TENNYSON.

"_He was not one man, he was a thousand men._"--SYDNEY SMITH.

When, towards the close of some long summer day, we come suddenly, and,

as we think, before his time, upon the broad sun, "sinking down in his

tranquillity" into the unclouded west, we cannot keep our eyes from the

great spectacle,--and when he is gone the shadow of him haunts our

sight: we see everywhere,--upon the spotless heaven, upon the distant

mountains, upon the fields, and upon the road at our feet,--that dim,

strange, changeful image; and if our eyes shut, to recover themselves,

we still find in them, like a dying flame, or like a gleam in a dark

place, the unmistakable phantom of the mighty orb that has set,--and

were we to sit down, as we have often done, and try to record by pencil

or by pen, our impression of that supreme hour, still would IT be there.

We must have patience with our eye, it will not let the impression

go,--that spot on which the radiant disk was impressed, is insensible to

all other outward things, for a time: its best relief is, to let the eye

wander vaguely over earth and sky, and repose itself on the mild shadowy

distance.

So it is when a great and good and beloved man departs, sets--it may be

suddenly--and to us who know not the times and the seasons, _too soon_.

We gaze eagerly at his last hours, and when he is gone, never to rise

again on our sight, we see his image wherever we go, and in whatsoever

we are engaged, and if we try to record by words our wonder, our sorrow,

and our affection, we cannot see to do it, for the "idea of his life" is

forever coming into our "study of imagination "--into all our thoughts,

and we can do little else than let our mind, in a wise passiveness, hush

itself to rest. The sun returns--he knows his rising--

"To-morrow he repairs his drooping head,

And tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore

Flames in the forehead of the morning sky;"

but man lieth down, and riseth not again till the heavens are no more.

Never again will he whose "Meditations" are now before us, lift up the

light of his countenance upon us.

We need not say we look upon him, as a great man, as a good man, as a

beloved man,--_quis desiderio sit pudor tam cari capitis?_ We cannot now

go very curiously to work, to scrutinize the composition of his

character,--we cannot take that large, free, genial nature to pieces,

and weigh this and measure that, and sum up and pronounce; we are too

near as yet to him, and to his loss, he is too dear to us to be so

handled. "His death," to use the pathetic words of Hartley Coleridge,

"is a recent sorrow; his image still lives in eyes that weep for him."

The prevailing feeling is,--He is gone--"_abiit ad plures_--he has gone

over to the majority, he has joined the famous nations of the dead."

It is no small loss to the world, when one of its master spirits--one of

its great lights--a king among the nations--leaves it. A sun is

extinguished; a great attractive, regulating power is withdrawn. For

though it be a common, it is also a natural thought, to compare a great

man to the sun; it is in many respects significant. Like the sun, he

rules his day, and he is "for a sign and for seasons, and for days and

for years;" he enlightens, quickens, attracts, and leads after him his

host--his generation.

To pursue our image. When the sun sets to us, he rises elsewhere--he

goes on rejoicing, like a strong man, running his race. So does a great

man: when he leaves us and our concerns--he rises elsewhere; and we may

reasonably suppose that one who has in this world played a great part in

its greatest histories--who has through a long life been preeminent for

promoting the good of men and the glory of God--will be looked upon with

keen interest, when he joins the company of the immortals. They must

have heard of his fame; they may in their ways have seen and helped him

already.

Every one must have trembled when reading that passage in Isaiah, in

which Hell is described as moved to meet Lucifer at his coming: there is

not in human language anything more sublime in conception, more

exquisite in expression; it has on it the light of the terrible crystal.

But may we not reverse the scene? May we not imagine, when a great and

good man--a son of the morning--enters on his rest, that Heaven would

move itself to meet him at his coming? That it would stir up its dead,

even all the chief ones of the earth, and that the kings of the nations

would arise each one from his throne to welcome their brother? that

those who saw him would "narrowly consider him," and say, "is this he

who moved nations, enlightened and bettered his fellows, and whom the

great Taskmaster welcomes with 'Well done!'"

We cannot help following him, whose loss we now mourn, into that region,

and figuring to ourselves his great, childlike spirit, when that

unspeakable scene bursts upon his view, when, as by some inward, instant

sense, he is conscious of God--of the immediate presence of the

All-seeing Unseen; when he beholds "His honorable, true, and only Son,"

face to face, enshrined in "that glorious form, that light unsufferable,

and that far-beaming blaze of majesty," that brightness of His glory,

that express image of His person; when he is admitted into the goodly

fellowship of the apostles--the glorious company of the prophets--the

noble army of martyrs--the general assembly of just men--and beholds

with his loving eyes the myriads of "little ones," outnumbering their

elders as the dust of stars with which the galaxy is filled exceeds in

multitude the hosts of heaven.

What a change! death the gate of life--a second birth, in the twinkling

of an eye: this moment, weak, fearful, in the amazement of death; the

next, strong, joyful,--at rest,--all things new! To adopt his own words:

all his life, up to the last, "knocking at a door not yet opened, with

an earnest indefinite longing,--his very soul breaking for the

longing,--drinking of water, and thirsting again"--and then--suddenly

and at once-a door opened into heaven, and the Master heard saying,

"Come in, and come up hither!" drinking of the river of life, clear as

crystal, of which if a man drink he will never thirst,--being filled

with all the fulness of God!

* * * * *

Dr. Chalmers was a ruler among men: this we know historically; this

every man who came within his range felt at once. He was like Agamemnon,

a native {anax andron}, and with all his homeliness of feature and

deportment, and his perfect simplicity of expression, there was about

him "that divinity that doth hedge a king." You felt a power, in him,

and going from him, drawing you to him in spite of yourself. He was in

this respect a _solar_ man, he drew after him his own firmament of

planets. They, like all free agents, had their centrifugal forces acting

ever towards an independent, solitary course, but the centripetal also

was there, and they moved with and around their imperial

sun,--gracefully or not, willingly or not, as the case might be, but

there was no breaking loose: they again, in their own spheres of power,

might have their attendant moons, but all were bound to the great

massive luminary in the midst.

There is to us a continual mystery in this power of one man over

another. We find it acting everywhere, with the simplicity, the

ceaselessness, the energy of gravitation; and we may be permitted to

speak of this influence as obeying similar conditions; it is

proportioned to _bulk_--for we hold to the notion of a bigness in souls

as well as bodies--one soul differing from another in quantity and

momentum as well as in quality and force, and its intensity increases by

nearness. There is much in what Jonathan Edwards says of one spiritual

essence having more being than another, and in Dr. Chalmers's question,

"Is he a man of _wecht_?"

But when we meet a _solar_ man, of ample nature--soul, body, and spirit;

when we find him from his earliest years moving among his fellows like a

king, moving them whether they will or not--this feeling of mystery is

deepened; and though we would not, like some men (who should know

better), worship the creature and convert a hero into a god, we do feel

more than in other cases the truth, that it is the inspiration of the

Almighty which has given to that man understanding, and that all power,

all energy, all light, come to him, from the First and the Last--the

Living One. God comes to be regarded by us, in this instance, as he

ought always to be, "the final centre of repose"--the source of all

being, of all life--the _Terminus ad quem_ and the _Terminus a quo_. And

assuredly, as in the firmament that simple law of gravitation reigns

supreme--making it indeed a _kosmos_--majestic, orderly, comely in its

going--ruling, and binding not the less the fiery and nomadic comets,

than the gentle, punctual moons--so certainly, and to us moral creatures

to a degree transcendantly more important, does the whole intelligent

universe move around and move towards and in the Father of Lights.

It would be well if the world would, among the many other uses they make

of its great men, make more of this,--that they are manifestors of

God--revealers of His will--vessels of His omnipotence--and are among

the very chiefest of His ways and works.

As we have before said, there is a perpetual wonder in this power of one

man over his fellows, especially when we meet with it in a great man.

You see its operations constantly in history, and through it the Great

Ruler has worked out many of His greatest and strangest acts. But

however we may understand the accessory conditions by which the one man

rules the many, and controls, and fashions them to his purposes, and

transforms them into his likeness--multiplying as it were himself--there

remains at the bottom of it all a mystery--a reaction between body and

soul that we cannot explain. Generally, however, we find accompanying

its manifestation, a capacious understanding--a strong will--an

emotional nature quick, powerful, urgent, undeniable, in perpetual

communication with the energetic will and the large resolute

intellect--and a strong, hearty, capable body; a countenance and person

expressive of this combination--the mind finding its way at once and in

full force to the face, to the gesture, to every act of the body. He

must have what is called a "presence;" not that he must be great in

size, beautiful, or strong; but he must be expressive and

impressive--his outward man must communicate to the beholder at once and

without fail, something of indwelling power, and he must be and act as

_one_. You may in your mind analyze him into his several parts; but

practically he acts in everything with his whole soul and his whole

self; whatsoever his hand finds to do, he does it with his might.

Luther, Moses, David, Mahomet, Cromwell--all verified these conditions.

And so did Dr. Chalmers. There was something about his whole air and

manner, that disposed you at the very first to make way where he

went--he held you before you were aware. That this depended fully as

much upon the activity and the quantity--if we may so express

ourselves--of his affections, upon that combined action of mind and body

which we call temperament, and upon a straightforward, urgent will, as

upon what is called the pure intellect, will be generally allowed; but

with all this, he could not have been and done, what he was and did, had

he not had an understanding, in vigor and in capacity, worthy of its

great and ardent companions. It was large, and free, mobile, and

intense, rather than penetrative, judicial, clear, or fine,--so that in

one sense he was more a man to make others _act_ than _think_; but his

own actings had always their origin in some fixed, central, inevitable

_proposition_, as he would call it, and he began his onset with stating

plainly, and with lucid calmness, what he held to be a great seminal

truth; from this he passed at once, not into exposition, but into

illustration and enforcement--into, if we may make a word, overwhelming

insistance. Something was to be done, rather than explained.

There was no separating his thoughts and expressions from his person,

and looks, and voice. How perfectly we can at this moment recall him!

