LETTERS TO THE SUPPORTERS OF THE

EDINBURGH REVIEW.

No I.-To the Reverend THOMAS CHALMERS, D. D.

SIR,-I know no man who has less reason when a letter is brought to him, to dread that it may contain something disagreeable to his feelings, than Dr Chalmers. You have overcome many disadvantages, and achieved many triumphs; your enemies are few, and the nature of the reproaches which they pour out against you betrays very distinctly the meanness and envy from which they are sprung.Your friends are numerous; all of them admire your genius as an author, and venerate your zeal as a clergyman; and not a few of them, add to all this, a sincere and ardent love of the simplicity and the kindness which form the best ornaments of your character in private life. Your reception in the world is such as might spoil a mind less pure and dignified than yours. The flattery of women, and the vulgar, you could not of course fail to despise; but the most dangerous of all temptations, the "Laudari a viris laudatis," has been abundantly served up to you; you have been extolled by every one of your eminent contemporaries who has had occasion to hear you preach. You have overcome the cold dignity of Lord Castlereagh, and the reluctant scepticism of Mr Jeffrey, with equal ease; and you have taken a station in the eye of your country, above what is, or has lately been, occupied by any clergyman, either of the English or of the Scottish church.

The praises which have been heaped upon you, have indeed, in many instances, been extravagant and absurd. I consider you as a man of strong intellect and ardent imagina

tion; but I believe, that both in reason and fancy, you have, at the present time, many superiors; and that, had you selected for the subject of your disquisitions any other topic than that of religion, your labours would have attracted much less notice than they have done. I say not this by way of disparaging your talents, for almost every great man is calculated to shine in one department, not in many; and that in which your greatness has been shewn, is certainly as worthy of respect as any which you

could have selected. But, although you have applied to sacred subjects a more vigorous style, and a more energetic imagination, than are commanded by any other preacher of your day, you are not to suppose that you have not been immeasurably surpassed in your own field by many illustrious predecessors. Your reasoning is lame and weakly, when compared with that of Butler and Paley. Your erudition is nothing to that of a Lardner, a Warburton, or a Horsley. Your eloquence is jejune, when set by the side of Barrow, or any of the great old English preachers; and must always seem coarse, and even unnatural, to those who are familiar with Massillon and Bossuet. Nevertheless, you are assuredly a great man. Your mind is cast in an original mould. Your ardour is intense, and no one can resist the stream of your discourse, who has either heart to feel what is touching, or soul to comprehend what is sublime.

A man, situated as you are, cannot fail to be the subject of much conversation among those who are acquainted with his merits. But the "Digito monstrarier et dicier hic est," are sometimes the penalty, as well as the prize, of eminence; and the same causes which secure every exertion of your virtue or your genius from neglect, cannot fail to draw upon every departure from the one, and every misapplication of the other, the eye of a most minute and jealous scrutiny. Your faults are likely to be blazoned with the same clamour which waits upon your excellencies; and the world, which is in no case fond of giving too much praise, will hasten to atone for the violence with which it has applauded, by the bitterness with which it will condemn.

Do not fear that I have made these observations by way of a prelude to abuse. You have no admirer more sincere than myself. Although not personally acquainted with you, I love and respect your character-and every part of it. I by no means coincide with some extravagant positions of the rhapsodist who praised you some months ago in the pages of this Magazine; but the admiration I feel for you is as sincere as his can be; and if you be displeased with any part of my address, remember, I beseech you, that my officiousness is only another illustration of the old Greek proverb, which

says, that "Love hates to be silent," sgws 8 Qike to oiyã. I think you cannot possibly be the worse of being told, that in my apprehension, and in that of many who admire and love you as I do, you have lately fallen into a great and dangerous error. I by no means wish to set up my voice with any thing like petulance or pertinacity against the conduct of one entitled to so much respect. You may have reasons, perhaps good ones, for what you have done. But, be assured, the world is very anxious to hear them; and till they are explained, in the eyes of all good Christians, and, I will add, of all honest men, you are not what you were. Your conscience has already spoken. -There is no need for going about the bush with a man of your stamp. You are sensible that the world has reason to wonder at your conduct in becoming a contributor to the Edinburgh Review; and you confess, before I ask you to do so, that, by assuming this character, you have tarnished the purity of your reputation. As you have committed the offence, however, more frequently than once, I shall not ask your leave to tell you, at somewhat greater length, both the grounds and the nature of the opinion which the public is likely to form in respect to every Christian Minister who lends his support to the declining credit of that once formidable Journal.

