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— •^^ mm ^^^—A Series of Discourses on the Christian Hevelation , viewed in Connexion with the Moderh Astronomy . By Thomas Chalmers , D . D . Minister of the Tron Church , Glasgow . Fifth Edition . Glasgow and . London . Pp . 275 .
1817 . IF popularity were an unerring test of the merits of authors , the work before us might safely defy criticism . It has not only exceeded in speedy
circulation any collection of sermons within our memory , but has fairly surpassed the most popular poems of the day , and rivalled the newest and most fashionable novels . Nor has the
success of its author , la . his personal ministrations , been less splendid . He has drawn together , by the fyme of his eloquence , all ranks and classes and characters ; senators and artiznns ,
peers and mechanics , patriots and pensioners , ladies of every rank and of every age , persons of all religious and persons of no religion , who have eagerly pressed to catch even the most distant accents of this Northern
Prodigy , Never perhaps were heat , and crowd , and want of accommodation represented in the newspapers with such attractive force since the days of the ** Critic "—and never were these charming announcements more successful . And if we are to believe the
same faithful and disinterested authorities , the auditors felt that their highest expectations had been more than exceeded . ** A wave of delighted sensibility , " such as Dr . Chalmers seat through the " mighty throng" of innumerable angels , * seems to have un-? Seep . 169 .
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dulated over all Hie benches ; - * -and , if we ai * e rightly informed , the more decisive and apparent wave of handkerchiefs was only restrained by a timely recollection , that tke place of worship was not a theatre . To crown the
whole , the newspaper admirers of the orator called on the nation to award to him the palm of modern genius and to place him next to Milton in the British temple of fame ! AH this , however , goes but a little way towards proving his intrinsic
excellence . Those who are carried away by eloquence of popular preachers are not precisely the parties who confer that permanent renown , which is tba decisive proof and the true reward of genius . The voice of the people may be very potent in political discussions .
but it is feeble in all abstract questions and matters which relate to imagination and taste . The majority of those who occasionally read or hear might , indeed , confer a certain duration © n thkags in themselves worthless—if they would be constant is their admiration .
But this they cannot foe . Having no fixed principles of taste ; no real perception of intellectual excellence ; no nice and fine discrimination of beauty or truth j no lasting sympathy with sublimity or grandeur ; they love a
perpetual variety , and are ever transferring their applause to n «» w favourites . Those , on the other hand , who are gifted with a true sensibility to the works of genius , judge from feelings which are uniform and deeply interwoven with the whole tenoor of their
existence . They Jove works of imagination * merely for their brilliant and effective passages , but for those retiring beauties which escape ail eyes , ungifted by something of * ' the vision and the faculty divine . " These too do not lose their attraction , by frequent observance ; ibr they are calculated to awaken delicious trains of
meditation , " ever charming , ever new . " They become more dear to t he man of taste the more he observes them . He recurs to them as to recollections of infancy , which time and frequeut contemplation only render more sacred . His admiration , therefore , is calculated to endure . And as the sentiments by which his love and veneration are
excited are common to minds of a similar temperament—to all , in &ct , who haye a real and genuine sympathy with the
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418 Review . ' —Chalmerss Astronomical Discourses .
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their eyes , so that they see not with their eyes , nor hear with their ears , nor understand with their heart , nor be converted and healed : if the seed they sow shall indeed be as the grass
on the house-tops which withereth before it groweth up , the disadvantage will not be to them , they will have discharged their duty ; and He who rewards the conduct of his creatures ,
not according to its success but its virtue , will fill them with a more elevated and lasting joy than those have ever experienced , who are " in great povieer , and who spread like a green bay-tree T * S . S .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1817, page 418, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2466/page/42/
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