Thundering, flaming, lightening in the pulpit; teaching, indoctrinating,

drawing after him his students in his lecture-room; sitting among other

public men, the most unconscious, the most king-like of them all, with

that broad leonine countenance, that beaming, liberal smile; or on the

way out to his home, in his old-fashioned great-coat, with his throat

muffled up, his big walking-stick moved outwards in an arc, its point

fixed, its head circumferential, a sort of companion, and playmate, with

which doubtless, he demolished legions of imaginary foes, errors, and

stupidities in men and things, in Church and State. His great look,

large chest, large head, his amplitude every way; his broad, simple,

childlike, inturned feet; his short, hurried impatient step; his erect,

royal air; his look of general good-will; his kindling up into a warm

but vague benignity when one he did not recognize spoke to him; the

addition, for it was not a change, of keen specialty to his hearty

recognition; the twinkle of his eyes; the immediately saying something

very personal to set all to rights, and then the sending you off with

some thought, some feeling, some remembrance, making your heart burn

within you; his voice indescribable: his eye--that most peculiar

feature--not vacant, but _asleep_--innocent, mild, and large; and his

soul, its great inhabitant, not always at his window; but then, when he

did awake, how close to you was that burning vehement soul! how it

penetrated and overcame you! how mild, and affectionate, and genial its

expression at his own fireside!

Of his portraits worth mentioning, there are Watson Gordon's,

Duncan's--the Calotypes of Mr. Hill--Kenneth M'Leay's miniatures--the

Daguerreotype, and Steell's bust. These are all good, and all give bits

of him, some nearly the whole, but not one of them that {ti thermon},

that _fiery particle_--that inspired look--that "diviner mind"--the

_poco piu_, or little more. Watson Gordon's is too much of the mere

clergyman--is a pleasant likeness, and has the shape of his mouth, and

the setting of his feet very good. Duncan's is a work of genius, and is

the giant looking up, awakening, but not awakened--it is a very fine

picture. Mr. Hill's Calotypes we like better than all the rest; because

what in them is true, is absolutely so, and they have some delicate

renderings which are all but beyond the power of any human artist; for

though man's art is mighty, nature's is mightier. The one of the Doctor

sitting with his grandson "_Tommy_" is to us the best; we have the true

grandeur of his form--his bulk. M'Leay's is admirable-spirited--and has

that look of shrewdness and vivacity and immediateness which he had when

he was observing and speaking keenly; it is, moreover, a fine, manly bit

of art. M'Leay is the Raeburn of miniature painters--he does a great

deal with little. The Daguerreotype is, in its own way, excellent; it

gives the externality of the man to perfection, but it is Dr. Chalmers

at a stand-still--his mind and feelings "pulled up" for the second that

it was taken. Steell's is a noble bust--has a stern heroic expression

and pathetic beauty about it, and from wanting color and shadow and the

eyes, it relies upon a certain simplicity and grandeur;--in this it

completely succeeds--the mouth is handled with extraordinary subtlety

and sweetness, and the hair hangs over that huge brow like a glorious

cloud. We think this head of Dr. Chalmers the artist's greatest bust.

In reference to the assertion we have made as to bulk forming one

primary element of a powerful mind, Dr. Chalmers used to say, when a man

of activity and public mark was mentioned, "Has he _wecht?_ he has

promptitude--has he power? he has power--has he promptitude? and,

moreover, has he a discerning spirit?"

These are great practical, universal truths. How few even of our

greatest men have had all these three faculties large--fine, sound, and

in "perfect diapason." Your men of promptitude, without power or

judgment, are common and are useful. But they are apt to run wild, to

get needlessly brisk, unpleasantly incessant. A weasel is good or bad as

the case may be,--good against vermin--bad to meddle with;--but inspired

weasels, weasels on a mission, are terrible indeed, mischievous and

fell, and swiftness making up for want of momentum by inveteracy;

"fierce as wild bulls, _untamable as flies_." Of such men we have

nowadays too many. Men are too much in the way of supposing that _doing_

is _being;_ that theology and excogitation, and fierce dogmatic

assertion of what they consider truth, is godliness; that obedience is

merely an occasional great act, and not a series of acts, issuing from a

state, like the stream of water from its well.

"Action is transitory--a step--a blow,

The motion of a muscle--this way or that;

'Tis done--and in the after vacancy,

We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed.

Suffering" (_obedience_, or _being_ as opposed to _doing_)--

"Suffering is permanent,----

And has the nature of infinity."

Dr. Chalmers was a man of genius--he had his own way of thinking, and

saying, and doing, and looking everything. Men have vexed themselves in

vain to define what genius is; like every ultimate term we may describe

it by giving its effects, we can hardly succeed in reaching its essence.

Fortunately, though we know not what are its elements, we know it when

we meet it; and in him, in every movement of his mind, in every gesture,

we had its unmistakable tokens. Two of the ordinary accompaniments of

genius--Enthusiasm and Simplicity--he had in rare measure.

He was an _enthusiast_ in its true and good sense; he was "entheat," as

if full of God, as the old poets called it. It was this ardor, this

superabounding life, this immediateness of thought and action, idea and

emotion, setting the whole man a-going at once--that gave a power and a

charm to everything he did. To adopt the old division of the Hebrew

Doctors, as given by Nathanael Culverwel, in his "Light of Nature:" In

man we have--_1st_, {pneuma zoopoioun}, _the sensitive soul_, that which

lies nearest the body--the very blossom and flower of life; _2d_, {ton

noun}, _animam rationis_, sparkling and glittering with intellectuals,

crowned with light; and _3d_, {ton thymon}, _impetum animi, motum

mentis_, the vigor and energy of the soul--its temper--the mover of the

other two--the first being, as they said, resident _in hepate_--the

second _in cerebro_--the third _in corde_, where it presides over the

issues of life, commands the circulation, and animates and sets the

blood a-moving. The first and second are informative, explicative, they

"take in and do"--the other "gives out." Now in Dr. Chalmers, the great

ingredient was the {ho thymos} as indicating _vis animae et vitae_,--and

in close fellowship with it, and ready for its service, was a large,

capacious {ho nous}, and an energetic, sensuous, rapid {to pneuma}.

Hence his energy, his contagious enthusiasm--this it was which gave the

peculiar character to his religion, to his politics, to his _personnel_;

everything he did was done heartily--if he desired heavenly blessings he

"panted" for them--"his soul broke for the longing." To give again the

words of the spiritual and subtle Culverwel, "Religion (and indeed

everything else) was no matter of indifferency to him. It was {thermon

ti pragma}, a certain fiery thing, as Aristotle calls love; it required

and it got the very flower and vigor of the spirit--the strength and

sinews of the soul--the prime and top of the affections--this is that

grace, that panting grace--we know the name of it and that's all--'tis

called zeal--a flaming edge of the affection--the ruddy complexion of

the soul." Closely connected with this temperament, and with a certain

keen sensation of truth, rather than a perception of it, if we may so

express ourselves, an intense consciousness of objective reality,--was

his simple animating faith. He had faith in God--faith in human

nature--faith, if we may say so, in his own instincts--in his ideas of

men and things--_in himself_; and the result was, that unhesitating

bearing up and steering right onward--"never bating one jot of heart or

hope" so characteristic of him. He had "the _substance_ of things hoped

for." He had "the _evidence_ of things not seen."

By his _simplicity_ we do not mean the simplicity of the head--of that

he had none; he was eminently shrewd and knowing--more so than many

thought; but we refer to that quality of the heart and of the life,

expressed by the words, "in simplicity a child." In his own words, from

his Daily Readings,--

"When a child is filled with any strong emotion by a surprising

event or intelligence, it _runs_ to discharge it on others,

impatient of their sympathy; and it marks, I fancy, the

simplicity and greater naturalness of this period (Jacob's),

that the grown-up men and women _ran_ to meet each other, giving

way to their first impulses--even as children do."

His emotions were as lively as a child's, and he ran to discharge them.

There was in all his ways a certain beautiful unconsciousness of

self--an outgoing of the whole nature that we see in children, who are

by learned men said to be long ignorant of the EGO--blessed in many

respects in their ignorance! This same Ego, as it now exists, being

perhaps part of "the fruit of that forbidden tree;" that mere knowledge

of _good_ as well as of _evil_, which our great mother bought for us at

such a price. In this meaning of the word, Dr. Chalmers, considering the

size of his understanding--his personal eminence--his dealings with the

world--his large sympathies--his scientific knowledge of mind and

matter--his relish for the practical details, and for the spirit of

public business--was quite singular for his simplicity; and taking this

view of it, there was much that was plain and natural in his manner of

thinking and acting, which otherwise was obscure, and liable to be

misunderstood. We cannot better explain what we mean than by giving a

passage from Fenelon, which D'Alembert, in his Eloge, quotes as

characteristic of that "sweet-souled" prelate. We give the passage

entire, as it seems to us to contain a very beautiful, and by no means

commonplace truth:--

"Fenelon," says D'Alembert, "a caracterise lui-meme en peu

de mots cette simplicite qui se rendoit si cher a tous les

coeurs, 'La simplicite est la droiture d'une ame qui

s'interdit tout retour sur elle et sur ses actions--cette vertu

est differente de la sincerite, et la surpasse. On voit

beaucoup de gens qui sont sinceres sans etre simples--Ils ne

veulent passer que pour ce qu'ils sont, mais ils craignent sans

cesse de passer pour ce qu'ils ne sont pas. L'homme simple

n'affecte ni la vertu, ni la verite meme; il n'est jamais

occupe de lui, il semble d'avoir perdu ce _moi_ dont on est si

jaloux.'"

What delicacy and justness of expression! how true and clear! how little

we see nowadays, among grown-up men, of this straightness of the

soul--of this losing or never finding "_ce moi!_" There is more than is

perhaps generally thought in this. Man in a state of perfection, would

no sooner think of asking himself--am I right? am I appearing to be what

inwardly I am? than the eye asks itself--do I see? or a child says to

itself--do I love my mother? We have lost this instinctive sense; we

have set one portion of ourselves aside to watch the rest; we must keep

up appearances and our consistency; we must respect--that is, look back

upon--ourselves, and be respected, if possible; we must, by hook or by

crook, be respectable.

Dr. Chalmers would have made a sorry Balaam; he was made of different

stuff, and for other purposes. Your "respectable" men are ever doing

their best to keep their status, to maintain their position. He never

troubled himself about his status; indeed, we would say _status_ was not

the word for him. He had a _sedes_ on which he sat, and from which he

spoke; he had an _imperium_, to and fro which he roamed as he listed;

but a _status_ was as little in his way as in that of a Mauritanian

lion. Your merely "sincere" men are always thinking of what they said

yesterday, and what they may say to-morrow, at the very moment when they

should be putting their whole self into to-day. Full of his idea,

possessed by it, moved altogether by its power,--believing, he spoke,

and without stint or fear, often _apparently_ contradicting his former

self--careless about everything, but speaking fully his mind. One other

reason for his apparent inconsistencies was, if one may so express it,

the spaciousness of his nature. He had room in that capacious head, and

affection in that great, hospitable heart, for relishing and taking in

the whole range of human thought and feeling. He was several men in one.

