made. and ateres annd har in his it E Se ome eleas SOD e of -0.10 ent that by a abbors fr Buchanan derived f more the defe than to the King; far conditions power was hand; that even to p minority of were struct vi side, supparing and surrounded way me. 81. r. may be inferred history of Scotland Sound To Poenz H Thy shielded Pallas Rend, rend thyme, p DONE FOR THE EVANGELIZATION OF EDINBURGH. azine. December 1846. last number I on the way in ome missionlly carried on the ministers ach assuming of his own him with the viding as far ous and edur hinted at e ministers each other's purpose of of mutual t. I would own sphere red sense, of lent vitality eling check ority of any ever. This delays and n unwieldy n the hand etting forth re a mighty though not he right asuld require 1 been presily settled leliberation. ach other's ach other's re effectual 1 the work; ousand other htily encoul strengthen any are the would fall Occasionslation for a 1 of a female school-the t tell on the t and cleanlianatory exf nuisances the kind of Sabbath service that should be provided, and how the attendance upon it might be fostered and recruited from the various seminaries in the place-above all, the immense efficacy and charm which lay in the visits of a well-appointed, because a well-principled agency, each assuming his own little group of households, and converting it into a home-walk for all the duties and charities of the gospel. We do hope that our Free Church ministers will freely and fully take part in such a glorious combination. We know that many of them have already selected their districts for the work and labour of love which we have now specified. Let all who are thus engaged meet together as we have ventured to recommend, and in our town of Edinburgh we could have a miniature Evangelical Alliance. Were such to be formed in other towns also, we might thus have a basis of induction sufficiently extensive and firm, on which to rear an edifice of greater promise than we can at all look for from any attempts which have been made hitherto. There is one great benefit that would ensue from such an intercommunion between the Free Church ministers and those of other denominations. They might come to see from our example, what I am persuaded they do not yet fully comprehend-the mighty advantage of a general fund. Without this, we should never have been able to maintain our church as it came out at the Disruption, and far less should we have been able to extend it. Even as it is, and though we have made an addition of about two hundred regular charges in less than four years, we have not yet overtaken the supply of our own adherents, and never made any inroad at all on the outfield territory. Let us not then feel independent of aid from others in this great work, or think that by the strength of our own solitary arm we shall conjure up the means for so vast an achievement as the provision of schools for all, and churches for all. We should, if we have at all the spirit of true Christian patriotism, rejoice in the co-operation of all other evangelical bodies. The agencies of all, and the funds of all, at least judging by what has yet been called forth in our day—a day truly of small things would need to be put into requisition for many years, ere a sensible progress can be made in raising the great bulk and body of our people from the degeneracy into which they have fallen. Let us imagine that the desire now abroad for Christian union, and a desire for the Christian good of our perishing countrymen, and the disposition of Christian liberality-that all these were pressed together into the service of that cause which we now advocate. Then, by a law of our nature, each of these affections, languid and feeble it may be when alone, would be mightily strengthened and increased, in pure virtue of their conjunct and contemporaneous operation. They would lend a mutual excitement, would mutually sustain and aliment each other. The success and devotedness of their missionaries would call forth an unwonted munificence in the congregations that employ them; and the congregations of various name would, in the spirit of a generous rivalship, provoke each other to love and to good works, so as that altogether we should behold an amount of sacrifice and of high conception and effort, which has long been unknown in Christendom. The system which we propose reconciles two advantages that very generally come into conflict with and neutralise each other. We would have each congregation to operate apart, each selecting their own district and taking their own way with it. But we would have the representatives of these congregations to meet periodically, when, we feel quite sure, that, as the fruit of their converse, there would ensue a rapid enlightenment both in the principles and methods of what might be termed the missionary art. Let them never think of aiming at an authoritative uniformity, else we shall be landed in motions and speeches and adjournments in terminable, and so a cruel arrest be laid on the progress of the work. What we want is unfettered activity in each of the parts; and no other uniformity throughout the whole, than what will at length spontaneously emerge from experience, and persuasion, and good sense. The authority of aught like jurisdiction or control in this matter is much to be deprecated; and no other authority should be desired or sought after than that which lies in the weight of opinion; gradually ripening into a common or conventional understanding, in proportion as observations are multiplied, and the work is intelligently studied as well as steadily persevered in. But At the outset of such a combination, (if it shall really be entered on) one feels a greater difficulty in presuming to lesson those of other denominations than those of his own. We must first act together for some time, ere that a mutual frankness, and confidence, and ease shall have become universal. that is no reason why, with all fulness, as well as in all earnestness and simplicity, the ministers of the same church should not freely communicate with each other. On this principle we shall conclude these our brief remarks, with one or two more addressed to our brethren of the Free Church of Scotland. And first, we do fear that they are fast losing hold of the territorial principle. It is long, indeed, since the ministers of our