From all that I have either heard or read of your discourses in the pulpit, if there is one thing more than any other characteristic of you as a preacher, it is the zeal with which you are never weary of telling your audience, that Christianity should exert an intense and pervading influence, not only over their solemn acts of devotion, but over their minds, even when most engaged with the business and the recreations wherein the greater part of every life must of necessity be spent. True religion, according to the doctrine which you support with such persuasive and commanding eloquence, is not the dark Sybil of some Pythian cell, consulted only on great emergen cies, surrounded with mysterious vapours, and giving utterance to enigmatical responses. She is, or ought to be, the calm and smiling attendant of all our steps, the tutelary angel of all our wishes and hopes, the confidential friend and guardian, whose

presence lends to pleasure its greatest charm, whose absence, or coldness, would be sufficient to throw a damp over every exertion, and to chill the very fountain of all our enjoyment. We must go out of the world altogether, if we are never to mingle in the society of the ungodly; but, say you, in no moment of our intercourse with the world, and the men of the world, should we allow ourselves entirely to forget that we ourselves have our treasure laid up elsewhere-far less should we ever, by any deportment of ours, confirm the evil principles, or countenance the evil deeds, whose existence we cannot but observe among those with whom we are thus, at times, compelled to associate. On the contrary, we should take every opportunity of letting all men see what we arewe should remember, that the faith which we possess is not a thing to be worn like a gala garment, and laid aside at pleasure for weeds less likely to attract attention-we should take care that civility to our neighbours do not make us forgetful or careless of the duty which we owe to ourselves.

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If an ordinary Christian be thus bound to preserve and shew his Christianity in the midst of all his occupations, it follows, I apprehend, pretty clearly, that a Christian author must lie under an obligation no less binding with regard to the conduct, purport, and probable effect of all his writings. The Bible informs us, that the Christian ought to consider himself as city set upon a hill;" surely the sacred preacher, the pious author, cannot but consider himself as occupying the most prominent part of this conspicuous situation. He cannot but know, that it is his fate to be " seen and read of all men." Beza wrote obscene songs; but this was in the days of his youth, and he lived abundantly to repent and atone for his errors. Marot wished to expiate the sin of his Madrigals; and he composed, with that view, his metrical version of the Psalms. It was reserved for Dr Chalmers to exhibit the apparent converse of their conduct; and after publishing a powerful treatise on the Historical Evidences of Christianity, and a series of masterly sermons against Modern Infidelity, to delight the malignant, and startle the friendly, by coming forth as the prop and pillar of a Deistical Review.

The articles which you have as yet contributed to the Edinburgh Review (such of them, at least, as are generally known, or suspected to be yours), appear to me to be by no means among the most happy of your productions. You are an orator, but you are nothing else. Your style is formed for the pulpit, and no living preacher can there compete with you. But it was not more absurd in Voltaire to attempt an epic poem, or in Mr Fox to attempt a history, than it is in you to imagine that you can gain honour to your name by writing in the Edinburgh Review.-But this has nothing to do with the subject of my address to you. Although you had written like an angel-although you had shewn yourself to be more witty than Mr Jeffrey, more logical than Mr Brougham, and more scientific than Mr Playfair-I assert, that you could have had no reason to pique yourself upon your laurels. I maintain, that by writing in this Review, you are injuring the cause of your faith and of your Master; and I know, that you are incapable of consoling yourself for wrong done to them, by any gratification which your individual vanity might receive.

In one of your late publications-a work with which, by the way, I was much more pleased than most people seem to have been-you caution your readers against blaming too much the papistical submission to creeds, couneils, and fathers, while they themselves are, in all probability, the equally unquestioning disciples of some less venerable authorities. Believe me, the circle in which you yourself move, above all, the audience to which you preach, have great need to take this, your admonition, into their serious consideration. I know of no man whose ipse dixit affords at this moment a more common, or a more undisputed, argument, among many extensive classes of society than your own. You are the oracle of a few; but many, very many, who make no man their oracle, are inclined to listen with the utmost attention to your advice, and to follow, without much examination, any path of conduct which seems to have the recommendation of your favour. This much is certain, that any foreigner, a stranger to our country and our popular literature, after a perusal of your avowed works, would think himself extremely safe in