Multitudinous but not multiplex, in him odd and apparently incongruous

notions dwelt peaceably together. The lion lay down with the lamb.

Voluntaryism and an endowment--both were best.

He was _childlike_ in his simplicity; though in understanding a man, he

was himself in many things a child. Coleridge says, every man should

include all his former selves in his present, as a tree has its former

years' growths inside its last; so Dr. Chalmers bore along with him his

childhood, his youth, his early and full manhood into his mature old

age. This gave himself, we doubt not, infinite delight--multiplied his

joys, strengthened and sweetened his whole nature, and kept his heart

young and tender; it enabled him to sympathize, to have a fellow-feeling

with all, of whatever age. Those who best knew him, who were most

habitually with him, know how beautifully this point of his character

shone out in daily, hourly life. We well remember long ago loving him

before we had seen him--from our having been told, that being out one

Saturday at a friend's house near the Pentlands, he collected all the

children and small people--the _other_ bairns, as he called them--and

with no one else of his own growth, took the lead to the nearest

hill-top,--how he made each take the biggest and roundest stone he could

find, and carry,--how he panted up the hill himself with one of enormous

size,--how he kept up their hearts, and made them shout with glee, with

the light of his countenance, and with all his pleasant and strange ways

and words,--how having got the breathless little men and women to the

top of the hill, he, hot and scant of breath--looked round on the world

and upon them with his broad benignant smile like the {anerithmon

kymaton gelasma}--the unnumbered laughter of the sea,--how he set off

his own huge "fellow,"--how he watched him setting out on his race,

slowly, stupidly, vaguely at first, almost as if he might die before he

began to live, then suddenly giving a spring and off like a

shot--bounding, tearing, {autis epeita pedonde kylindeto laas anaides},

_vires acquirens eundo_; how the great and good man was _totus in illo_;

how he spoke to, upbraided him, cheered him, gloried in him, all but

prayed for him,--how he joked philosophy to his wondering and ecstatic

crew, when he (the stone) disappeared among some brackens--telling them

they had the evidence of their senses that he was in, they might even

know he was there by his effects, by the moving brackens, himself

unseen; how plain it became that he had gone in, when he actually came

out!--how he ran up the opposite side a bit, and then fell back, and

lazily expired at the bottom,--how to their astonishment, but not

displeasure--for he "set them off so well," and "was so funny"--he took

from each his cherished stone, and set it off himself! showing them how

they all ran alike, yet differently; how he went on, "making," as he

said, "an induction of particulars," till he came to the Benjamin of the

flock, a _wee wee_ man, who had brought up a stone bigger than his own

big head; then how he let him, _unicus omnium_, set off his own, and how

wonderfully IT ran! what miraculous leaps! what escapes from impossible

places! and how it ran up the other side farther than any, and by some

felicity remained there.

* * * * *

He was an orator in its specific and highest sense. We need not prove

this to those who have heard him; we cannot to those who have not. It

was a living man sending living, burning words into the minds and hearts

of men before him, radiating his intense fervor upon them all; but there

was no reproducing the entire effect when alone and cool; some one of

the elements was gone. We say nothing of this part of his character,

because upon this all are agreed. His eloquence rose like a tide, a sea,

setting in, bearing down upon you, lifting up all its waves--"deep

calling unto deep;" there was no doing anything but giving yourself up

for the time to its will. Do our readers remember Horace's description

of Pindar?

"Monte decurrens velut amnis, imbres

Quem super uotas aluere ripas,

Fervet, immensusque ruit profundo

Pindarus ore:

--'per audaces nova dithyrambos

Verba devolvit, numerisque fertur

Lege solutis.'"

This is to our mind singularly characteristic of our perfervid Scotsman.

If we may indulge our conceit we would paraphrase it thus. His eloquence

was like a flooded Scottish river,--it had its origin in some exalted

region--in some mountain-truth--some high, immutable reality; it did not

rise in a plain, and quietly drain its waters to the sea,--it came sheer

down from above. He laid hold of some simple truth--the love of God, the

Divine method of justification, the unchangeableness of human nature,

the supremacy of conscience, the honorableness of all men; and having

got this vividly before his mind, on he moved--the river rose at once,

drawing everything into its course--

"All thoughts, all passions, all desires,--

Whatever stirs this mortal frame,"

things outward and things inward, interests immediate and remote--God

and eternity--men, miserable and immortal--this world and the

next--clear light and unsearchable mystery--the word and the works of

God--everything contributed to swell the volume and add to the onward

and widening flood. His river did not flow like Denham's Thames,--

"Though deep yet clear, though gentle yet not dull;

Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full."

There was strength, but there was likewise rage; a fine frenzy--not

unoften due mainly to its rapidity and to its being raised suddenly by

his affections; there was some confusion in the stream of his thoughts,

some overflowing of the banks, some turbulence, and a certain noble

immensity; but its origin was clear and calm, above the region of clouds

and storms. If you saw _it_; if you took up and admitted his

proposition, his starting idea, then all else moved on; but once set

a-going, once on his way, there was no pausing to inquire, why or

how--_fervet_--_ruit_--_fertur_, he boils--he rushes--he is borne along;

and so are all who hear him.

To go on with our figure--There was no possibility of sailing up his

stream. You must go with him, or you must go ashore. This was a great

peculiarity with him, and puzzled many people. You could argue with him,

and get him to entertain your ideas on any purely abstract or simple

proposition,--at least for a time; but once let him get down among

practicals, among applications of principles, into the regions of the

affections and active powers, and such was the fervor and impetuosity of

his nature, that he could not stay leisurely to discuss, he could not

then entertain the opposite; it was hurried off, and made light of, and

disregarded, like a floating thing before a cataract.

To play a little more with our conceit--The greatest man is he who is

both born and made--who is at once poetical and scientific--who has

genius and talent--each supporting the other. So with rivers. Your

mighty world's river rises in high and lonely places, among the

everlasting hills; amidst clouds, or inaccessible clearness. On he

moves, gathering to himself all waters; refreshing, cheering all lands.

Here a cataract, there a rapid; now lingering in some corner of beauty,

as if loath to go. Now shallow and wide, rippling and laughing in his

glee; now deep, silent, and slow; now narrow and rapid and deep, and not

to be meddled with. Now in the open country; not so clear, for other

waters have come in upon him, and he is becoming useful, no longer

turbulent,--travelling more contentedly; now he is navigable, craft of

all kinds coming and going upon his surface forever; and then, as if by

some gentle and great necessity, "deep and smooth, passing with a still

foot and a sober face," he pays his last tribute to "the _Fiscus_, the

great Exchequer, the sea,"--running out fresh, by reason of his power

and volume, into the main for many a league.

Your mere genius, who has instincts, and is poetical and not scientific,

who grows from within--he is like our mountain river, clear, wilful,

odd; running round corners; disappearing it may be under ground, coming

up again quite unexpectedly and strong, as if fed from some unseen

spring, deep down in darkness; rising in flood without warning, and

coming down like a lion; often all but dry; never to be trusted to for

driving mills; must at least be tamed and led off to the mill; and going

down full pace, and without stop or stay, into the sea.

Your man of talent, of acquirements, of science--who is made,--who is

not so much educed as edified; who, instead of acquiring his _vires

eundo_, gets his _vires eundi_, from acquirement, and grows from

without; who serves his brethren and is useful; he rises often no one

knows where or cares; has perhaps no proper fountain at all, but is the

result of the gathered rain-water in the higher flats; he is never quite

clear, never brisk, never dangerous; always from the first useful, and

goes pleasantly in harness; turns mills; washes rags--makes them into

paper; carries down all manner of dye-stuffs and feculence; and turns a

bread-mill to as good purpose as any clearer stream; is docile, and has,

as he reaches the sea, in his dealings with the world, a river trust,

who look after his and their own interests, and dredge him, and deepen

him, and manage him, and turn him off into docks, and he is in the sea

before he or you know it.

* * * * *

Though we do not reckon the _imagination_ of Dr. Chalmers among his

master faculties, it was powerful, effective, magnificent. It did not

move him, he took it up as he went along; its was not that imperial,

penetrating, transmuting function that we find it in Dante, in Jeremy

Taylor, in Milton, or in Burke; he used it to emblazon his great central

truths, to hang clouds of glory on the skirts of his illustration; but

it was too passionate, too material, too encumbered with images, too

involved in the general _melee_ of the soul, to do its work as a master.

It was not in him, as Thomas Fuller calls it, "that inward sense of the

soul, its most boundless and restless faculty; for while the

understanding and the will are kept as it were _in libera custodia_ to

their objects of _verum et bonum_, it is free from all engagements--digs

without spade, flies without wings, builds without charges, in a moment

striding from the centre to the circumference of the world by a kind of

omnipotency, creating and annihilating things in an instant--restless,

ever working, never wearied." We may say, indeed, that men of his

temperament are not generally endowed with this power in largest

measure; in one sense they can do without it, in another they want the

conditions on which its highest exercise depends. Plato and Milton,

Shakspeare and Dante, and Wordsworth, had imaginations tranquil, sedate,

cool, originative, penetrative, intense, which dwelt in the "highest

heaven of invention." Hence it was that Chalmers could personify or

paint a passion; he could give it in one of its actions; he could not,

or rather he never did impassionate, create, and vivify a person--a very

different thing from personifying a passion--all the difference, as

Henry Taylor says, between Byron and Shakspeare.

In his impetuosity, we find the rationale of much that is peculiar in

the style of Dr. Chalmers. As a spoken style it was thoroughly

effective.[50] He seized the nearest weapons, and smote down whatever

he hit. But from this very vehemence, this haste, there was in his

general style a want of correctness, of selectness, of nicety, of that

curious felicity which makes thought immortal, and enshrines it in

imperishable crystal. In the language of the affections he was

singularly happy; but in a formal statement, rapid argumentation and

analysis, he was often as we might think, uncouth, and imperfect, and

incorrect: chiefly owing to his temperament, to his fiery, impatient,

swelling spirit, this gave his orations their fine audacity--this

brought out hot from the furnace his new words--this made his numbers

run wild--_lege solutis_. We are sure this view will be found confirmed

by these "Daily Readings," when he wrote little, and had not time to

get heated, and when the nature of the work, the hour at which it was

done, and his solitariness, made his thoughts flow at their "own sweet

will;" they are often quite as classical in expression, as they are

deep and lucid in thought--reflecting heaven with its clouds and stars,

and letting us see deep down into its own secret depths: this is to us

one great charm of these volumes. Here he is broad and calm; in his

great public performances by mouth and pen, he soon passed from the

lucid into the luminous.