towns ever held, or at least ever felt, this principle in any strong degree. Their main concern and duty were with their congregations, and they sat loose to their parishes; and, now that since the Disruption they have no parishes, there is danger lest the alienation shall speedily become complete and irrecoverable. It were well, therefore, that they entered on the work of district cultivation; and it is delightful to think that many of them are doing it. Well do we know that it lies not within the limits of human strength for them to do much in their own persons; and that, with the care of their congregations, and their attention to the public interests of the church, they are in the state of over-worked men a state of exhaus tion, aggravated by the extravagant notions of ministerial ubiquity, which abound every where, and in virtue of which they are plied with demands for service from all points of the compass. In these circumstances we should expect little more from each of the ministers, than a monthly meeting, with an agency called forth out of their own people, who have resolved that part of their time shall be consecrated to the best and highest interests of their fellow townsmen. He might call them forth by the power of a moral suasion addressed to each of them personally; or it were quite legitimate that they should be called forth by a regular sermon from the pulpit, and that from the text of "Put them in mind to be ready to every good work." (Titus iii. 1.) They may be such works as he himself cannot put forth his hand to. For his is a higher walk— that of dealing with the hearts and the consciences of men. His proper vocation is that of study for the ministry of the word and prayer, and to which, like the apostles of old, he should give himself wholly. "Meditate on these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all." (1 Tim. iv. 15.) It were well if the feeling became more prevalent that each man is or ought to be his brother's keeper; and that, under the sense or principle of this responsibility, a living missionary spirit were to seize our congregations-a spirit that might discharge itself on the plebeian streets, and lanes, and closes of our city. In this direction there is not the glare of a distant enterprise, and nothing of the excitement, or romance, or poetical character of an expedition to other lands. But we are not sure if this homelier undertaking do not evince a greater strength of brotherhood to our species, if the roughness and reality of this plain work, divested of all those accompaniments which tell on the imagination, do not constitute a test more decisive and unequivocal of our affection for human souls. What noble results might not be looked for under the blessing of God, if a whole army from our various churches were thus to offer their servi But something ces in this great cause. more than service is wanted; although it must be admitted that our chief difficulty lies in the want of service. We find a far greater number of people willing to give than willing to act. Yet even the rate of giving must be prodigiously elevated, ere that any great or sensible progress can be made in the elevation of the masses. In addition, then, to the requisite labour, we must try to raise the standard of Christian liberality. Not satisfied with the rare, and what to this degenerate age seem the romantic, sacrifices of the few, we must study to generalize the habit of giving amongst the many, and greatly to work up the average of those contributions which are made for Christian objects. Were the luxury of doing good, but to displace some one of the innumerable luxuries of human indulgence, it would give birth to an annual revenue far greater than has yet been realized in this country for all religious purposes put together. When God shall be pleased to enlarge by His grace the hearts of our professing Christians, we shall then see what a fund is in reserve for the highest designs of philanthropy and patriotism, for truly all that has been yet yielded in support of these has, generally speaking, made no sensible inroad on the style and expenditure of families. We should rejoice if our Free Church congregations in Edinburgh would take these things to heart, and this under an adequate sense of the magnitude of the task that we would fain put into their hands. Say that each of their congregations charged itself with a plebeian district of from one to two thousand people, and with this as their ultimate design, that all within its limits should be educated; and also that all should have the ample opportunities of a Sabbath service, as well as an abundant supply of household ministrations at the hands of an ecclesiastical labourer. We believe that the failure of every former effort has arisen from attempting too much, and with means most inadequately slender. It is not enough that we provide Sabbathschools, and family prayer-meetings and monthly tracts; and, in a word, by a strange rule of inverse proportion, operate all the more slightly and superficially just as we have all the harder materials to deal with. Far better than any thin-spread appliance of this sort over the whole of Edinburgh, were it that each church should select its own small and manageable vineyard, whereupon to concentrate all its energies and means. But first and foremost, there ought to be an adequate system of week-day schooling that boys and girls may be taught, and well taught, in all the elementary education that is proper for them. There cannot be a more effectual forerunner than this-a better pioneer to all the subsequent operations. But it is not the method of proceeding which I purpose at present to lay down. It is the first great expense which I want to take notice of, the first of the larger calls, which in the earlier stages of such an enterprize, will behove to be made on the liberality of the congregation that embarks in it. Let the call be met generously and ungrudgingly. Let the example of a sacrifice in the high cause of education be given forth by the Free Church congregations of Edinburgh to the Free Church congregations at large. Let them take the part which becomes them in what may be termed the great problem of our day-the recovery of our people from that fearful abyss of igno rance, and irreligion, and profligacy, into which they have fallen; and let us see, in particular, that