ing account is a fiction, except the strong internal evidence of its improbability; and shall be glad to find it is genuine, as, if so, it may doubtless be used with great advantage in influencing the natives to adopt more extensively the prac tice there recommended.

INVESTIGATOR.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

I KNOW of no spectacle more gratifying to the Christian mind, than

the crowded auditories which attend many of our churches and public charitable meetings. When I compare this state of things with former years, I find abundant reason to bless God and to congratulate my country. There is, however, in most crowded churches and public meetings, a physical evil of some magnitude, arising from the absence of suitable ventilation. There are comparatively few churches or public rooms in which the principles of ventilation have been duly considered in the original construction; and even where the original construction is unexception able, the addition of galleries, and other partial changes, often render it unavailing.

I trust an allusion to this subject will not be considered unimportant, at a time when so many new churches are about to be erected, and so many old ones to be enlarged. It is of the greatest consequence that the point should be duly attended to; and that our ecclesiastical structures should be formed upon the most scientific principles for perfect ventilation, without partial currents. I am acquainted with buildings admirably constructed for sound and convenience, in which the importance of due ventilation ventilation seems to have been quite over looked. I have no doubt the surveyors and others connected with the Society for the Building

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

THE following intelligence, contained in a speech lately delivered at the Episcopal Consistorial Court of Exeter Cathedral, by the Rev. Jonas Dennis, is to me quite new, and, if well founded, is of considerable importance, as greatly affecting the discipline of the church. I have no particular remark to make upon the other topics which Mr. Dennis has thought it right to bring forward, but I conceive it is of importance that our clergy and parochial officers should be aware of the following statement, with a view to render their presentments legal.

"The Act to which I shall next advert, is one which has been attended with the most injurious consequences to the church, consequences which did not come within the contemplation of its author. In the immediate neighbourhood of our late member for the county, Mr. Bastard, some litigious prosecution in the ecclesiastical court had occurred. Mr. B. instantly resolved to put an end to the possibility of such proceedings; and for that purpose brought a bill into the House of Commons, and carried it through both Houses of Parliament, by which the time within which crimes of several kinds are presentable, is limited to

various durations; whereas, by one of the canons of 1603-the rule by which the presentments of churchwardens are required to be regu lated-the official presentment of all spiritual and immoral crimes, without any discrimination, is required to be made but once in every year. From neglect of sufficient provision being made for the promulgation of the laws which are enacted in this country, this comparatively recent law is unknown to churchwardens: they still continue to take the canon for their guide, according to the directions which they receive; that canon not having been formally repealed by the Convocation, although virtually repealed by the statute. The result is, that the judicious provision made by the church, for the correction of ecclesiastical of fences and immoral practices, is become completely nugatory; the persons exercising ordinary jurisdiction taking no notice of any an

nual presentment, from not knowing the length of time which may have elapsed since the commission of any alleged crime, and being subjected to the issue of a prohibi tion from the courts of common law, if a longer period can be proved to have elapsed than that which is limited by the statute. It was asserted by the late Professor Carlisle, in passing through this city on his return from Greece, to a medical friend of mine, that no man living had done so much to destroy the remaining discipline of the church, as our late able and worthy representative. He meant no such thing. His motive was good. His object was laudable. But he was not conversant with ecclesiastical regulations, and by meddling with them he did the greatest mischief, while he intended to confer benefit upon the community."

A MIDDLESEX CLERGYMAN.

CHALMERS's Sermons.

(Concluded from p. 399.)

OUR readers will recollect, that, for the sake of attaining something like method in the review of the valuable sermons before us, we proposed to connect under separate divisions such as appeared to form a sort of class. The second series contained the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth sermons, of which we have already noticed all but the sixth and eighth.

The sixth is on the Necessity of a Mediator between God and Man. Dr. Chalmers shews the urgent necessity for a Redeemer, from the consideration that our best observances-good as they may be in human estimation, and beneficial to society-are not ade

quate to the Divine command, or ca pable of sustaining the just scrutiny of God. He forcibly points out the danger and folly of rejecting the only Mediator; the nature, and magnitude, and difficulties of whose work he proceeds to describe; and having represented him as our Justification, he shews the necessity of our cordially accepting him in his great office of a Mediator, and also as the agent of our Sanctification. The concluding passage of the sermon being chiefly collateral to the general argument, will best bear detaching from the context.

"Before we conclude, we shall just advert to another sense, in which the Mediator between God and man may be affirmed to have laid his hand upon them both :-He fills up that mysterious interval which lies between every cor

poreal being, and the God who is a spirit and is invisible.

"No man hath seen God at any time, -and the power which is unseen is terrible. Fancy trembles before its own picture, and superstition throws its darkest imagery over it. The voice of the thunder is awful, but not so awful as the conception of that angry Being who sits in mysterious concealment, and gives it all its energy. In these sketches of the imagination, fear is sure to predominate. We gather an impression of Nature's God, from those scenes where Nature threatens, and looks dreadful. We speak not of the theology of the schools, and the empty parade of its demonstrations. We speak of the theology of actual feeling,-that theology which is sure to derive its lessons from the quarter whence the human heart derives its strongest sensations, and we refer both to our own feelings, and to the history of this world's opinions, if God is more felt or more present to your imaginations in the peacefulness of spring, or the love liness of a summer landscape, than when winter with its mighty elements sweeps the forest of its leaves,-when the rushing of the storm is heard upon our windows, and man flees to cover himself from the desolation that walketh over the surface of the world.

