, and overmatch them." He
was one of the first to answer to his own call, to fulfill his own
prediction. No single writer of our age has done so much to present the
truths of Christianity in new forms, and to invest them with all the
attractions of a fascinating eloquence; nor could a single volume be
named which has done more than this very volume of "Astronomical
Discourses" to soften and subdue those prejudices which the infidelity
of natural science engenders.

* * * * *

EFFECT OF HIS ELOQUENCE.--SERMON ON DISSIPATION IN LARGE CITIES.--Dr.
Chalmers returned to Glasgow on Saturday, the 27th December, and on the
following day found a prodigious crowd awaiting his appearance in the
Tron Church pulpit. His popularity as a preacher was now at its very
highest summit, and judging merely by the amount of physical energy
displayed by the preacher, and by the palpable and visible effects
produced upon his hearers, we conclude that it was about this period,
and within the walls of the Tron Church, that by far the most wonderful
exhibitions of his power as a pulpit orator were witnessed. "The Tron
Church contains, if I mistake not," says the Rev. Dr. Wardlaw, who, as
frequently as he could, was a hearer in it, "about 1400 hearers,
according to the ordinary allowance of seat-room; when crowded of course
proportionally more. And, though I can not attempt any pictorial sketch
of the _place_, I may, in a sentence or two, present you with a few
touches of the _scene_ which I have, more than once or twice, witnessed
within its walls; not that it was at all peculiar, for it resembled
every other scene where the doctor in those days, when his eloquence was
in the prime of its vehemence and splendor, was called to preach. There
was one particular, indeed, which rendered such a scene, in a city like
Glasgow, peculiarly striking. I refer to the _time_ of it. To see a
place of worship, of the size mentioned, crammed above and below, on a
_Thursday forenoon_, during the busiest hours of the day, with fifteen
or sixteen hundred hearers, and these of all descriptions of persons, in
all descriptions of professional occupation, the busiest as well as
those who had most leisure on their hands, those who had least to spare
taking care so to arrange their business engagements previously as to
_make time_ for the purpose, all pouring in through the wide entrance at
the side of the Tron steeple, half an hour before