nan, more watchful for the discovery of unknown faults, more anxious for their correction, or more diligent in endeavouring, under the influence of the Divine grace, to perfect holiness in the

fear of God.' But after all the deduc

tions which may be due to the paramount claims of truth, or urged by the severer demands of a less friendly scrutiny, there remains to the subject of these Memoirs a residue of solid, and undoubted, and indefeasible excellence, of which the conviction and estimate will, it is firmly believed, be gradually and certainly augmenting. He may be slighted by some, and misrepresented or misunderstood by others; but among those who can justly appreciate distinguished worth, genuine piety, and enlarged and active philanthrophy, there can surely be but one opinion-that Dr. Buchanan was a burning and a shining light, and a signal blessing to the nations of the East. We may, indeed, safely leave his eulogy to be pronounced by future generations in Great Britain

and Hindostan, who will probably vie with each other in doing honour to his memory, and unite in venerating him as one of the best benefactors of mankind; as having laboured to impart to those who in a spiritual sense are 'poor indeed,' a treasure

- Transcending in its worth The gems of India.'

"But if it were possible that men should forget or be insensible to their obligations to this excellent person, he is now far removed from human censure

and applause: his judgment and his work are with God; his record is on high, and his witness in heaven. He has entered into peace,' and will doubtless stand in no unenvied lot at the end of the days;' when they that are wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.'" Vol. II. pp. 391, 392.

After the time and attention we have bestowed on these volumes, and the copious extracts from them with which we have adorned our miscellany, it may seem scarcely necessary that we should advert specifically to the manner in which the biographer of Dr. Buchanan has performed the task assigned to him; and yet we feel so strongly his claims on our gratitude, that we

cannot pass it over in silence. Of Mr. Pearson it is no more than a just commendation to say, that he has produced a work worthy of the distinguished subject of his narrative, and has executed his labour,

which was one of considerable difficulty as well as delicacy, in a way which renders that narrative one of the most interesting and instructive pieces of biography in the English language. We certainly attach great value to these volumes. The facts and discussions are so skilfully interwoven with each other as to form one uniform texture; and, what has occurred to us as rather remarkable in a work of so much striking incident, the observations and arguments introduced by the author never appear tedious; a result which could only arise from their own intrinsic merit. For classical purity and perspicuity of language; for a luminous statement of facts; for good sense, good taste, good writing,— and what is more than all, a wakeful spirit of piety, and a constant recurrence to the truths and precepts of Christianity, without any mixture of those party feelings, or of that party phraseology, or of those coarsenesses and inelegancies of style, which are sometimes injuriously associated with religious biography, we recollect no recent work that has better deserved the popularity which we rejoice tofind that these volumes have already attained.

A Series of Discourses, on the Christian Revelation, viewed in Connection with the Modern Astronomy. By THOMAS CHALMERS, D. D., Minister of the Tron Church, Glasgow. Glasgow: J. Smith and Son. London: Longman, &c. 1817. 8vo. pp. 275.

THE discourses which we are about to review are so generally known and admired that we might perhaps

be justified in leaving them to the public judgment, which has been already awarded in their favour. The name, however, and former publications of Dr. Chalmers would demand our attention even were they attached to a volume of far less intrinsic value than that which we are now about to notice. In conducting our remarks, we shall first give an outline of Dr. Chalmers's argument, and then proceed to a few observations upon the manner in which he has conducted it.

The first discourse, which is intended as preparatory to the rest, contains a rapid and vigorous sketch of the wonders disclosed by modern astronomy. The text, or rather motto, is from Psalm viii. 3, 4. When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and stars which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him; and the son of man, that thou visitest him? Dr. Chalmers views the Psalmist as leaving in imagination this diminutive world, and urging his way through infinite space, where, instead of dark unpeopled solitudes, he beholds an immeasurable scene, crouded with splendour, and filled with the energy of the Divine presence. Creation rises in its immensity before him; and earth and all its concerns seem to shrink into nothing, amidst contemplations so vast and overpowering. Passing upward from the grandeur and variety of the material creation, to the great Architect of all, he exclaims, "What is man, that thou art mindful of him; and the son of man, that thou visitest him?"