[50] We have not noticed his iterativeness, his reiterativeness,

because it flowed naturally from his primary qualities. In

speaking it was effective, and to us pleasing, because there

was some new modulation, some addition in the manner, just

as the sea never sets up one wave exactly like the last or

the next. But in his books it did somewhere encumber his

thoughts, and the reader's progress and profit. It did not

arise, as in many lesser men, from his having said his

say--from his having no more in him; much less did it arise

from conceit, either of his idea or of his way of stating

it; but from the intensity with which the sensation of the

idea--if we may use the expression--made its first mark on

his mind. Truth to him never seemed to lose its first

freshness, its edge, its flavor; and Divine truth, we know,

had come to him so suddenly, so fully, at mid-day, when he

was in the very prime of his knowledge and his power and

quickness--had so possessed his entire nature, as if, like

him who was journeying to Damascus, a Great Light had shone

round about him--that whenever he reproduced that condition,

he began afresh, and with his whole utterance, to proclaim

it. He could not but speak the things he had seen and felt,

and heard and believed; and he did it much in the same way,

and in the same words, for the thoughts and affections and

posture of his soul were the same. Like all men of vivid

perception and keen sensibility, his mind and his body

continued under impressions, both material and spiritual,

after the objects were gone. A curious instance of this

occurs to us. Some years ago, he roamed up and down through

the woods near Auchindinny, with two boys as companions. It

was the first burst of summer, and the trees were more than

usually enriched with leaves. He wandered about delighted,

silent, looking at the leaves, "thick and numberless." As

the three went on, they came suddenly upon a high brick

wall, newly built, for peach-trees, not yet planted. Dr.

Chalmers halted, and looking steadfastly at the wall,

exclaimed most earnestly, "What foliage! what foliage!" The

boys looked at one another, and said nothing; but on getting

home, expressed their astonishment at this very puzzling

phenomenon. What a difference! leaves and parallelograms; a

forest and a brick wall!

What, for instance, can be finer in expression than this? "It is well to

be conversant with great elements--life and death, reason and madness."

"God forgets not his own purposes, though he executes them in his own

way, and maintains his own pace, which he hastens not and shortens not

to meet our impatience." "I find it easier to apprehend the greatness of

The Deity than any of his moral perfections, or his sacredness;" and

this--

"One cannot but feel an interest in Ishmael, figuring him to be

a noble of nature--one of those heroes of the wilderness who

lived on the produce of his bow, and whose spirit was nursed and

exercised among the wild adventures of the life he led. And it

does soften our conception of him whose hand was against every

man, and every man's hand against him, when we read of his

mother's influence over him, in the deference of Ishmael to whom

we read another example of the respect yielded to females even

in that so-called barbarous period of the world. There was a

civilization, the immediate effect of religion, in these days,

from which men fell away as the world grew older."

That he had a keen relish for material and moral beauty and grandeur we

all know; what follows shows that he had also the true ear for beautiful

words, as at once pleasant to the ear and suggestive of some higher

feelings:--"I have often felt, in reading Milton and Thomson, a strong

poetical effect in the bare enumeration of different countries, and this

strongly enhanced by the statement of some common and prevailing

emotion, which passed from one to another." This is set forth with great

beauty and power in verses 14th and 15th of Exodus xv.,--"The people

shall hear and be afraid--sorrow shall take hold on the inhabitants of

Palestina. Then the dukes of Edom shall be amazed--the mighty men of

Moab, trembling shall take hold of them--the inhabitants of Canaan shall

melt away." Any one who has a tolerable ear and any sensibility, must

remember the sensation of delight in the mere sound--like the colors of

a butterfly's wing, or the shapeless glories of evening clouds, to the

eye--in reading aloud such passages as these: "Heshbon shall cry and

Elealeh--their voice shall be heard to Jabez--for by the way of Luhith

with weeping shall they go it up--for in the way of Horonaim they shall

raise a cry. God came from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran. Is not

Calno as Carchemish? is not Hamath as Arpad? is not Samaria as Damascus?

He is gone to Aiath, he is passed to Migron; at Michmash he hath laid up

his carriages: Ramath is afraid; Gibeah of Saul is fled--Lift up thy

voice, O daughter of Gallim: cause it to be heard unto Laish, O poor

Anathoth. Madmenah is removed; the inhabitants of Gebim gather

themselves to flee. The fields of Heshbon languish--the vine of

Sibmah--I will water thee with my tears, O Heshbon and Elealeh." Any one

may prove to himself that much of the effect and beauty of these

passages depends on these names; put others in their room, and try them.

We remember well our first hearing Dr. Chalmers. We were in a moorland

district in Tweeddale, rejoicing in the country, after nine months of

the High School. We heard that the famous preacher was to be at a

neighboring parish church, and off we set, a cartful of irrepressible

youngsters. "Calm was all nature as a resting wheel." The crows, instead

of making wing, were impudent and sat still; the cart-horses were

standing, knowing the day, at the field-gates, gossiping and gazing,

idle and happy; the moor was stretching away in the pale sunlight--vast,

dim, melancholy, like a sea; everywhere were to be seen the gathering

people, "sprinklings of blithe company;" the country-side seemed moving

to one centre. As we entered the kirk we saw a notorious character, a

drover, who had much of the brutal look of what he worked in, with the

knowing eye of a man of the city, a sort of big Peter Bell--

"He had a hardness in his eye,

He had a hardness in his cheek."

He was our terror, and we not only wondered, but were afraid when we saw

_him_ going in. The kirk was full as it could hold. How different in

looks to a brisk town congregation! There was a fine leisureliness and

vague stare; all the dignity and vacancy of animals; eyebrows raised and

mouths open, as is the habit with those who speak little and look much,

and at far-off objects. The minister comes in, homely in his dress and

gait, but having a great look about him, like a mountain among hills.

The High School boys thought him like a "big one of ourselves," he looks

vaguely round upon his audience, as if he saw in it _one great object,

not many_. We shall never forget his smile! its general benignity;--how

he let the light of his countenance fall on us! He read a few verses

quietly; then prayed briefly, solemnly, with his eyes wide open all the

time, but not seeing. Then he gave out his text; we forget it, but its

subject was, "Death reigns." He stated slowly, calmly, the simple

meaning of the words; what death was, and how and why it reigned; then

suddenly he started, and looked like a man who had seen some great

sight, and was breathless to declare it; he told us how death

reigned--everywhere, at all times, in all places; how we all knew it,

how we would yet know more of it. The drover, who had sat down in the

table-seat opposite, was gazing up in a state of stupid excitement; he

seemed restless, but never kept his eye from the speaker. The tide set

in--everything added to its power, deep called to deep, imagery and

illustration poured in: and every now and then the theme,--the simple,

terrible statement, was repeated in some lucid interval. After

overwhelming us with proofs of the reign of Death, and transferring to

us his intense urgency and emotion; and after shrieking, as if in

despair, these words, "Death is a tremendous necessity,"--he suddenly

looked beyond us as if into some distant region, and cried out, "Behold

a mightier!--who is this? He cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from

Bozrah, glorious in his apparel, speaking in righteousness, travelling

in the greatness of his strength, mighty to save." Then, in a few plain

sentences, he stated the truth as to sin entering, and death by sin, and

death passing upon all. Then he took fire once more, and enforced, with

redoubled energy and richness, the freeness, the simplicity, the

security, the sufficiency of the great method of justification. How

astonished and impressed we all were! He was at the full thunder of his

power; the whole man was in an agony of earnestness. The drover was

weeping like a child, the tears running down his ruddy, coarse

cheeks--his face opened out and smoothed like an infant's; his whole

body stirred with emotion. We all had insensibly been drawn out of our

seats, and were converging towards the wonderful speaker. And when he

sat down, after warning each one of us to remember who it was, and what

it was, that followed death on his pale horse,[51] and how alone we

could escape--we all sunk back into our seats. How beautiful to our eyes

did the thunderer look--exhausted--but sweet and pure! How he poured out

his soul before his God in giving thanks for sending the Abolisher of

Death! Then, a short psalm, and all was ended.

[51] "And I looked, and behold, a pale horse; and his name that

sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him."--Rev. vi. 8.

We went home quieter than we came; we did not recount the foals with

their long legs, and roguish eyes, and their sedate mothers; we did not

speculate upon whose dog _that_ was, and whether _that_ was a crow or a

man in the dim moor,--we thought of other things. That voice, that face;

those great, simple, living thoughts; those floods of resistless

eloquence; that piercing, shattering voice,--"that tremendous

necessity."

* * * * *

Were we desirous of giving to one who had never seen or heard Dr.

Chalmers an idea of what manner of man he was--what he was as a whole,

in the full round of his notions, tastes, affections, and powers--we

would put this book into their hands, and ask them to read it slowly,

bit by bit, as he wrote it. In it he puts down simply, and at once, what

passes through his mind as he reads; there is no making of himself feel

and think--no getting into a frame of mind; he was not given to frames

of mind; he preferred states to forms--substances to circumstances.

There is something of everything in it--his relish for abstract

thought--his love of taking soundings in deep places and finding no

bottom--his knack of starting subtle questions, which he did not care to

run to earth--his penetrating, regulating godliness--his delight in

nature--his turn for politics, general, economical, and

ecclesiastical--his picturesque eye--his humanity--his courtesy--his

warm-heartedness--his impetuosity--his sympathy with all the wants,

pleasures, and sorrows of his kind--his delight in the law of God, and

his simple, devout, manly treatment of it--his acknowledgment of

difficulties--his turn for the sciences of quantity and number, and

indeed for natural science and art generally--his shrewdness--his

worldly wisdom--his genius; all these come out--you gather them like

fruit, here a little, and there a little. He goes over the Bible, not as

a philosopher, or a theologian, or a historian, or a geologist, or a

jurist, or a naturalist, or a statist, or a politician--picking out all

that he wants, and a great deal more than he has any business with, and

leaving every thing else as barren to his reader as it has been to

himself; but he looks abroad upon his Father's _word_--as he used so

pleasantly to do on his _world_--as a man, and as a Christian; he

submits himself to its influences, and lets his mind go out fully and

naturally in its utterances. It is this which gives to this work all the

charm of multitude in unity, of variety in harmony; and that sort of

unexpectedness and ease of movement which we see everywhere in nature

and in natural men.

