earnest attention to the Bible, and prayer for that Spirit who alone can enlighten us in the discernment of its doctrine, and, above all, steadfast confidence in Him who casteth out none who come unto Him, we shall each of us be enabled to maintain that walk of faith and of holiness which leads to the Jerusalem above.

Give my best compliments to Mr. M'Corquodale, in which Mrs. Chalmers joins; and with best wishes for yourself and family, believe me, my dear madam, yours most truly,

THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. CCCLXI.-To MRS. M'CORQUODALE.

ST. ANDREWS, 17th October, 1827.

MY DEAR MADAM-I very sincerely condole with you on

the heavy bereavement which you have been called upon to suffer, the first loss, I understand in your family, and which, in the absence yet of all personal experience myself upon the subject, I should regard as far more trying to nature than the dissolution of any other relationship. Affection points more strongly downward as from a parent to children-than in any other direction; and when I think of the suddenness of your daughter's death, her interesting age, and the many cares and attentions which the delicacy of her health has required from you, and which all go to strengthen affection and add to its tenderness the shock you have experienced must be of no common severity. And what other comfort has one liable to the same visitations to offer, but those considerations which are familiar to all, though practically felt by few, even the evanescence of our present world, and the bliss and brightness of that invisible heaven, where sorrow and separation are unknown.

We hear on these occasions of melancholy of the healing influence of time, and refuge is often taken in such expedients, as business, variety, and entertainments. These may soothe, but they do not sanctify. They drown the painful recollection; whereas the recollection should be kept alive, and made the instrument of weaning our desires and expectations from a scene so transitory. The worldly would stifle the thought-the Christian softens it by pointing his eye upward to God and forward to eternity. I am yours, &c., THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. CCCLXII.-To MISS M'CORQUODALE.

MORNINGSIDE, 24th December, 1843. MY DEAR MISS M'CORQUODALE-It is of great consequence to me that I should remain all this week in the country; but I am unwilling that it should pass without converse of some sort with your family.

I am very far from wishing to overtask Mrs. M'Corquodale with too much in quantity. Such is the preciousness of Bible