taking up any number of a periodical work, to which he had been informed Dr Chalmers was a contributor. He would never suspect, that the sentiments of those who conduct this Journal, and the main tenor of their disquisitions, could be at all at enmity to those principles and feelings of which he already knew you to be so zealous a partaker, and so vigorous a defender. If he happened to be a weak man (and all good Christians are by no means to be expected to have strong intellects), he would much rather question his own eyes or understanding, than the moral or religious tendency of any thing which he might read in these so consecrated pages. The sanctity of your name would shed an air of reverence over all with which it should be associated; and he would never dream that treason might lurk under those banners of which you were pleased to declare yourself the champion.-If any man is told, that some particular work is supported by a person of acknowledged genius, he takes it for granted that the general talent of this work is at least respectable, and that the great man, for whose name he entertains so much regard, would never stoop to be the coadjutor of a herd of drivellers. Are we to rely with more confidence upon the consistency of intellect than upon that of principle? Are we to allow more license to your Christianity than we would to the genius of another man? The faith which you profess, should teach you that the talents you possess must all hereafter be accounted for. If the Judge be severe upon him who buries his talent in the napkin, how, think ye, will he look upon that man who pawns his treasure to be the surety of the adversary? Take heed, sir, I beseech you; you know not into what serious evils the indiscretion of a momentary vanity may bring the character and the usefulness of a minister of Christ.

It is not necessary to suppose, that many men can be found so ignorant, or so obtuse, as to believe that the Edinburgh Review is a Christian work, even although Dr Chalmers contributes, now and then, its leading articles. But may not much evil be done, although the infatuation should stop very considerably short of this? Is there no danger that they who see the difference between your avowed principles and those of the Journal

which you befriend, may be led, by the respect in which they hold your character and judgment, to suspect, that this difference, great and evident as it may be, is a matter of much less moment than they had formerly supposed? You know as well as I do, how natural a thing scepticism is; with what a seductive charm it seizes upon the affections of the young, the vain, and the inconsiderate; how it flatters the self-love of the ignorant, and luils to repose the Inquietude of the slothful. You know how many there are to be found in every city, who, even after they have recovered from the delusion of youthful selfsufficiency, and learned to suspect that some things are too high for the investigation of unassisted reason, are yet held in fetters by the habits which they have acquired, and arrested at the threshold of faith by the phantom of doubts which they have in vain endeavoured to dispel. Your experience as a clergyman has, I doubt not, made known to you many unhappy individuals, who thus suffer, by the indecision of many comfortless years, for the fleeting satisfaction of their youthful pride. You have seen such men; you have pitied them; perhaps it has not unfrequently been your lot to console their weary spirits, and strengthen their shrinking resolutions. What effect, think ye, will it have upon such minds as these, to hear that you lend your countenance, and the strength of your name and genius, to the Edinburgh Review?-that you are allow ing your writings to go forth into the world, and give their influence to forward the success of a work, from whose treacherous pages it has perhaps been their misfortune to derive not a few of those evil impressions which are rendering their lives unhappy? that you are become the patron of those whom they cannot help cursing as the misguiders of their youth, whose impious jeers have left a poison within their breasts, so foul and rankling, that no after penitence can entirely expel it,-whose derision has acted as a corrosive pestilence, mutilating and wasting away, within them, every thing that is most generous in feeling, and most sublime in principle? They had begun to reverence you as the weight in the scale, which was likely to give to the right cause its just preponderance. They were

rejoiced to find genius as great as they had before followed into evil, acting as the pillar and cloud which should conduct them into the land of security and faith. What a blow it is to all their expectations, when they see that you, who talk in the pulpit as if a clever sceptic were the most dangerous pest that ever was let loose upon society, can condescend to cater for that banquet, of which scoffers and infidels are the principal purveyors! How can you suppose that these men will turn from the cold blasphemies or impish grins of the old Reviewers, with that horror which every devout and stedfast Christian must feel in perusing their writings, when they find, that, in spite of all their grins and all their blasphemies, those heirs of the malignity of Gibbon and the scorn of Voltaire are aided and abetted in their impious undertakings by the sincere, the zealous, the manly intellect of Chalmers? What, think you, would the good men of less sophisticated ages have said to the spectacle of such alarming inconsistency? Would Milton have patronised a miscellany conducted by Mr Hobbes? Would Addison have been the coadjutor of Bolingbroke or Shaftesbury? Would Johnson have sent forth his essays mingled with those of Hume? I consider you as both morally and intelleetually very much the superior of Robertson; but I think you might derive a very important lesson, from contrasting the contempt wherewith his memory is loaded, with the respect which infidels and Christians alike accord to the firm integrity of Whitaker.*