Our readers will find in these delightful Bible Readings not a museum of

antiquities, and curiosities, and laborious trifles; nor of scientific

specimens, analyzed to the last degree, all standing in order, labelled

and useless. They will not find in it an armory of weapons for fighting

with and destroying their neighbors. They will get less of the physic of

controversy than of the diet of holy living. They will find much of what

Lord Bacon desired, when he said, "We want short, sound, and judicious

notes upon Scripture, without running into commonplaces, pursuing

controversies, or reducing those notes to artificial method, but leaving

them quite loose and native. For certainly, as those wines which flow

from the first treading of the grape are sweeter and better than those

forced out by the press, which gives them the roughness of the husk and

the stone, so are those doctrines best and sweetest which flow from a

gentle crush of the Scriptures, and are not wrung into controversies and

commonplaces." They will find it as a large pleasant garden; no great

system; not trim, but beautiful, and in which there are things pleasant

to the eye as well as good for food--flowers and fruits, and a few good,

esculent, wholesome roots. There are Honesty, Thrift, Eye-bright

(Euphrasy that cleanses the sight), Heart's-ease. The good seed in

abundance, and the strange mystical Passion-flower; and in the midst,

and seen everywhere, if we but look for it, the Tree of Life, with its

twelve manner of fruits--the very leaves of which are for the healing of

the nations. And, perchance, when they take their walk through it at

evening time, or at "the sweet hour of prime," they may see a happy,

wise, beaming old man at his work there--they may hear his well-known

voice; and if they have their spiritual senses exercised as they ought,

they will not fail to see by his side, "one like unto the Son of Man."

_DR. GEORGE WILSON._

Among the many students at our University who some two-and-twenty years

ago started on the great race, in the full flush of youth and health,

and with that strong hunger for knowledge which only the young, or those

who keep themselves so ever know, there were three lads--Edward Forbes,

Samuel Brown, and George Wilson--who soon moved on to the front and took

the lead. They are now all three in their graves.

No three minds could well have been more diverse in constitution or

bias; each was typical of a generic difference from the others. What

they cordially agreed in, was their hunting in the same field and for

the same game. The truth about this visible world, and all that it

contains, was their quarry. This one thing they set themselves to do,

but each had his own special gift, and took his own road--each had his

own special choice of instruments and means. Any one man combining their

essential powers, would have been the epitome of a natural philosopher,

in the wide sense of the man who would master the philosophy of nature.

Edward Forbes, who bulks largest at present, and deservedly, for

largeness was of his essence, was the observer proper. He saw everything

under the broad and searching light of day, white and uncolored, and

with an unimpassioned eye. What he was after were the real appearances

of things; _phenomena_ as such; all that seems to be. His was the search

after _what is_, over the great field of the world. He was in the best

sense a natural historian, an observer and recorder of what is seen and

of what goes on, and not less of what has been seen and what has gone

on, in this wonderful historic earth of ours, with all its fulness. He

was keen, exact, capacious,--tranquil and steady in his gaze as Nature

herself. He was, thus far, kindred to Aristotle, to Pliny, Linnaeus,

Cuvier, and Humboldt, though the great German, and the greater

Stagirite, had higher and deeper spiritual insights than Edward Forbes

ever gave signs of. It is worth remembering that Dr. George Wilson was

up to his death engaged in preparing his Memoir and Remains for the

press. Who will now take up the tale?

Samuel Brown was, so to speak, at the opposite pole--rapid, impatient,

fearless, full of passion and imaginative power--desiring to divine the

essences rather than the appearances of things--in search of the _what_

chiefly in order to question it, make it give up at whatever cost the

secret of its _why_; his fiery, projective, subtile spirit, could not

linger in the outer fields of mere observation, though he had a quite

rare faculty for seeing as well as for looking, which latter act,

however, he greatly preferred; but he pushed into the heart and inner

life of every question, eager to evoke from it the very secret of

itself. Forbes, as we have said, wandered at will, and with a settled

purpose and a fine hunting scent, at his leisure, and free and almost

indifferent, over the ample fields--happy and joyous and full of

work--unencumbered with theory or with wings, for he cared not to fly.

Samuel Brown, whose wings were perhaps sometimes too much for him, more

ambitious, more of a solitary turn, was forever climbing the Mount

Sinais and Pisgahs of science, to speak with Him whose haunt they

were,--climbing there all alone and in the dark, and with much peril, if

haply he might descry the break of day and the promised land; or, to

vary the figure, diving into deep and not undangerous wells, that he

might the better see the stars at noon, and possibly find Her who is

said to lurk there. He had more of Plato, though he wanted the symmetry

and persistent grandeur of the son of Ariston. He was, perhaps, liker

his own favorite Kepler; such a man in a word as we have not seen since

Sir Humphry Davy, whom in many things he curiously resembled, and not

the least is this, that the prose of each was more poetical than the

verse.

His fate has been a mournful and a strange one, but he knew it, and

encountered it with a full knowledge of what it entailed. He perilled

everything on his theory; and if this hypothesis--it may be somewhat

prematurely uttered to the world, and the full working out of which, by

rigid scientific realization, was denied him by years of intense and

incapacitating suffering, ending only in death, but the "_relevancy_" of

which, to use the happy expression of Dr. Chalmers, we hold him to have

proved, and in giving a glimpse of which, he showed, we firmly believe,

what has been called that "instinctive grasp which the healthy

imagination takes of _possible_ truth",--if his theory of the unity of

matter, and the consequent transmutability of the now called elementary

bodies, were substantiated in the lower but essential platform of actual

experiment, this, along with his original doctrine of atoms and their

forces, would change the entire face of chemistry, and make a Cosmos

where now there is endless agglomeration and confusion,--would, in a

word, do for the science of the molecular constitution of matter and its

laws of action and reaction at insensible distances, what Newton's

doctrine of gravitation has done for the celestial dynamics. For, let it

be remembered, that the highest speculation and proof in this

department--by such men as Dumas, Faraday, and William Thomson, and

others--points in this direction; it does no more as yet perhaps than

point, but some of us may live to see "_resurgam_" inscribed over Samuel

Brown's untimely grave, and applied with gratitude and honor to him

whose eyes closed in darkness on the one great object of his life, and

the hopes of whose "unaccomplished years" lie buried with him.

Very different from either, though worthy of and capable of relishing

much that was greatest and best in both, was he whom we all loved and

mourn, and who, this day week, was carried by such a multitude of

mourners to that grave, which to his eye had been open and ready for

years.

George Wilson was born in Edinburgh in 1818. His father, Mr. Archibald

Wilson, was a wine merchant, and died sixteen years ago; his mother,

Janet Aitken, still lives to mourn and to remember him, and she will

agree with us that it is sweeter to remember him than to have converse

with the rest. Any one who has had the privilege to know him, and to

enjoy his bright and rich and beautiful mind, will not need to go far to

learn where it was that her son George got all of that genius and worth

and delightfulness which is transmissible. She verifies what is so often

and so truly said of the mothers of remarkable men. She was his first

and best _Alma Mater_ and in many senses his last, for her influence

over him continued through life. George had a twin brother, who died in

early life; and we cannot help referring to his being one of twins,

something of that wonderful power of attaching himself, and being

personally loved, which was one of his strongest as it was one of his

most winning powers. He was always fond of books, and of fun, the play

of the mind. He left the High School at fifteen and took to medicine;

but he soon singled out chemistry, and, under the late Kenneth Kemp, and

our own distinguished Professor of _Materia Medica_, himself a

first-class chemist, he acquired such knowledge as to become assistant

in the laboratory of Dr. Thomas Graham, now Master of the Mint, and then

Professor of Chemistry in University College. So he came out of a

thorough and good school, and had the best of masters.

He then took the degree of M. D., and became a Lecturer in Chemistry, in

what is now called the extra-academical school of medicine, but which in

our day was satisfied with the title of private lecturers. He became at

once a great favorite, and, had his health and strength enabled him, he

would have been long a most successful and popular teacher; but general

feeble health, and a disease in the ankle-joint requiring partial

amputation of the foot, and recurrent attacks of a serious kind in his

lungs, made his life of public teaching one long and sad trial. How

nobly, how sweetly, how cheerily he bore all these long baffling years;

how his bright, active, ardent, unsparing soul lorded it over his frail

but willing body, making it do more than seemed possible, and as it were

by sheer force of will ordering it to live longer than was in it to do,

those who lived with him and witnessed this triumph of spirit over

matter, will not soon forget. It was a lesson to every one of what true

goodness of nature, elevated and cheered by the highest and happiest of

all motives, can make a man endure, achieve, and enjoy.

As is well known, Dr. Wilson was appointed in 1855 to the

newly-constituted Professorship of Technology, and to the Curatorship of

the Industrial Museum. The expenditure of thought, of ingenuity, of

research, and management--the expenditure, in a word, of

himself--involved in originating and giving form of purpose to a scheme

so new and so undefined, and, in our view, so undefinable, must, we

fear, have shortened his life, and withdrawn his precious and quite

singular powers of illustrating and adorning, and, in the highest sense,

sanctifying and blessing science, from this which seemed always to us

his proper sphere. Indeed, in the opinion of some good judges, the

institution of such a chair at all, and especially in connection with a

University such as ours, and the attaching to it the conduct of a great

Museum of the Industrial Arts, was somewhat hastily gone into, and might

have with advantage waited for and obtained a little more consideration

and forethought. Be this as it may, Dr. Wilson did his duty with his

whole heart and soul--making a class, which was always increasing, and

which was at its largest at his death.

We have left ourselves no space to speak of Dr. Wilson as an author, as

an academic and popular lecturer, as a member of learned societies, as a

man of exquisite literary powers and fancy, and as a citizen of

remarkable public acceptation. This must come from some more careful,

and fuller, and more leisurely record of his genius and worth. What he

was as a friend it is not for us to say; we only know that when we leave

this world we would desire no better memorial than to be remembered by

many as George Wilson now is, and always will be. His _Life of

Cavendish_ is admirable as a biography, full of life, of picturesque

touches, and of realization of the man and of his times, and is,

moreover, thoroughly scientific, containing, among other discussions, by

far the best account of the great water controversy from the Cavendish

point of view. His _Life of John Reid_ is a vivid and memorable

presentation to the world of the true lineaments, manner of life, and

inmost thought and heroic sufferings, as well as of the noble scientific

achievements of that strong, truthful, courageous, and altogether

admirable man, and true discoverer--a genuine follower of John Hunter.