by their hearty and generous responses to the call of our Church's Education Committee, they duly appreciate the worth and magnitude of the attempt which is now being made to provide a full and high scholarship for all our families. It were premature to offer so much as a conjecture on the views and purposes of Government in regard to education. But sure we are, that nothing would serve more effectually to purify and elevate their proposed schools, than the wide-spread example of such a system as Christian men would be most ready to adopt and to approve of. We rate very highly the power of an endowment, whether for good or for evil; and in our present uncertainty as to the character and effect of the coming State endowment, we greatly desiderate such a popular en-dowment as might enable us to take the education of our own people into our own hands-an education not sectarian but scriptural, based upon the word of God, while at the same time it was carried indefinitely upward and onward to a far larger amount of useful learning than has yet on the average been given in our primary and elementary schools. I am, dear Sir, yours truly, THOMAS CHALMERS. M. LE VERRIER'S PLANET. It is not only in harmony with sacred views of the origin of the universe, as His work, whose we are, to study its constitution, and mark its objects; but the engagement has valuable relations to "the truth according to godliness," disclosed in the inspired pages; and may be prosecuted in a way that shall strengthen the homage of the intellect, and the obedience of the heart to it. Physical facts are in close and intimate alliance with Christian theology. They illustrate the unity of the Divine Nature, and the universality of the Divine Providence, by manifesting the universal action of fundamental laws, apparent as far as the regions of the creation can be examined by us. They testify of all that infinitude of power and wisdom which the Scriptures, in majestic language, ascribe to the "Blessed and only Potentate," and commend to our reverence the revealed representations of His matchless perfection and ineffable glory. They evidence the dependence of man, supply him with motives to thankful devotion and to filial fear, by the display of benign adaptations and awful attri butes, and offer a rebuke to self-degradation and complacency, by the vastness of that scheme of existence which he is able to apprehend, and its boundless amplitude beyond the grasp of his powers. One of the most remarkable events of the present day, which will render the year 1846 memorable in the annals of physical astronomy, is the discovery of M. Le Verrier's planet, not, however, on account of a new member being added to the known bodies of the system, carrying its bounds to nearly twice their former supposed limit, but because of the manner in which the object has been seized. Before proceeding to detail this triumph of pure analysis and mathematics, it may not be without interest to recur to the history of modern observation. More than a century and a half elapsed after the construction of the telescope before any primary body was added to the list of those familiar to the ancient mind of the world as planets-wandering orbs to Greek and Roman apprehension whence their name- —whose apparently erratic movements, now direct, stationary, or retrograde, they could not reconcile with any general theory of the universe. But interesting revelations attended the first application of that instrument to the heavens, and rapidly followed as its capacity improved. With his second telescope-the first, constructed in 1609, being presented to the Doge of Venice-Galileo examined the lunar surface. He discerned its real irregularity, indicated by the bright and obscure parts visible to the naked eye, the latter of which, however, the schoolmen absurdly regarded as earthly taints, consequent on the proximity of the moon to us, holding with tenacity the notion of the self-luminosity, unblemished character, and geometrical perfection of all the celestial bodies. Afterwards, the milky way—that old abandoned high road of the sun, in the judgment of some of the Pagan philosophers, still gleaming with the solar radiance the pathway to great Jupiter's abode" according to the fancy of heathen superstition, a completely mysterious girdle in the heavens, till the seventeenth century-yielded up a revelation of itself to the "optic glass" of the Italian, and was resolved into a zone of stars. Some of the other nebulæ also, as Presape, a speck of light looming in the sombre districts of Cancer, with which the ancient eye was acquainted, were ascertained to be stellar combinations. Upon Jupiter being attacked, on several successive nights of January 1610, three minute stars were perceived eastward of the planet, and close to its disc. Two of them were subsequently found to have altered their place to the westward; a fourth was then caught sight of; and the Jovian system, a planet with four satellites, a miniature picture of the solar universe, was eventually unfolded. A remarkable appearance was next observed about Saturn, his annular appendages, the lateral portions of which, viewed in perspective, were taken to be two small stars, and hence the planet was described as threefold, in a well-known distich sent to Kepler. Then Venus was discovered, no longer shining in full-orbed brightness, as to the naked eye, but exhibiting similar phases to our moon-a clear proof of her dependence upon the sun, and interior position to the earth, in relation to that luminary. In one of his most important discoveries-that of the satellites of Jupiter-Galileo had nearly been anticipated by Harriot, a companion of Sir Walter Raleigh in his expedition to Virginia, afterwards attached to the Earl of Northumberland's household, by whom he was liberally supported. Baron de Zach examined his manuscripts at the seat of the Earl of Egremont, to whom they had descended, and produced a paper on them in the Astronomical Ephemeris of the Royal Academy of Berlin for the year 1788. From this it appears that Harriot observed the satellites of Jupiter, January 16, 1610; and Galileo had only detected them on the 7th of that month, and of course the two observations were made quite independent of each other. There had been statements repeatedly afloat, to the effect that these objects may be caught by a |