ndism of Dr. Chalmers, a man with the energy of a
giant and the simplicity of a child.' In 1837, Mr. Gladstone says in one
of the many fragments written when in his later years he mused over the
past, 'we had a movement for fresh parliamentary grants to build
churches in Scotland. The leaders did not seem much to like it, but had
to follow. I remember dining at Sir R. Peel's with the Scotch
deputation. It included Collins, a church bookseller of note, who told
me that no sermon ought ever to fall short of an hour, for in less time
than that it was not possible to explain any text of the Holy
Scripture.'

In the spring of 1838, the mighty Chalmers was persuaded to cross the
border and deliver in London half a dozen discourses to vindicate the
cause of ecclesiastical establishments. The rooms in Hanover Square
were crowded to suffocation by intense audiences mainly composed of the
governing class. Princes of the blood were there, high prelates of the
church, great nobles, leading statesmen, and a throng of members of the
House of Commons, from both sides of it. The orator was seated, but now
and again in the kindling excitement of his thought, he rose
unconsciously to his feet, and by ringing phrase or ardent gesture
roused a whirlwind of enthusiasm such that vehement bystanders assure us
it could not be exceeded in the history of human eloquence.[98] In
Chalmers' fulminating energy, the mechanical polemics of an
appropriation clause in a parliamentary bill assume a passionate and
living air. He had warned his northern flock, 'should the disaster ever
befall us, of vulgar and upstart politicians becoming lords of the
ascendant, and an infidel or demi-infidel government wielding the
destinies of this mighty empire, and should they be willing at the
shrines of their own wretched partizanship to make sacrifice of those
great and hallowed institutions which were consecrated by our ancestors
to the maintenance of religious truth and religious liberty,--should in
particular the monstrous proposition ever be entertained to abridge the
legal funds for the support of protestantism,--let us hope that there is
still enough, not of fiery zeal, but of calm, resolute, enlightened
principle in the land to resent the outrage--enough of energy and
reaction in the revolted sense of this great country to meet and
overbear it.'

CHALMERS IN LONDON

The impression made by all this on Mr. Gladstone he has himself
des