_The Five Gateways of Knowledge_ is a prose poem, a hymn of the finest

utterance and fancy--the white light of science diffracted through the

crystalline prism of his mind into the colored glories of the spectrum;

truth dressed in the iridescent hues of the rainbow, and not the less

but all the more true. His other papers in the _British Quarterly_, the

_North British Review_, and his last gem on "Paper, Pens, and Ink," in

his valued and generous friend Macmillan's first number of his Magazine,

are all astonishing proofs of the brightness, accuracy, vivacity,

unweariedness of his mind, and the endless sympathy and affectionate

play of his affections with the full round of scientific truth. His

essay on "Color Blindness" is, we believe, as perfect a monogram as

exists, and will remain likely untouched and unadded to, _factum ad

unguem_. As may be seen from these remarks, we regard him not so much

as, like Edward Forbes, a great observer and quiet generalizer, or, like

Samuel Brown, a discoverer and philosopher properly so called--though,

as we have said, he had enough of these two men's prime qualities to

understand and relish and admire them. His great quality lay in making

men love ascertained and recorded truth, scientific truth especially; he

made his reader and hearer _enjoy facts_. He illuminated the Book of

Nature as they did the missals of old. His nature was so thoroughly

composite, so in full harmony with itself, that no one faculty could or

cared to act without calling in all the others to join in full chorus.

To take an illustration from his own science, his faculties

interpenetrated and interfused themselves into each other, as the gases

do, by a law of their nature. Thus it was that everybody understood and

liked and was impressed by him; he touched him at every point. Knowledge

was to him no barren, cold essence; it was alive and flushed with the

colors of the earth and sky, and all over with light and stars. His

flowers--and his mind was full of flowers--were from seeds, and were

sown by himself. They were neither taken from other gardens and stuck in

rootless, as children do, much less were they of the nature of

gumflowers, made with hands, wretched and dry and scentless.

Truth of science was to him a body, full of loveliness, perfection, and

strength, in which dwelt the unspeakable Eternal. This, which was the

dominant idea of his mind--the goodliness, and not less the godliness of

all science--made his whole life, his every action, every letter he

wrote, every lecture he delivered, his last expiring breath, instinct

with the one constant idea that all truth, all goodness, all science,

all beauty, all gladness are but the expression of the mind and will and

heart of the Great Supreme. And this, in his case, was not mysticism,

neither was it merely a belief in revealed religion, though no man

cherished and believed in his Bible more firmly and cordially than he;

it was the assured belief, on purely scientific grounds, that God is

indeed and in very truth all in all; that, to use the sublime adaptation

by poor crazy Smart, the whole creation, visible and invisible,

spiritual and material, everything that has being, is--to those who have

ears to hear--forever declaring "_Thou Art_," before the throne of the

Great I AM.

To George Wilson, to all such men--and this is the great lesson of his

life--the heavens are forever telling His glory, the firmament is

forever showing forth His handiwork; day unto day, every day, is forever

uttering speech, and night unto night is showing knowledge concerning

Him. When he considered these heavens, as he lay awake weary and in

pain, they were to him the work of His fingers. The moon, walking in

brightness, and lying in white glory on his bed--the stars--were by Him

ordained. He was a singularly happy, and happy-making man. No one since

his boyhood could have suffered more from pain, and languor, and the

misery of an unable body. Yet he was not only cheerful, he was gay, full

of all sorts of _fun_--genuine fun--and his jokes and queer turns of

thought and word were often worthy of Cowper or Charles Lamb. We wish we

had them collected. Being, from his state of health and his knowledge of

medicine, necessarily "mindful of death," having the possibility of his

dying any day or any hour, always before him, and "that undiscovered

country" lying full in his view, he must--taking, as he did, the right

notion of the nature of things--have had a peculiar intensity of

pleasure in the every-day beauties of the world.

"The common sun, the air, the skies,

To him were opening Paradise."

They were to him all the more exquisite, all the more altogether lovely,

these Pentlands, and well-known rides and places; these rural solitudes

and pleasant villages and farms, and the countenances of his friends,

and the clear, pure, radiant face of science and of nature, were to him

all the more to be desired and blessed and thankful for, that he knew

the pallid king at any time might give that not unexpected knock, and

summon him away.

_ST. PAUL'S THORN IN THE FLESH: WHAT WAS IT?_

If the 15th verse of the fourth chapter of the Epistle to the Galatians,

instead of being taken in a figurative sense, as it generally has been,

be understood literally, it will be found to furnish the means of

determining, with a tolerably near approach to certainty, the particular

nature of the disease under which St. Paul is supposed to have labored,

and which he elsewhere speaks of as the "Thorn in his flesh." And that

the literal interpretation is the true one, may, I think, be shown,

partly from the general scope of the paragraph to which the 15th verse

belongs; partly from some peculiarities of expression in it, which could

only have been used under an intention that the verse in question should

be taken literally; and partly also from the fact that there are

statements and allusions elsewhere in the New Testament, which assert or

imply, that St. Paul really was affected in the manner here supposed to

be indicated.

"_Brethren, I beseech you_," says the Apostle, "_be as I am; for I am as

ye are: ye have not injured me at all. Ye know how through infirmity of

the flesh I preached the gospel unto you at the first. And my temptation

(trial) which was in my flesh ye despised not, nor rejected; but

received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus._ _Where is then

the blessedness ye spake of? for I bear you record, that, if it had been

possible, ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them

to me._"

The last words of this passage, "Ye would have plucked out your own

eyes, and have given them to me," have usually been taken in a

hyperbolical or proverbial sense, as if a merely general meaning was

conveyed, amounting simply to--"There was no sacrifice, however great,

which ye would not have made for me." But it is plainly open to inquiry,

whether the sense is not of a more special kind; whether (viz.) St. Paul

does not here, as in the preceding verses, intend to remind the

Galatians of pure matter of fact--to recall to them, not in mere general

terms, the depth and warmth of their feelings and professions of regard

for him, but to repeat to them perhaps the very words they had used, and

to revive in their memories the actual and express import of their

desires and anxieties. If this be the case, if it really was a common

and habitual thing with them to express a wish that it were possible for

them to pluck out their own eyes, and to transfer them to the apostle,

the only way of reasonably accounting for so strange and _outre_ a

proceeding, is to suppose that St. Paul actually labored either under

entire deprivation of vision, or under some severely painful and

vexatious disease of the eyes: The meaning being, that so keenly did the

Galatians sympathize with the apostle in his affliction, that they would

willingly have become his substitutes by taking all his suffering upon

themselves, if only it were possible, by doing so to relieve him.

That there is at least no _prima facie_ objection to this explanation of

the words, will, I think, be readily enough admitted. It is perfectly

simple and unforced, and it conveys a lively and touching representation

of the feelings which would naturally spring up in the minds of a

grateful and warm-hearted people, to their great benefactor and friend,

who, amidst disease, and pain, and weakness, had made the greatest and

most unwearying exertions to communicate to them the invaluable truths

of Christianity.

But, in addition to this, it will be found, I think, that under the

literal interpretation of the 15th verse, a peculiar point and force

belongs to the apostle's appeal, and a closely connected and harmonious

meaning is imparted to the whole paragraph, all of which, it seems to

me, are lost if the figurative explanation is adhered to. In the

previous part of the chapter, St. Paul had been arguing against the

foolish predilection which the Galatians had taken up for forms and

formalisms and ceremonial observances, and strongly exhorting them to

abandon this pernicious and unchristian propensity. And now, in the

paragraph quoted, he takes up new ground, and appeals to them by the

memory of their old affection for him, to listen to his arguments and

entreaties, and to be of one mind with him. The general meaning of what

he says is plain enough, but there are difficulties of detail, both in

particular expressions, and in the train of thought. The words, for

example, "Be as I am, for I am as ye are," at once strike the ear as a

peculiar and unusual style to adopt in an invitation to unity of thought

and feeling. But if the last clause of the 15th verse be taken

literally, I think it will appear that this expression has a special

fitness and propriety. The words, "for I am as ye are," imply a

reference, I imagine, to his being, in respect of his bodily affliction,

_not_ as they were; and what follows is intended to remind them how

anxious they were, when their love to him was fresh, to be "as he was,"

even although it would have been necessary to accept bodily pain and

mutilation to attain that object. If I am correct in thinking the first

clause of the 12th verse, and the last of the 15th, to be thus closely

related and corresponsive, it will be seen that they mutually explain

each other; and the apostle's argument, as I understand it, may then be

thus stated:--If you were so willing and eager, when I was with you,

even at the cost of plucking out your eyes, to "be as I am," surely you

will hardly refuse me the same thing now in this other matter, wherein

there is no such difference between us as to raise any impediment in the

way of your compliance, where no such sacrifice as ye were formerly

ready to make is required of you, and where all that is asked from you

is to give up your false opinions and evil practices, and simply "be as

I am" in believing and obeying the truth revealed.

In another respect, the ordinary explanation involves, I think, an

unnatural rupture of the continuity of thought, which is completely

avoided by the literal interpretation of the passage. In the 13th verse,

we find the apostle introducing, in a somewhat formal and special

manner, the subject of his bodily affliction. "Ye know," he says, "how

through infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel to you at the

first." And it cannot but strike the reader as strange that, after this,

all he should have to say about the matter, is that the Galatians

"despised not nor rejected it." The very vagueness, and merely negative

character of this expression, excites a sort of instinctive expectation

that he will forthwith proceed to state something more positive and

specific. But instead of this we are taught by the common explanation,

to suppose that an abrupt transition is at once made from the subject of

his "temptation" altogether; the statement about the attachment of the

Galatians, instead of becoming more distinct and special, as we

naturally expect it to do, suddenly merges into the widest possible

generality; and their affection, instead of being described by any

further reference to the facts of its manifestation, is now represented

to us under a strong (it is true) but rather fantastic figure, which

leaves an impression of its character and aspect just as undecided and

imperfect as before.

But a closer examination of the words at once throws doubt on this

conception of their meaning. In the 13th and 14th verses, the associated

ideas are, the apostle's disease or affliction, and the affectionate

concern of the Galatians with reference to it. In the 15th verse, the

reference to the Galatians' display of affection is still continued, and

now the idea connected with it is, that of their giving him their

plucked-out eyes. But this is not necessarily a change of association,

for, as already intimated, their plucking out their eyes and giving them

to the apostle, naturally and readily suggests the thought that their

design was, "if it had been possible," to supply them to him as

substitutes for his own, under the assumption of the latter being

diseased or defective. If this be the reference, then the missing idea

reappears, the lost association is recovered; bodily affliction in the

apostle, and the affection of the Galatians towards him, are still the

connected thoughts, the only change being just what might naturally be

expected to take place as the discourse proceeded, viz.:--that the ideas

are more distinctly developed, and that what was previously alluded to

in general terms, is now, not indeed directly stated, but specifically

indicated and implied. The "temptation" in the one verse, and the

disease hinted by implication in the form assumed by the passionate

sympathy of the Galatians, are therefore identified; and thus, the whole

paragraph, from the 12th to the 15th verse, instead of presenting an

agglomeration of abrupt transitions and disconnected thoughts, evolves a

close, natural, and continuous meaning throughout.

