these sermons. At the time we speak of it was customary for the city clergymen of Glasgow to preach, in rotation, on Thursdays in the Tron Church. Their number was eight, and the returns of duty was to each at an interval of two months. Chalmers's first discourse was delivered on Thursday, the 23rd of November. He undertook to shew the groundlessness of the prejudice against revelation, which rests on the vastness of the planetary universe, and what would seem the comparative unimportance of man. The discussion occupied all the Thursdays of 1816 that fell to him. The crowds that thronged to hear him were immense. All the news-rooms poured out their most diligent students of the Herald and Courier. The law-courts were deserted; the offices of merchants and bankers, in the busiest time of a busy city, sent out their thousands; master, clerk, and apprentice all crowding to hear Chalmers. "Out of the very heart of the great tumult, an hour or two stood redeemed for the highest exercises of the spirit; and the low traffic of earth forgotten, heaven and its high economy, and its human sympathies and eternal interests, engrossed the mind at least and the fancy of congregated thousands." In January, 1817, these discourses were announced for publication. The publication of sermons was a matter of so much commercial risk that a subscription was frequently resorted to, and this was suggested to Chalmers by his publisher. Chalmers resisted, and preferred trusting to the general market. Bookseller and author were alike surprised at the result. Within a year nearly 20,000 copies were disposed of. "The Tales of my Landlord" were published about the same time, and the circulation of the sermons equalled that of the popular novel. Hazlitt, from whom, by the way, we have the pleasantest if not the best account of Coleridge's preaching, tells us of Chalmers's: "These sermons ran like wildfire through the country, were the darlings of watering-places, were laid in the windows of inns, and were to be met with in all places of public resort. We remember finding

the volume in the orchard of the inn at Burford Bridge, near Boxhill, and passing a whole and very delightful morning in reading it without quitting the shade of an apple tree." Canning

VOL. XXXVIII.-NO. CCXXVIII.

told Mackintosh that he was entirely converted to admiration of Chalmers. Foster, in the Eclectic Review, blamed Chalmers for "dragging into notice a stale and impotent objection against the truth of the Christian religion, and giving a wide spread, by his discourses, to an argument which, as far as we can find, is almost unknown." We believe that Foster was wrong in supposing that some such feeling of prejudice does not lurk in many minds, and we think the greatest service is done in dragging into distinct light all such objections; whose real force is in the obscurity which gives them substantive existence. Forced into distinct expression there is nothing whatever in the strange fear that the God who created should disregard his creature. That the objection is "stale" is no reason for leaving it unanswered; that it is "impotent," if by impotent Foster means, as is most probable, that it ought to have no effect, is no reason for allowing it to produce an effect which it ought not to have the power of producing. There can, we think, be little doubt that, in all such cases, the fairest and the wisest course, if not the only fair and wise one, is—where a preacher feels himself competent to treat of a difficulty such as the prejudice dealt with by Chalmers-in his discourses to bring it fully before the minds of his congregation; to allow it such force as it may seem justly to have. Concealment, or shirking the difficulty, is the worst course he can adopt. We transcribe, from Blackwood, a passage no doubt by Wilson:—

"It has, we know, been said by some, that Chalmers has, in these noble 'Discourses,' all along combated a phantom, and that those objections to the truth of Christianity have never been raised which it is their object to overthrow. On this very account are his 'Discourses' invaluable. The objections which he combats are not so much the clear, distinct, and decided averments of infidelity, as they are the confused, glimmering, and disturbing fears and apprehensions of noble souls bewildered among the boundless magnificence of the universe. Perhaps there is no mind of any strength, no soul of any nobility, that has not often, in the darkness of the night, been beset by some of those majestic terrors; we may never have communicated them even to our dearest friends, for when they are gone, they are unutterable-like the 3 A

imagined shadows of ghosts, they come and go, silently and trackless; but an awe is left in the haunted mansion of the soul; and with all the deepest gratitude of a perturbed imagination we listen to the holy and the lofty voice which scares away the unhallowed visitants, and once more fills the midnight stillness with dreams of a peaceful and heavenly happiness. What although in the conversation of ordinary society no such thoughts ever find expression? Low, indeed, and unimpassioned is the strain of feeling which man holds with man in the common intercourse of life. And how, amid the trivial talk of amusement, or the intelligent discussion of affairs, or even the more dignified colloquy of philosophers, how could such emotions as we now speak of find utterance or sympathy? How can there be any conducting atmosphere by which such mysterious thoughts might be conBut as there veyed from soul to soul?

are fears, and doubts, and troubles, and agitating aspirations, too awful to bear the garb of ordinary words, so is there a Chalmers to meet them in all their dark array, and to turn them, during their hesitating allegiance or their open rebellion, into the service and beneath the banner of our God and our Redeemer."-Blackwood's Magazine, vol. ii.

p. 139.

he appeared for the first time in a Lon-
don pulpit. Mrs. Chalmers and he,
accompanied by Mr. Smith, his pub-
lisher, left Glasgow for London on
Monday the 14th of April, 1817. Their
They
progress was a circuitous one.
crossed from Cumberland to Yorkshire,
visited the scenery of Rokeby, and in-
spected the Moravian establishment at
Fulneck.