Now if this bumbling reflection be thus forced upon the mind by the mere spectacle of the immense concave of the heavens, reposing upon the circular boundary of the world, and lighted up with innumerable stars, moving with solemn regularity along its surface; how much more forcibly does it recur when the same magnificent and mysterious scene is beheld by the light of the modern astronomy?

Aided by the exalted conceptions and discoveries of science, each of those twinkling orbs becomes a sphere of great and overwhelming magnitude. The sun, which we behold as little more than a bright spot in the heavens, assumes dimensions many thousand times larger than the terrestrial globe which we so proudly inhabit, and to which we are apt to attach the idea of its being the only spot in creation worthy of the Divine regard and superintendance.

But the mere magnitude of the stars and planets is not the only circumstance which seems to countenance the humbling conclusion of the Psalmist. These worlds, so important even as masses of matter, may possibly be far more important by being, like our own, the residence of rational and immortal beings. Here the modern astronomy presses, with almost irresistible conviction, her grand discoveries: she points out the striking analogy between our own globe and the planetary worlds. They, like us, have their revolutions round our sun, and round their own axis: they, therefore, like us, have their vicissitudes of day and night, summer, and winter. To them, as well as to us, the Almighty has given the lights in the firmament of heaven: to all of them he has appointed the sun to rule the day, and to many of them moons to rule the night; for them he has made the stars also. And shall we suppose the analogy stops here? Shall not pursue it further? Shall we conclude, asks our author, that silence and solitude reign throughout the mighty empire of nature; that the greater part of the creation is an empty parade; and that not one worshipper of the Divinity is to be found amidst the interminable extent of the starry worlds?

we

Dr. Chalmers considers it " a delightful confirmation" of the argument, that in proportion as our instruments are improved, we discover new resemblances between our own world and the planetary

system. Not only is it ascertained that those distant orbs have their day and night, their change of seasons, and some of them moons to temper their darkness when turned from the sun; but

"We can see of one, that its surface rises into inequalities, that it swells into mountains and stretches into valleys; of another, that it is surrounded by an atmosphere which may support the respiration of animals; of a third, that clouds are formed and suspended over it, which may minister to it all the bloom and luxuriance of vegetation; and of a fourth, that a white colour spreads over its northern regions, as its winter advances, and that on the approach of summer this whiteness is dissipatedgiving room to suppose, that the element of water abounds in it, that it rises by evaporation into its atmosphere, that it freezes upon the application of cold, that it is precipitated in the form of snow, that it covers the ground with a fleecy mantle, which melts away from the heat of a more vertical sun; and

that other worlds bear resemblance to

our own, in the same yearly round of beneficent and interesting changes." pp. 30, 31.

Our author does not, however, stop even here, but proceeds to "guess with plausibility what we cannot anticipate with confidence," that the day may arrive when our instruments of observation shall be so powerful as to resolve by the

evidence of our senses what is at present but a probable speculation. He imagines that we may, at some future time, be able to observe summer throwing its green mantle over those mighty tracts, and again view them left naked and deprived of verdure after the flush of vegetation has subsided. He conceives, that in the progress of years we may have it in our power to trace the hand of cultivation spreading a new aspect over some portion of a planetary surface; that we may actually behold a city, the metro polis of some great empire, expanding into a visible spot, by the pow ers of some future telescope, and even be enabled to construct a map of some distant world in all its minute and topical varieties.

