we could have prevented the first example of a plurality without the sanction of a previous and express ordinance upon the subject, and could then have acted without law. I now go further, and assert, that though two, three, or any number of examples may have been tolerated, we can, by a simple judicial decision, prevent the next which arises, and then act, not merely without law, but against precedent.

"It would detain you really too long for me to enter upon the principle of that division which exists in civil matters between the legislative and the judicial powers. It must be familiar to every student

of general law, and is laid down with admirable brevity and distinctness by De Lolme in his treatise 'On the British Constitution.' Now, it must be obvious to all, that in our General Assembly there is no such division. There is a something in the nature of our business which makes it safe for us to dispense with it; and thus it is that the same body, according to the nature of the question which comes before it, sits at one time in a legislative and at another in a judicial capacity. What that something is may be collected from an example. Parliament, in virtue of its legislative power, imposes a tax upon window-light, and in the act which it passes upon the subject, it may provide as many exemptions and modifications as it will. A question is started, whether the members themselves are obliged to pay this tax? This question would not come before parliament. Though this body have the power of framing the law, they have not the power of interpreting the law. The latter power lies with a judicial court, and the members of our legislature must stand at the bar of such a court on the same footing with the meanest subject of the land. It is clear as day, that if endowed with the office of interpreting their own laws, there would be a temptation to laxity too strong for poor human nature to be intrusted with; that if, along with the power of enacting, they had also the power of administering, they would find out for themselves a way of escaping, and would therefore feel no restraint in laying on the most oppressive and iniquitous regulations upon the rest of their fellow subjects; they would not care how heavy the burden was which, in their legislative capacity, they laid upon the shoulders of their countrymen, so long as they could contrive, in their judicial capacity, to be saved from the task of touching one of them with their own fingers; and thus, while they enslaved others, they could, by their judgments, render themselves independent of the laws which they had made.

bl.

"Now, this does not apply to the enactments of the General AssemIn this land of toleration the people can at all times withdraw themselves from the government of the Church; and its clergy, if they dared to move a single inch beyond the line which separates justice from oppression, may find themselves abandoned by all but the

members of their own body. It is true, that there is a risk of their being too indulgent to themselves in their judicial decisions. And so they would, if they had a secular interest to gain by it. I would not trust them, for example, with the question about window-lights more than I would trust Parliament. But I would trust them with the question about professorships; I would trust them with the questions about clerical character and clerical employments; I would trust them, in short, with all those spiritual questions of Church regulation and dis cipline which properly belong to them, on every one of which the vast majority are exempted from all personal feeling, and where popularity, and reputation, and a natural sense of justice all concur in urging them to a righteous decision.

"In the case before us, indeed, the clergy, with a spirit which does them immortal honor, were moving in a direction opposite to their own interests. If the decision had been purely theirs, they would have put down the pluralities long ago, and have proved to the world how safely the union of legislative and judicial powers might be confided to them. The mischief arising from such a union is, that a leaning to our own interests may pervert our judgments; and when lawyers, animated with the sacredness of principle, lift their voice against such a corruption as this, I welcome their presence here as the auspicious symptom of purity to our establishment. But, in point of fact, the tendencies of the clergy were disinterested, and nothing would have arrested their righteous decision, had not law, with all the forms of its confounding phraseology, bewildered them. They misunderstood their own powers, and got perplexed with the nomenclatures of another profession. They have been most provokingly puzzled out of their senses, and like a non-compos, have resigned the management of their affairs into other hands. .

"I am sure that the gentlemen of the law understand me. I bear upon my heart no disrespect or resentment for any of them. It is not against their appearance within these walls as men and as members of this court that I am lifting my voice. It is against the misapplication of the principles of one department to the business of another; and many of this honorable profession prove, by their speeches and their votes, that they feel and disown the errors of such a misapplication. I will not say for the gentlemen of our profession that we discern the misapplication; but I am sure that we feel it. I am confident that I speak to the feeling and experience of the vast majority of clergymen among us, when I assert as a fact, that the business of the one profession has been shackled and constrained, and brought into a state of most unnatural bondage by the principles of another. Now, is this right? Must not there be a deviation somewhere from the original purposes of our judicatories, if a clergyman with abundance of Scripture and abundance of common sense, feels himself thrown out of the concern,

and the whole is left to the management of other hands. There must be something wrong when a member, with the common accomplishments and the common education of a clergyman, is not qualified to share in the business of clergymen. I maintain that the same faith and the same Bible, which carry him with honor and effect through the business of his parish, should enable him to sustain his part in any one business which a clergyman has to meddle with. If he is not able, then it is because the business has been most unnaturally refined away from him. It is because it has been perverted into other channels; and he, to follow it, must find his way through all the intricacies of another profession. This is a fact which speaks for itself. It may call for a high reach of sagacity to assign the rationale of the fact, or to analyze it into its original elements. But the fact itself is obvious as the light of day. I am conscious of the odor of another profession in this place; and I see the ascendency of its peculiar principles as clearly with the eye of my mind, as I see at this moment the peculiar habiliment of this profession with the eye of my body. It stares me in the face that the affairs of the profession of divinity are not managed by divines but by lawyers, and upon this broad and undeniable fact I make the confident affirmation, that there is something wrong in the principle and philosophy of the whole business.

......