There is only one supposable case in which I should think it justifiable, or even commendable in you, to be a contributor to Mr Jeffrey's Review. It is this. Since the moment this Review was commenced, it has maintained a remarkable silence with regard to one very important part of our national literature. Our poets, philosophers, historians, travellers, and wits, have received abundant attention; but little or nothing has been ever said about our divines. Two or three volumes of sermons have indeed been reviewed; and these have been thus highly favoured, it would appear,

See Gibbon's Miscellaneous Works, vol. iii.

rather on account of personal regard to their authors, than from any affection for the subjects of which they treat. The reviews of these books were written, indeed, with a decent air; but the most superficial observer cannot fail to see, that, in discussing the literary merits of Moncrieff, Alison, and Morehead, the critic has been very careful to abstain from any thing like an eulogy on that peculiar system of faith which it has been, throughout life, the chief object of all these good men's endeavours to illustrate and defend. Your own works have excited much more attention among the literary as well as the Christian world, than any other religious compositions of our day, but not one of them has ever been noticed in this Review,-a circumstance which I attribute not to any unwillingness on the part of Mr Jeffrey to gratify and praise you, but to the intensely Christian aspect and air of the writings themselves, and the difficulty, or rather I should say the impossibility, of assigning to you your due place among the literary men of the time, without saying something decided concerning the topics which you have handled so well, and from which the chief inspiration of your genius seems unquestionably to be derived. Now I do not suppose for a moment, that you could stoop to follow the example of some of your brother authors, and review yourself; but I see nothing absurd in imagining that you might very well review and applaud those who are employed on the same subjects, and animated with the same hopes, which you yourself love and cherish. Had Mr Jeffrey said to Dr Chalmers, "I cannot venture to say a word with respect to religion, but I pledge myself to insert nothing in the Review which can appear hostile to it. Take you this matter entirely into your hands: you understand it better than any of our confederacy. The want of religious reviews is the greatest defect of our Journal; for theological writings have always formed a most important part of English literature, and even in that point of view alone, I am sensible that our neglect of them is a radical error. Say what you please, and do what you please, with this branch of the Review. Leave me the belles lettres and the science, and take you the religion, &c." Had Mr Jeffrey acted in this

open and candid manner, I think you might safely have quenched all your scruples, and set your shoulders to the work, infinitely to your own honour and to the benefit of the Review. But this is not so. The Review still continues to be the organ of infidelity. The part which you play is a very humble one. You are only allowed to write on subjects unconnected with religion: while you are earnestly entreated to join the camp, the weapons in whose use you are most skilful are maliciously kept out of your hands. You are rather there as a part of the pageant than as one of the substantial combatants. It suits neither your interest nor your reputation to maintain so pitiful a post. It is unworthy of you to write in any book, wherein you dare not give full vent to your thoughts on that subject which you profess to consider as of paramount weight and dignity. I own that there would be some risk of ridicule in the attempt to render the Edinburgh Review a defender of Christianity. But if this be so, if you shrink from the derision of the men of the world, should you not still more shrink from their contempt And contempt, you may depend upon it, is the best wages which some of your present coadjutors will ever give you for all your compli

ance.

In spite of every thing, you cannot avoid shewing us, who know you, that even in your assumed character of an Edinburgh Reviewer, you still preserve the same ardent love for Christianity which shines with a more effectual splendour among the volumes you have published with your name. In one eloquent passage, you even advance and maintain, with no ordinary vigour, the principle, that the extended influence of our religion would of itself be sufficient to remove all those evils of pauperism and poorsrates which at present occupy so much of the attention of the British legislature. This is noble, and worthy of you. But do not imagine that the full meaning of the writer will ever be guessed at by the majority of those who read the passage. They are so much accustomed to see the terms of "the truth," and "our holy religion," &c. coupled in this Journal with obvious taunts and gibes against the most sacred mysteries of their faith, that they take it for granted the