But still, how insignificant are five or six planetary worlds which are all we have hitherto considered, compared with the multitude of other lights which fill the concave of heaven! These planets are all attached to the sun; but what are those more distant bodies that disown his power, and seem fixed immovably in the heavens? Are they intended only to shed a feeble and scarcely noticed light upou our little corner of the universe; or are they designed for a purpose worthier of themselves, to light other worlds, and give animation to other systems? The first thing, Dr. Chalmers remarks, which strikes a scientific observer, is their im mense distance; a distance so great that if the whole space occupied by the planetary system, and which exceeds by many millions of times the magnitude of our world, were lighted up into one vast globe of fire, it would appear only a small lucid point from the nearest of them. If the earth which moves with more than the inconceivable velocity of a million and ried from its orbit, and proceed a half miles a day, were to be hurimmense regions of space, it would with the same rapid flight in the not arrive at the termination of its.

journey, after occupying all the time which has elapsed since the creation of the world. Calculations like these cannot be grasped by the human mind. We may demonstrate their truth, as Dr. Chalmers observes, by the powers of a rigid and infallible geometry:

"But no human fancy can summon up. a lively or an adequate conception, can roam in its ideal flight over this immeasurable largeness, can take in this mighty space in all its grandeur, outer boundaries of such a creation, or and in all its immensity, can sweep the lift itself up to the majesty of that great and invisible Arm, on which all is suspended." p. 36.

Our author next proceeds to exhibit the usual arguments, to prove that the fixed stars are luminous

bodies, and shews the probability of their revolving on their axes, from the fact of the periodical variations of light to which some of them are known to be subject. From the splendour of a star of the first or second magnitude, they fade away to inferior magnitudes; and one even becomes quite invisible to the naked eye, though still within the reach of the telescope; till at length they gradually recover their brightness, again to undergo the same regular vicissitude. Now this is exactly what would happen, supposing these bodies to be varied on one side with dark spots like our sun, and successively to present in their rotatory motion the less illuminated disk to the eye of an observer. Why then, exclaims Dr. Chalmers, resist the interesting conclusion, that our sun is but one of innumerable luminaries, which like him carry numerous other worlds in their train? It is true, we see not these satellites: but could we take our flight to these distant regions, we should soon lose sight of our own little world; the larger planets would disappear in their turn; the sun would decline into a spot, his retinue of worlds would be lost in the obscurity of distance; and all that remained visible of our whole magnificent system be reduced to the glimmering of a little star.

"The contemplation has no limits. If we ask the number of suns and of systems, the unassisted eye of man can take in a thousand, and the best telescope which the genius of man has constructed can take in eighty millions. But why subject the dominions of the universe to the eye of man, or to the powers of his genius? Fancy may take its flight far beyond the ken of eye or of telescope. It may expatiate in the outer regions of all that is visible; and shall we have the boldness to say, that there is nothing there? that the wonders of the Almighty are at an end, be.cause we can no longer trace his footsteps? that his Omnipotence is exhausted, because human art can no longer follow him? that the creative energy

of God has sunk into repose, because the imagination is enfeebled by the magnitude of its efforts, and can keep no longer on the wing through those what eye hath seen, or the heart of mau mighty tracts, which shoot far beyond hath conceived; which sweep endlessly along, and merge into an awful and mysterious infinity?" pp. 41, 42.

"

To complete the climax, our airthor alludes to two other circumstances, which seem to carry our ideas of the universe to the farthest limits of the imagination, The sun, we know, revolves on its axis; and this motion might have been communicated to it, mechanically speaking, either by a simple or a compound impulse. If impelled, for instance, by a single stroke, which is not in the direction of its centre, it would acquire a rotatory motion, but at the same time be driven forward in space, as well as caused to turn upon its axis. To communicate the rotatory motion without the progressive, two forces are necessary, and these in opposite directions, so as to counteract the effect of each other's

projectile influence, while they combine in producing a rotatory movement. Now the planets have both a progressive and a rotatory motion, which they have therefore probably received by one and the same impulse. The sun has likewise a movement of revolution. If therefore, he was acted upon like the planets, by one impulse, he must have a progressive motion also; and that he is so acted upon seems more consistent with analo.

gy and simplicity, than to suppose a compound force to have operated upon him. Hitherto, however, this is merely conjecture, without evidence; but a circumstance has been discovered, which renders such a conjecture highly probable. In the course of ages, the stars in one quarter of the celestial sphere are apparently receding from each other, and in the opposite quarter are apparently drawing nearer to each other. This is what would