The journey was a delightful one. They saw with intelligent eyes the great manufacturing towns. They vi sited many eminent men-James Montgomery, at Sheffield; Robert Hall, at Leicester. As Mrs. Chalmers was of the party, we have not the kind of record which remains of most of Chalmers's other journies, in his letters to his wife. But Smith and he wrote a joint journal, the Doctor undertaking to chronicle character, and Smith narrating such incidents as occurred, and describing scenery. That chronicle

has not been recovered, but some of Smith's letters have been preserved, and the poet, Montgomery, has given an account of his recollections of the day on which he saw Chalmers. The Moravian missions were the subject of their conversation, and "Chalmers said-evidently not from sudden impulse, but a cherished purpose in his heart I mean to raise five hundred pounds for the Brethren's missions this year. Five hundred pounds for our poor missions!' I cried; I never heard of such a thing before.' He rejoine! -I will do it.' But while I heartily thanked him, and implicitly believed in the integrity of his intention, I could only hope that he might be able to fulfil it, and within myself I said- I will watch you, Doctor.' I did so, and traced him through sermons, subscriptions, collections, and donations, till he had realised, to the best of my recollection, a sum nearer to six than five hundred pounds."

"Now, considering in how many comprehensive concerns he was at that very time putting forth all his strengthoriginating, promoting, and accomplishing economical, local, patriotic, and Christian plans for the well-being of populous communities-in comparison with which this effort in aid of the Brethren was like the putting forth of his little finger only-yet, I confess, that 'small thing,' not to be despised, gave me a most magnificent idea of the intellectual, moral, and sanctified power for

the reason of mankind was slightly wounded by the addition of a single absurdity."

Of the truth of facts so long and openly discussed, there can be no question. The monks of Mount Athos did indeed put themselves into a state which may with safety be called one of mental lucidity, by fixing their eyes intently on a point. Mr. Robertson, who used to induce the mesmeric sleep by causing his votaries to fix their eyes on a wafer, had better precedent than he supposed for his practice; and Miss Martineau, who, in her artificial trances, saw all objects illuminated has been unconsciously repeating a monastic method of worship. The contemptuous indifference of Gibbon for once arises from defect of information; and when in a note he observes that Mosheim "unfolds the causes with the judgment of a philosopher," while Fleury "transcribes and translates with the prejudices of a Catholic priest," himself gives a luculent example of the errors of philosophy, and of the often unsuspected approach of prejudice to truth. Mosheim's observation, notwithstanding the damaging approval of Gibbon, is not without its value. "There is no reason," he says, "for any to be surprised at this account, or to question its correctness. For among the precepts and rules of all those in the East who teach men how to withdraw the mind from the body, and to unite it with God, or inculcate what the Latins call a contemplative and mystic life, whether they are Christians, or Mohammedans, or Pagans, there is this precept, viz., that the eyes must be fixed every day for some hours upon some particular object, and that whoever does this will be rapt into a kind of ecstasy. See what Engelbert Kempfer states concerning the monks and mystics of Japan, tom. i. p. 30; and the account of those of India by Francis Bernier, tom. ii. p. 127." Strange that Mosheim, observing the uniformity both of the process and of its results in so many different parts of the world, should not have suspected that there was something more in this species of lucidity than the merely casual effects of a distempered imagination. By fixing the gaze even of the lower animals on an immoveable point, they fall into a condition equally unnatural, and which, if they had language to express their visions, would

probably be found equally clairvoy

ant.

A favourite subject of medieval art is the life of the Christian ascetic in the Desert. In these representations a human skull may generally be seen placed before the eyes of the devotee. Such an object would fix the gaze and induce the ecstasy as well as any other. The charm of this species of contemplation must have been intense, since in search of its exaltations and illuminations the very convents were deserted; and during the fourth and fifth centuries the deserts of Idumea, of Egypt, and of Pontus, swarmed with anchorites, who seemed to live only for the sake of escaping from life, and in their fasts and mortifications rivalled, if they did not for a time even surpass, the Fakirs of the East. To such an extent was this religious enthusiasm carried, that in Egypt the number of the monks was thought to equal that of the rest of the male population. Strange consideration, if it be the fact, that a few passes of a mesmeric operator should produce the same effects which these multitudes procured through toils so painful and sacrifices to themselves and to society so costly.