Then

Yes, it is a vile and unnatural oppression; and nature will not long sustain this outrage upon all its principles. I anticipate the day when the members of this Church will no longer suffer themselves to be quirked out of all their senses, when every head shall be freed from the bamboozlements of legal sophistry; and, nobly clearing our way from the trammels which have kept down every generous aspiring, we shall recover the tone and the elasticity of independent men. you may think that the Church will be the prey of every fluctuation. She will not. Her security lies in her constitution. I maintain that you will find a greater uniformity in the proceedings of 300 men at liberty to obey their own honest suggestions on every question that comes before them, than when under the guidance of a set of factitious principles which may be dexterously accommodated to every interest and to every opinion."

APPENDIX, N.-P. 441.

"EDINBURGH, November 14, 1849. "MY DEAR SIR-I shall now put in writing to you what I consider ' the most interesting anecdote I ever heard regarding Dr. Chalmers. I first heard it narrated upward of thirty years ago, when it was not uncommon for our moderate clergy to say, 'Oh, as for Chalmers, he is mad!'

"A gentleman and his wife, one Sabbath, going to church in Glas

gow, met a friend who spoke to them, and inquired where they were going. They said, 'To hear Dr. Chalmers.' He said, 'What! to hear that madman?' They said, if he would agree to go with them, and hear Dr. Chalmers for once, and if, after that, he persisted in talking in such a manner of him, they would never dispute the matter with him again. He accompanied them; and, singular to relate, it happened that, when Dr. Chalmers entered the pulpit that day, he gave out as his text, 'I am not mad, most noble Festus, but speak forth the words of soberness and truth;'* and the gentleman, who, I rather think, was a medical man, became from that day a changed man, a convert to evangelical Christianity. I had often heard and related this story without being able to authenticate it, till, on happening to mention it to my friend Dr. Welsh, he told me that he knew it to be perfectly authentic, and knew who the party was. I was delighted with this confirmation of the story, as I think it one of the most interesting anecdotes in modern biography. 1 am. yours ever, "To DR. HANNA. JOHN ANDERSON."

APPENDIX, O.—P. 444.

The letter which has given occasion to the present brief hotice of its author indicates, in a way scarcely to be mistaken, that he was not an ordinary or every-day man. Those who had the privilege of knowing Dr. Jones with any degree of intimacy, look back to the period when they enjoyed it with special interest and delight; for there was a charm about him which belongs not to many of those acquaintance. ships or friendships which, during even a lifetime, one has the opportunity of forming.

He was, without question, a person of great natural genius, and of rare gists, and eminently a man of God. His character has been faithfully portrayed by two of his clerical friends, who well knew his talents and his worth-the Rev. Dr. Hunter, minister of the Tron Church, Edinburgh, and the Rev. Dr. Makellar, then minister of Pencaitland-in the discourses which they delivered to the congregation of Lady Glenorchy's chapel immediately after his death, and which were published at the time. And nothing more is here intended than to preserve a few additional reminiscences of an individual, between whom and Dr. Chalmers there subsisted a strong reciprocal regard; who spent a most useful life at a very interesting period in the religious history of Scotland; and who, with an eagle eye, discerned the influence which Dr. Chalmers was destined to exercise upon that history. The recollection is still fresh, of a meeting between them, which took place some considerable time after Dr. Chalmers had been settled in Glasgow, and when a pause had occurred in their inter Posthumous Works, vol. vi., p. 226.

VOL. I.-Y

course. As soon as Dr. Jones entered the room, Dr. Chalmers rose from his chair with a spring of delight, which found instant utterance in his well-remembered exclamation-the characteristic and expressive Ha, ha! with which he so often greeted his friends-and advanced to meet him; while Dr. Jones, placidly coming up, returned the pressure of his hand, and then broke forth, "Thomas Chalmers! Thomas Chalmers! to see you again, to meet you once more, is as life from the dead!"

After alluding to a few circumstances in his early history, some of the features in the general character of Dr. Jones may here be recalled, and then one or two of those which he exhibited as the pastor of the congregation to whom he was so long the minister of God for good.

It may be said of Dr. Jones that he was an Englishman all through, and a Scotsman all over. He never lost the original impress of the former, nor failed in manifesting his perfect identification with the inerests and feelings of the latter. Born in the city of Gloucester, in 1754, and deprived of both his parents while yet a child, he was early cast upon the care of strangers. Perhaps this circumstance (for he never ceased to feel the influence of early impressions) may have led to the deep interest which he took in the Orphan Hospital of Edinburgh, the inmates of which formed for a long time part of his congregation. At first he was designed for a secular employment, and had actually entered upon it, when, having been thrown into the society of some members of the Methodist body, his mind became so deeply impressed with the momentous bearing of divine things, and so infused with earnest zeal for the salvation of his fellow men, that he abandoned his worldly prospects and pursuits, and resolved to consecrate himself to the ministry of the gospel. With this view he was introduced to Lady Huntingdon, and at the age of eighteen entered the academy instituted by her at Trevecca, near Brecknock, in Wales.

His introduction to Lady Glenorchy was one of those remarkable events in Providence which distinguished his life. He was invited to accompany a young gentleman residing at Plymouth to Exeter, on a visit to a pious and wealthy friend of the name of Holmes, where he found that Lady Glenorchy, then at Exeter, was expected to join the party at dinner. This led to his becoming acquainted with that lady, by whom he was requested to conduct family worship at her lodging on the same evening. This he did, and afterward regularly officiated as her domestic chaplain at Plymouth, where for a time she had taken up her residence. His introduction to Lady Glenorchy was thus brought about, as he himself said, "by what some would call accide it, but which I call a very peculiar and gracious providence," on which nearly all his usefulness and comfort, during a long life, were afterward found to turn.