Something more, however, is required than merely to show that the

interpretation which I propose exhibits a better arrangement, and

connection of the thoughts. The apostle may have written in haste, and

that explanation of his meaning which attributes to him imperfect

connectedness, may after all be the correct one. I shall therefore

proceed to inquire whether some further light may not be thrown upon the

subject, by a more minute investigation than I have yet attempted, of

particular words and turns of expression in the passage.

The phrase, "I bear you record," could only have been used with

propriety in reference to a positive _fact;_ something that the apostle

had actually witnessed. He could not have employed this language in

announcing a mere _inference_ (as the common interpretation would make

it) from the conduct of the Galatians towards him, as to the strength

and extent of their regard; for a man's testimony can only bear

reference to facts which have actually come under his observation. The

apostle's language, let it be observed, is not the declaration of a

_belief_ that the Galatians would have plucked out their own eyes in his

behalf, if circumstances had arisen to make such a sacrifice necessary;

it is the announcement of a _testimony_ ({martyro}), on the assumption

that those circumstances had actually arisen. And the testimony is not

to the effect that the Galatians entertained strong affection to him,

and as a consequence of that affection; that he is assured they would

have plucked out their eyes for him (for these must have been the terms

of his declaration, upon the ordinary understanding of the passage); but

it is direct to the point, that if it had only been possible, "they

would have plucked out their own eyes, and have given them to him." Such

language, it appears to me, would be absurd, unless we are to understand

by it, that the Galatians had actually expressed a wish, and

demonstrated a desire to perform the very act which the apostle speaks

of! And if so, I think it is obviously necessary to infer that some

circumstance must have existed to give occasion to a wish of so peculiar

a kind, in the minds of those who were attached to the apostle's person;

and the only circumstance which I can conceive of as calculated to

excite such a wish, is St. Paul's suffering under some painful affection

of the eyes.

The expression, "if it had been possible," has also, I think, a peculiar

significance. If the sentence in the 15th verse, beginning, "I bear you

record," &c., is thoughtfully considered, it will be seen that three

suppositions may be made as to the apostle's meaning and reference:

_1st_, The language may be understood (as has usually been done) in a

figurative or proverbial sense, and as containing no allusion to any

really existing circumstances; _2d_, It may be taken literally, but with

reference rather to what _might_ happen than to circumstances actually

existing; as if the writer had said, "If I were to lose my eyes, I bear

you record that you would willingly have plucked out yours to supply

their place;" or, _3d_, The words may be understood as giving a plain

matter-of-fact representation of what the Galatians really thought and

felt in reference to the apostle's bodily affliction. Now, I think it

may be made out quite distinctly that the words "if it had been

possible," could only have been used under the last of these hypotheses;

for in no other case would the contingency of _possibility_ have

presented itself to the writer's mind. If, for example, we are to

understand the language as literal, but with reference to the _future_

or _conceivable_, rather than the present or actual, the expression

would obviously have been,--"I bear you record that if it had been

_necessary_" or, "if such a thing had been required of you for my

benefit, ye would have plucked out," &c.[52] If, on the other hand, we

suppose the language to be figurative or proverbial, no contingency

would have been mentioned at all, for it is characteristic of such

language that it is always absolute and unconditional. For example, in

the expressions, "If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it

from thee;" "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it

from thee;" every one at once recognizes the purely proverbial or

figurative character of the language, and this simply because its form

is absolute and unconditioned. The moment you introduce anything like a

condition, and make the removal of the sinning eye or the offending hand

dependent upon some circumstance, you are compelled to understand the

words according to their strictly literal meaning. Thus, if our Lord,

instead of saying what he did in this case, had used such an expression

as this,--"If thy right hand offend thee, and if the tendency to offend

be insuperable, cut it off;" or, "If thy right eye offend thee, and its

extraction would not endanger life, pluck it out," it is clear that the

expressions could only have been taken in their strictly literal sense.

So, in the words under review, it is also obvious that the introduction

of the "if it be possible" takes the phrase out of the class of figures

or proverbs, and necessitates its interpretation in a close, literal,

matter-of-fact manner.

[52] This seems to have been the view taken by Calvin, but with

that logical acuteness which was characteristic of him, he

at the same time perceived that it was inaccordant with the

expression, "if it had been possible." In his commentary

upon the passage, therefore, he substitutes "_si opus sit_"

for the apostle's words; thus, of course, assuming that St.

Paul had adopted an inapt phrase to express his meaning. But

I need scarcely say that such a mode of interpretation is

altogether inadmissible, the only legitimate rule being to

take the words of the text as they stand, and thence to

infer the circumstances or conditions under which they were

used.

Perhaps a slight incident which lately occurred in my presence will

better illustrate what I wish to convey than any elaborate exposition

could do. One day, a poor simple-hearted married couple, from the

country, called on a medical friend of mine, to consult him about a

complaint in the eyes of the husband, which seemed to threaten him with

total blindness. The wife entered at great length into all the symptoms

of the complaint, and was extremely voluble in her expressions of

sympathy and of anxiety that something should be done to remove the

disease. It was difficult to repress a smile at the scene, and yet it

was touching too; and the doctor, looking in the old woman's honest

affectionate face, quietly said, "I suppose you would give him one of

your own eyes, _if you could_:" "That I would, sir," was the immediate

answer. Now, it is clear that my friend's words could only have been

used under the particular circumstances which called them forth. Had the

affection of the old woman been exhibited upon some other occasion than

her husband's threatened blindness, he _might_ have said (though, of

course, the allusion to eyes at all would not very naturally or probably

have suggested itself), "I suppose you would give him one of your own

eyes _if he required it_," but he could never have used the words, "_if

you could_." The application of this to the language used by St. Paul is

sufficiently obvious.

Another expression in this paragraph seems to me still further to

discriminate the nature of the complaint under which St. Paul suffered.

I mean the words, "and have given them to me." Admitting that the

Galatians might, under other circumstances than diseased vision in the

apostle, have thought of such a way of demonstrating their affection to

him as plucking out their own eyes, I cannot imagine how the notion of

"giving them to him" could ever have occurred to them, unless his organs

of sight were in such a state of disease as in the natural association

of ideas to give rise to this vain and fanciful wish. For the very fact

of its being thus vain, fanciful, and far-fetched, makes it necessary to

assume that there were some peculiar circumstances in the case to

occasion a thought so odd and out of the way. If the language had really

been what it has so generally been supposed to be--figurative or

proverbial--I can conceive the apostle putting it in this way, "Ye would

have plucked out your own eyes _for me_," or, "_to show the strength of

your affection for me_;" but it seems to me that it is absurd and

unmeaning to say, "_and have given them to me_", unless under the idea

of such giving being of some service to the apostle, as a kindly fancy

would naturally dwell upon the thought of its being, if St. Paul's own

eyes were injured or destroyed. And, further, we are compelled, I think,

to conclude that the idea of _substitution_ is conveyed by the word

"given," from this fact, that the clause, "if it had been possible," has

actually no meaning at all, unless it is to be understood as referring

to the supposed attempt of the apostle to make use of the Galatians'

eyes. It is clear that the writer could not have used the words, "if it

had been possible" in reference to the "plucking out," because _there_

the obstacle of impossibility did not present itself; there was nothing

to hinder the Galatians from plucking out their eyes if they had been so

disposed. Neither could the reference have been to "giving" in the

simple sense of that word; if they could pluck out their eyes there was

no impossibility in merely _giving_ them to the apostle. The only thing

about the possibility of which there could be any question was their

being _so_ given--_so_ made over to him as to be of any service as

substitutes for his own.

One other expression in the paragraph still requires to be noticed, but

I must defer alluding to it until I have referred to some other points

which seem to me to have a bearing upon the question. In the mean time,

having thus shown how exactly the whole of the language of this passage

tallies with the idea of the apostle having been affected with some

distressing complaint in his eyes, it is surely very remarkable to

learn, from a totally different source, that St. Paul actually had at

one period of his life lost the power of vision. I allude, of course, to

what is recorded, in the ninth chapter of Acts, of the strange

occurrence which took place when he was on his way to Damascus. And

although we are informed that he shortly afterwards recovered his sight,

it is obvious that this is quite compatible with the existence of much

remaining disease and imperfection of vision. Indeed, I am not sure but

his own language in giving an account of the extraordinary event

actually favors the idea that the miraculous cure effected by Ananias

went barely to the restoration of sight, and did not amount to a

complete removal of the injury which his eyes had sustained. In his

address to the Jews at Jerusalem, when he stood upon the stairs of the

castle (Acts xxii. 13), all that he says is, "Ananias came unto me and

stood and said unto me, Brother Saul, receive thy sight. And the same

hour _I looked up upon him_." In Acts ix. 18, the words are,

"Immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales, and he

received sight forthwith." In neither passage at least is there anything

inconsistent with the idea that his eyes, though they had not lost the

power of vision, may yet have been seriously and perhaps permanently

injured. And although it is perhaps scarcely legitimate to bring it

forward as an argument for the view which I have adopted, yet it is

impossible to overlook the fact that a most important end was served by

the apostle's eyes being permitted to retain the marks of disease and

severe injury, for a standing proof was thus afforded to the Church and

to the world that the extraordinary vision, so confirmatory of the truth

of our holy religion, was not, as some might otherwise have been

inclined to think it, a vain fancy of the apostle's own mind. Often, no

doubt, when St. Paul told of that remarkable meeting with the Lord

Jesus, he was met by the reply, "'Paul, thou art beside thyself;'

delusion, a heated imagination, has deceived and betrayed you." But he

had only to point to his branded, half-quenched orbs, and to ask the

objectors if mental hallucinations were accustomed to produce such

effects on the bodily frame. To such a question there could obviously be

no answer And if the objectors were satisfied of the apostle's veracity

in alleging the one thing to be the effect of the other, it was hardly

possible for them to gainsay the claim of a Divine origin for

Christianity.