The Egyptian method of inducing clairvoyance in boys, by causing them to gaze on a pool of ink in the palm of the hand, has already been identified with the practice of Dr. Dee, whose black spherical mirror is now said to be in the possession and use of a distinguished modern mesmeriser. Divination by the crystal is a wellknown medieval practice; and from the accounts of it which Delrio and others have handed down, it appears to have resembled, in some remarkable particulars, the method now in use among the soothsayers of Cairo. It does not appear to make any difference whether the polished object be black or white, a mirror, a solid ball, or a transparent globe containing water: the same extraordinary series of appearances is alleged to follow an earnest inspection of it. Before proceeding to Delrio's singular corroboration of this use of the crystal, it will be well to state what is known of divination by the phial and by the mirror. Divination by the phial is technically known as gasteromancy. "In this kind of divination," says Peucer (12mo, Wirtemberg, 1560, p. 146, a), "the response is given by pictures, not

by sounds.

They procured glass vessels of a globular shape, filled with fair water, and set round them lighted tapers; and after invoking the demon with a muttered incantation, and proposing the question, they brought forward a pure boy-child, or a pregnant woman, who, gazing intently on the glass, and searching it with their eyes, called for, and demanded, a solution of the question proposed. The devil then answered these inquiries by certain images, which, by a kind of refraction, shone from the water on the polished and mirror-like surface of the phial."

Catoptromancy, or divination by the mirror, is as old as the time of the Roman Emperors. In one of the passages relating to this method of inducing what is called clairvoyance, we have an illustration of the early acquaintance of mankind with some of the forms of mesmerism. The passage is found in Spartian's life of Ditius Julian, the rich Roman who purchased the Empire when it was put up to auction by the Prætorian guards. "Julian was also addicted to the madness of consulting magicians, through whom he hoped either to appease the indignation of the people, or to control the violence of the soldiery. For they immolated certain victims (human?) not agreeable to the course of Roman sacrifice; and they performed certain profane incantations; and those things, too, which are done at the mirror, in which boys with their eyes blindfolded are said, by means of incantations, to see objects with the top of the head, Julian had recourse to. And the boy is said to have seen (in the mirror) both the approach of Severus and the death of Julian."

The passage may be variously rendered, according to different readings and punctuations, either as "boys, who can see with their eyes blindfolded, by reason of incantations made over the top of the head;" or, 66 boys, who having their eyes blindfolded, can see with the top of the head, by reason of incantations;" or, "boys who, having their eyes blindfolded, can see with the top of the head, it being operated on by way of incantation." This seeing, or seeming to see, with the top of the head, is one alleged variety of the modes of modern clairvoyance. seems difficult to imagine that the boy Horner, whose case is related by Mr.

It

Topham, in a letter to Dr. Elliotson, dated May 31, 1847 (Zoist, No. 18, p. 127), could have heard anything of these pagan practices. Mr. Topham, a barrister and man of credit, states"After five or six weeks' mesmerism, he began spontaneously to exhibit instances of clairvoyance. The first occasion was on the 11th of September. It was in the dusk of the evening, so that the room where he was mesmerised was nearly dark. My previous mode of mesmerising him had been by pointing at his eyes, but on this occasion I began by making passes over the top of his head, and continued them after he was in the sleep. In the course of five or six minutes after the sleep was induced, he suddenly exclaimed that he could see into the room above us (the drawing-room). I said, 'Your eyes are closed; how can you see?' And he replied, 'I don't see with my eyes; I see from the top of my head. All the top of my head seems open.' He then described, &c. I found everything as he had described, &c." Mr. Topham, it need scarcely be added, does not appear to have been at all aware of the passage in Spartian, which, indeed, has not been cited or referred to in any published work for nearly two hundred years back.

A like use of the suspended ring, indicating the early acquaintance of practitioners in these arts with one of the alleged evidences of the so-called odylic force, is thus described by Peucer (p. 146, b) among various modes of hydromancy :-" A bowl was filled with water, and a ring suspended from the finger was librated in the water; and so, according as the question was propounded, a declaration or confirmation of its truth, or otherwise, was obtained. If what was proposed was true, the ring, of its own accord, without any impulse, struck the sides of the goblet a certain number of times. They say that Numa Pompilius used to practice this method, and that he evoked the gods, and consulted them in water in this way."

Crystallomancy is the art of divining by figures, which appear on the surface of a crystal ball, in like manner as on the phial filled with water. Concerning this practice, Delrio has the following remarkable passage, citing his cotemporary, Spengler (Disq. Mag. 1. 4, c. 2, q. 5, s. 6):-"A man well