"If nature and her elements be dreadful, how dreadful that mysterious and unseen Being, who sits behind the elements he has formed, and gives birth and movement to all things! It is the mystery in which he is shrouded, it is that dark and unknown region of spirits, where he reigns in glory, and stands revealed to the immediate view of his worshippers, it is the inexplicable manner of his being so far removed from that province of sense, within which the understanding of man can expatiate, it is its total unlikeness to all that nature can furnish to the eye of the body, or to the conception of the mind which animates it,-it is all this which throws the Being who formed us at a distance so inaccessible,-which throws an impenetrable mantle over his way, and gives us the idea of some dark and untrodden interval betwixt the glory of God, and all that is visible and created.

"Now, Jesus Christ has lifted up this mysterious veil, or rather he has entered within it. He is now at the right hand of God; and though the brightness of

his Father's glory, and the express image of his person, he appeared to us in the palpable characters of a man; and those high attributes of truth, and justice, and mercy, which could not be felt or understood, as they existed in the abstract and invisible Deity, are brought down to our conceptions in a manner the most familiar and impressive, by having been made, through Jesus Christ, to flow in utterance from human lips, and to beam in expressive physiognomy from a human

countenance.

"So long as I had nothing before me but the unseen Spirit of God, my mind wandered in nncertainty, my busy fancy was free to expatiate, and its images filled my heart with disquietude and terror. But in the life, and person, and history of Jesus Christ, the attributes of the Deity are brought down to the ob servation of the senses; and I can no longer mistake them, when in the Son, who is the express image of his Father, I see them carried home to my understanding by the evidence and expression of human organs,—when I see the kindness of the Father, in the tears which fell from his Son at the tomb of Lazarus,—when I see his justice blended with his mercy, in the exclamation, 'O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,' by Jesus Christ; uttered with a tone more tender than the sympathy of human bosom ever prompted, while he bewailed the sentence of its desolation,—and in the look of energy and significance which he threw upon Peter, I feel the judgment of God himself, flashing conviction upon my conscience, and calling me to repent while his wrath is suspended, and he still waiteth to be gracious.

"And it was not a temporary character which he assumed. The human kindness, and the human expression which makes it intelligible to us, remained with him till his latest hour. They survived his resurrection, and he has carried them along with him to the mysterious place which he now occupies. How do I know all this? I know it from his history, I hear it in the parting words to his mother from the cross,-I see it in his unaltered form when he rose triumphant from the grave,-I perceive it in his tenderness for the scruples of the unbelieving Thomas, and I am given to understand, that as his body retained the impression of his own sufferings, so his mind retains a sympathy for ours, as warın, and gracious, and

endearing, as ever. We have a Priest on high, who is touched with a fellow feeling of our infirmities. My soul, unable to support itself in its aërial flight among the spirits of the invisible, now reposes on Christ, who stands revealed to my conceptions in the figure, the countenance, the heart, the sympathies of a man. He has entered within that veil which hung over the glories of the Eternal, and the mysterious inaccessible throne of God is divested of all its terrors, when I think that a Friend who bears the form of the species, and knows its infirmities, is there to plead for me." pp. 185–189.

We must now proceed to the other sermon (the eighth), which contains a lengthened and highly profitable discussion of the grand personal qualities of the faith of the Gospel, and in some measure embraces the contents of the sermon last mentioned, as far as respects both the "judicial righteousness," and the righteousness of sanctification implied in the offers of the Christian system. The preacher, at setting out, gives his opinion that it is easier to put an end to the resistance of the understanding, than to excite a holy and permanent fear, and to render the heart soft and tender in regard to the humbling doctrines of the Gospel. In the second paragraph of this discourse we recognise an exquisite allusion, repeated from a former page, in which the desirable effect of the preacher's representation of human wickedness is said to be that of causing each of the audience to "mourn apart" over his own transgressions; as when, on the day of judgment, though all that is visible be shaking, and dissolving, and giving way, each despairing eyewitness shall mourn apart over the recollection of his own guilt, and the prospect of his own "rueful and undone eternity." This appropriate use of the prophetic passage in question, we scarcely hesitate to trace to a similar use of it in Mr. Hall of Leicester's eloquent and instructive address on

the Duties and Discouragements of the Christian Ministry. The plagiarism, if such it may be called, is tion it by way of introducing a very innocent; and we only mencollateral remark on the comparative structure of the style of these two great masters of human eloquence. Both are profound in thought, exuberant in diction, fertile in imagination, novel in illustration, and of true originality in all the various parts and offices of the inventive faculty; yet, in comparing them together, we must confess that in the management of their respective powers we see some points in which the luminary of the Kirk has to learn from the coryphæus of the Baptist communion. In the utmost fulness and exuberance of Mr. Hall's rich imagery we do not recollect an ill-assorted figure, an incongruous word, or an eccentric or conceited expression. All is plain and manlywe should rather say gigantic: yet, as occurs in some of the grandest efforts of sacred architecture, we seem, till we recollect ourselves, to lose the conception of the vast, the lofty, the superlative, in the justness of the proportions and the chaste polish of the several parts. Whether Dr. Chalmers would prefer to exhibit, we certainly will not say to follow, the taste of another remarkable writer of the Baptist school, of later eminence, we know not; but that Dr. Chalmers is not unacquainted with the writings of Mr. Foster, we have much reason for believing. Except in point of an almost impenetrable obscurity, which too often characterizes Mr. Foster's pages, but which by no means prevails to any thing like an equal extent in those of Dr. Chalmers, we discern a close resemblance between these two writers, whose style and sentiments and mode of argumentation remarkably correspond. We speak only to the ear, when we say, (if not wholly mistaken in our conjecture on this