This hypothesis as to the _cause_ and _occasion_ of St. Paul's

infirmity, receives from another part of Scripture, where allusion is

made to it, a somewhat remarkable confirmation. In the 12th chapter of

Second Corinthians, it cannot, I think, after what I have just stated,

but be regarded as very singular that the "thorn in the flesh" is

mentioned in immediate connection with "visions and revelations of the

Lord." The ordinary idea, indeed, has been that this connection is

merely incidental; but a little consideration, I think, will show that

this cannot be the case. In the 7th verse he says, "And lest I should be

exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there

was given to me a thorn in the flesh," &c. Now, I contend that unless

there was some such intimate relation between the thorn in the flesh and

the revelations in question, as that of the one being immediately

occasioned by the other, the humbling effect here attributed to the

bodily infirmity could not have been produced on the apostle's mind,

because the cause assigned would have been unsuitable and inadequate to

such an effect. It is true that every affliction, bodily or otherwise,

has a tendency to produce a feeling of humiliation, but it does so only

in so far as it cuts away the ground on which we are disposed to build

up matter of pride or boasting. If a man is proud of his strength or

personal beauty, it would humble him to lose a limb, or to have his

features disfigured by loathsome disease. But these afflictions would

not produce the same effect if they befell another person who valued

himself exclusively upon his learning and mental endowments. The pride

of learning and of intellect would, in such a case, remain as strong as

ever. Accordingly we find that deformed persons, so far from being

distinguished by the grace of humility, are very frequently rather

remarkable for the opposite characteristics of vanity and self-conceit;

so natural is it for the mind to take refuge from what tends to produce

a sense of degradation, in something that the humbling stroke does not

directly smite. It does not, therefore, distinctly appear, in any

explanation of St. Paul's affliction which would refer it to disease of

an ordinary kind, how it should have had the effect which he attributes

to it,--that of preventing him from being unduly exalted by the

abundance of the revelations made to him. But when it is pointed out

that his affliction was the immediate consequence of his close

intercourse with Deity, the relation of the two things assumes an

entirely different aspect, and a sufficient cause of humiliation

appears. For, if at any time the apostle was disposed to glorify himself

on his superiority to his fellow-men, and on being the peculiar favorite

and friend of God, his real insignificance, and the infinite distance

that lay between him and the Divine Being, must have been sent home with

irresistible power to his mind, by the recollection that the mere sight

of that terrible majesty had struck him to the ground, and had left an

ever-during brand of pain and disfigurement on his person. I shall just

add, that in Second Corinthians xii. 7, the words, {te hyperbole ton

apokalypseon} may with quite as much propriety be construed with {edothe

moi skolops te sarki}, as with {hina me huperairomai}; the meaning

being thus given,--"and that I might not be exalted, a thorn in the

flesh [caused] by the exceeding greatness (for this rather than

'abundance' seems to me the proper translation of {hyperbole}) of the

revelations, was given me."

If the account I have thus given of the connection between St. Paul's

"thorn in the flesh," and the visions or revelations with which he was

favored, be the correct one, we are now furnished with the means of

explaining a somewhat obscure expression in the 14th verse of the fourth

chapter of Galatians, to which I promised to return: "And my trial which

was in my flesh, ye despised not, nor _rejected_." If we are compelled

to abide by the belief, that St. Paul's "trial" was merely some bodily

affliction of the ordinary kind, we can understand the meaning of his

saying that the Galatians did not "despise" it (although, by the way, it

seems rather a microscopic basis on which to found a laudation of a body

of Christian men and women, to say that they were so good as not to

despise him on account of a natural bodily infirmity), but it is

impossible, on this assumption, to attach any consistent sense to the

word "_rejected_." It has, therefore, been taken as simply synonymous

with "despise," an interpretation which is objectionable, both because

it is at variance with the well-ascertained meaning of the Greek word

{exeptusate} (spit _out_, not spit _at_), and also because it involves

the imputation of needless tautology to St. Paul's language, from which,

almost more than from any other fault of style, the whole of his

writings prove him to be singularly free. But if my explanation of the

nature of the apostle's trial be the true one, every word of the

sentence has a clear and intelligible meaning. St. Paul came among the

Galatians proclaiming to them the glad truth, that Jesus Christ was

risen from the dead. How did he know it? Because he himself had seen him

alive after his passion, "when he came near to Damascus." Was he quite

sure that the vision was not a dream, or a delusion? He pointed to his

eyes in proof that it was a great certainty, a terrible as well as

joyous reality. And this evidence the Galatians "despised not, nor

rejected."

This explanation of the reference of "rejected," has also the advantage

of removing a difficulty which has hitherto been felt in the translation

of the preceding verse. It is there said, "Ye know how through infirmity

of the flesh I preached," &c. Now, it so happens, that the Greek words

{di astheneian}, cannot, in accordance with the common usage of the

language, be translated "through" (in the sense of _during_)

"infirmity." Had this been the meaning which the apostle intended to

convey, he would have used the genitive {di astheneias}. With the

accusative, the reference of {dia} is generally found to be to the

instrument, ground, or cause of anything, and its meaning is--by, on

account of, by means of, on the ground of, &c.[53] The literal and

strictly correct translation of St. Paul's words, therefore, is: "By the

infirmity of my flesh, I proclaimed to you the good news," _i. e._, I

adduced the fact of my bodily affliction, as giving indisputable

evidence of the truth which I told you about the resurrection and

exaltation of Jesus Christ, and this evidence "ye despised not, nor

rejected." Thus, not only a specific meaning is attached to the word

"rejected," but a much more close, distinct, and consistent sense is

given to the whole passage, than upon any other understanding of the

reference it could possess.

[53] See Robinson's _Lexicon to the New Testament_, _sub voce_ {dia}.

There are one or two other passages in St. Paul's Epistles, in which

reference, I think, is implied to this subject of his bodily affliction,

and all of them seem to me to afford incidentally some confirmation of

the particular view of the matter which I have endeavored to establish.

At the close of the Epistle to the Galatians (chap. vi. verse 11), we

find him saying, "Ye see how large a letter I have written to you with

my own hand." Now, the letter is not a very large one; on the contrary,

it is one of the shorter of the apostle's productions. And, then, why

should he take credit for having written it with his own hand? Under

ordinary circumstances, it would scarcely occur to any one in the habit

of writing at all, to speak of this as any remarkable achievement. But,

if the Galatians knew him to be laboring under impaired vision, and

perhaps severe pain in his eyes, the words are peculiarly significant,

and could not fail to make a touching impression on the quick, impulsive

temperament, so vividly alive to anything outward, of the Celtic tribe

to which they were addressed. And thus too, we obtain an explanation of

what would otherwise be rather unaccountable, how a man of St. Paul's

active habits, and whom we have difficulty in conceiving of as

accustomed in anything to have recourse to superfluous ministrations,

seems to have almost uniformly employed an amanuensis in writing to the

various churches.[54]

[54] It has been suggested to me that the state of St. Paul's

eyesight might also furnish an explanation of his mistake in

not recognizing the High Priest, which is recorded in Acts

xxiii. 5, and about which some difficulty has been felt by

commentators. One can picture the great apostle, who was a

thorough gentleman, stretching forward, and shading his

eyes, to see better, and saying, "Pardon me, I did not see

it was the High Priest." "I wist not."

Again, at the very conclusion of the Epistle, we have what I cannot help

regarding as another allusion to his affliction: "From henceforth let no

man trouble me; for I bear in my body the _marks of the Lord Jesus_." It

has been customary to regard these words as referring to the marks of

scourging, stoning, &c., which had been imprinted on the apostle's body

by the enemies of the gospel, in the course of the persecutions to which

he had been subjected in consequence of his firm adherence to the faith.

But though the fact of his having undergone severe persecution was a

strong proof of his _sincerity_, it was no proof at all of his bearing

any _authority_ over the Galatians. Yet this is what he must be

understood as asserting here. And I cannot help thinking, that the

words, "marks of the Lord Jesus," are chosen with a reference to that

relationship which was established between St. Paul and his Master and

Lord, on the occasion of that extraordinary meeting on the way to

Damascus, for it was then he received his commission to bear Christ's

name to the Gentiles. {Stigmata} were the brands with which slaves were

marked in order to prove their ownership. So, if I am right in my

understanding of the meaning of the word here, the apostle intends to

intimate that the blasting effect produced on his eyes by the glory of

that light, constituted the _brand_ which attested his being the servant

({doulos}) of Jesus Christ, and of his being commissioned by him to

communicate to others the truth of the gospel. This gives a force and

fulness of meaning which corresponds exactly with the peculiar energy of

the expression, while, according to any ordinary explanation of the

passage, it seems rather to be strong language used without any adequate

occasion for it.[55]

[55] It may be worth mentioning here, that an opinion prevails in

the Roman Catholic Church, that persons who have been

favored with Divine visions, or to whom God wishes to give a

token of his peculiar love, are frequently marked by what

are specifically called _stigmas_. I have not met with any

account of the grounds on which this opinion is founded: but

the _stigmas_ are explained to be the marks of the Saviour's

five wounds. It is very likely that the notion is nothing

more than a fantastic and superstitious explanation of the

passage in Galatians vi. 17. But it is not altogether

impossible that it may be the faint and imperfect echo of

some early tradition in the Church as to the physical effect

produced upon St. Paul by Christ's miraculous appearance to

him near Damascus. Whatever be its origin, the existence of

such an opinion is not without a certain degree of curiosity

and interest.

I think the circumstance of the expression, "marks of the Lord Jesus,"

occurring just where it does, at the close of the Epistle, is worthy of

remark. From what he says at the 11th verse of the same chapter ("Ye see

how large a letter I have written to you with my own hand") it is

obvious that, to whatever cause it is to be attributed, the act of

writing was one of considerable effort to the apostle. His zeal, and

anxiety, and Christian affection, however, had borne him up, and carried

him through with his task. But just as he was concluding, I imagine that

he began to feel that the effort he had made was greater than his

infirmity was well able to bear. If my idea as to the nature of that

infirmity be correct, his weak, diseased eyes were burning and smarting

more than ordinarily, from the unusual exertion that had been demanded

from them; and this, at once leading his mind to what had been the cause

of that exertion, the misconduct of the Galatians and their teachers,

naturally wrung from him an assertion of his authority, in the impetuous

and reproachful, but at the same time deeply pathetic exclamation: "From

henceforth let no man trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the

Lord Jesus." And so he concludes his Epistle.

In pursuing the above inquiry, certain further conclusions, naturally

flowing out of what I have attempted to establish, and yet involving

results considerably remote from it, have presented themselves to my

thoughts. I am inclined to regard them as calculated in some degree to

simplify the mode of presenting the Christian scheme to the mind, and to

impart to its claims upon the understanding and belief more of logical

directness, and less of the liability to evasion, than appear to me to

characterize some of the more ordinary modes of its presentation. But I

must leave the development of this, the most interesting, as I think,

and important part of my subject, to some future opportunity, should it

be granted me.

_THE BLACK DWARF'S BONES._

... "_If thou wert grim,

Lame, ugly, crooked, swart, prodigious._"