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which he lays before you a list of all the promises annexed to particular duties, or adapted to particular situations. You have nothing of his own; it is a mere collection of texts. I lately took it up when under one of those visitations of perplexity and distrust which you describe, and it did what all my own intellectual processes were unable to accomplish-it calmed and reassured me. Among the splendid galaxy of comfort which his page of quotations laid before me, I was particularly charmed with the two following:

"Commit thy works unto the Lord, and thy thoughts shall be established.'-Prov. xvi. 3.

"It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord.'—Lam. iii. 26.

"Go on and prosper, my dear Sir; and my fervent prayer is, that you be 'rooted and built up in Christ, and stablished in the faith.'-Yours, with much regard,

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THOMAS CHALMERS."

DUNDEE, January 30, 1812. "MY DEAR SIR,-I feel a lively interest on this subject; but every day brings me mortifying proofs that even zeal on religious subjects does not imply ultimate Christianity-the regulation of the heart and the conduct. My progress here is imperceptible, although, without such progress, I know the Bible to be a dead letter. It is easy to declaim about the cause of Christianity; but the great concern of the individual is his own soul; and I am short, far short, of that spirit which delights in the sacrifice of which the world never hears, and which does all things in the simplicity of faith in Jesus. On perusing my Journal, I am discountenanced at the vacillation, and the coldness, and the folly it exhibits, and still more that, with this record before me, I still go on to accumulate its accusations.-Yours, JAMES ANDERSON."

"KILMANY MANSE, February 5, 1812.

"MY DEAR SIR,— * * * I can well understand what you state to me in your last, that zeal raised by the excitement of a particular object may be found to consist with a faulty or diseased constitution of the inner man. But on the other hand, I have to state to you, that the peace and the joy and the delight attending what you have so aptly denominated the closer intimacies of the Christian, appear to me to be founded not on the complacency of the heart in its own virtues, but on the confiding repose of an humble and acquiescing spirit when it commits all to the sufficiency of Christ its Saviour. It is peace and joy in believing. Its plea is not that its sins are few, but that the mercies of God in Christ are great. The rejoicing of its hope lies not in its own attainments, but in the frankness and kindness and liberality of the invitation. Where sin abounded, grace much more abounds; and the giving up of all in quiet and thankful confidence to a Mediator and High Priest, forms the starting-point from which I date its only sure and effectual progress in the accomplishments of the Christian. I see all this, though, like yourself, I have not attained to it. I do not yet hold fast my confidence; but I pray both in your behalf and in my own, that we may, in the good time of an all-wise God, reach this most desirable consummation. In the mean time, it is good for a man to hope and quietly to wait for the salvation of the Lord.'

"I conclude with an extract from Baxter. He is treating of an extreme case, though both of us perhaps may feel in some degree the application to ourselves :

"As we have need to call the thoughts of careless sinners inwards, and turn them from the creature and sin upon themselves; so we have need to call the thoughts of self-perplexing melancholy persons outwards, for it is their disease to be still grinding upon themselves. * * When you are poring on

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your hearts to search whether the love of God be there or no, it were wiser to be thinking of the infinite amiableness of God, and that will cause it whether it were there before or not. So, instead of poring on your hearts to know whether they are set on heaven, lift up your thoughts to heaven, and think of its glory, and that will raise them thither, and give you and shew you that which you were searching for. Bestow that time in planting holy desires in the garden of your heart which you bestow in routing and puzzling yourselves in searching whether it be there already. We are such dark confused things, that a sight of ourselves is enough to raise a loathing and horror in our minds, and make them melancholy. But in God and glory there is nothing to discourage our thoughts, but all to delight them if Satan do not misrepresent them to us.'

"So far Baxter. My prayer to God is for your soul's health. I long to see you; and in the mean time rest assured, that my friendship and correspondence with you fill up a mighty space in the circle of my concerns.-Yours most truly,

THOMAS CHALMERS,"

In the course of a few months Mr. Anderson's religious convictions became so strong, and his zeal so irrepressible, that he resolved to relinquish business, and devote himself to the Christian ministry. With the view of preparing for the sacred office, he repaired to Edinburgh, and in the session of 1812-13, enrolled himself as a student of moral philosophy. It was only the third winter after the appointment of Dr. Thomas Brown as Mr. Stewart's successor, and the excitement had not yet subsided which attended the first delivery of that brilliant course of lectures, in which the most subtile metaphysical analysis robed itself in the drapery of a most fascinating eloquence. Mr. Anderson's excitable spirit was thrown into the tumults of

a new, and, in some respects, conflicting mental agitation. Rushing with eager footstep into the fresh regions of speculation which were open to him, he even pressed beyond the boundaries which his new guide had traced. His genius had earned for him the highest university honours, and raised the brightest expectations both of his eminence in society and usefulness in the Church; but, although he still survives, it pleased God to disappoint these hopes by one of those sovereign and distressful dispensations of His providence, for the full explanation of which we must wait till time is exhausted, and we can look back on these scenes of struggle from the realms of security."

CHAPTER XI.

REGULAR AND EARNEST STUDY OF THE BIBLE-FORMATION OF THE BRITISH AND FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY-CONSTITUTION OF THE KILMANY BIBLE ASSOCIATION-THE ACCUMULATION OF LITTLES— JOURNAL OF 1812-HIS MARRIAGE.

RICHARD BAXTER, who at this period was a favourite author with Mr. Chalmers, has left behind him this impressive testimony "To tell you the truth, while I busily read what other men said in their controversies, my mind was so prepossessed with their notions, that I could not possibly see the truth in its own native and naked evidence; and when I entered into public disputations, though I was truly willing to know the truth, my mind was so forestalled with borrowed notions, that I chiefly studied how to make good the opinions which I had received, and ran farther from the truth. Yea, when I read the truth, I did not consider and understand it; and when I heard it from them whom I opposed in wrangling disputations, or read it in books of controversy, I discerned it least of all; till at last, being in my sickness cast far from home, where I had no book but my Bible, I set myself to study the truth from thence; and so, by the blessing of God, discovered more in one week than I had done before in seventeen years' reading, hearing, and wrangling."

His own intuitive sagacity suggested to Mr. Chalmers what experience had taught Baxter. From the beginning of his religious course, he was most sensitively afraid lest the truth, as God had revealed it, should come to him distorted

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