The first sermon which Mr. Chalmers preached in Glasgow was delivered before the Society of the Sons of the Clergy, on Thursday the 30th day of March, 1815, a few months after his appointment, and a few months previous to his admission as minister of the Tron Church. The recent excitement of the canvass, the rumors strange and various, which crossing the breadth of Scotland were circulating in all quarters through the city, the quickened curiosity of opponents, the large but somewhat tremulous expectation of friends, drew together a vast multitude to hear him. Among the crowd which filled the church was a young Oxford student, himself the son of a Scottish minister, who had been surprised by hearing Mr. Chalmers's work on the Evidences of Christianity mentioned with high approval, within the walls of an English University, shortly after the date of its publication. The keen dark eye of the youthful auditor fixed itself in searching scrutiny upon the preacher, and a few years later his graceful and graphic pen drew the following sketch: "I was a good deal surprised and perplexed with the first glimpse I obtained of his countenance, for the light that streamed faintly upon it for the moment did not reveal any thing like that general outline of feature and visage for which my fancy had by some strange working of presentiment, prepared me. By-and-by, however, the light became stronger, and I was enabled to study the minutiae of his face pretty leisurely, while he leaned forward and read aloud the words of the Psalm, for that is always done in Scotland, not by the clerk, but the clergyman himself. At first sight, no doubt, his face is a coarse one, but a mysterious kind of meaning breathes from every part of it, that such as have eyes to see cannot be long without discovering. It is very pale, and the large, half-closed eyelids have a certain drooping melancholy weight about them, which interested me very much. I understood not why. The lips, too, are singularly pensive in their mode of falling down at the sides, although there is no want of richness and vigor in their central fullness of curve. The upper lip, from the nose downward, is separated by a very deep line, which gives a sort of leonine firmness of expression to all the lower part of the face. The cheeks are square and strong, in texture like pieces of marble, with the cheek-bones very broad and prominent. The eyes themselves are light in color, and have a strange dreamy heaviness, that conveys any idea rather than that of dullness, but which contrasts in a wonderful manner with the dazzling watery glare they exhibit when expanded in their sockets, and illuminated into all their flame and fervor in some moment of high entranced enthusiasm. But the shape of the forehead is, perhaps, the most singular part of the whole visage; and, indeed, it presents a mixture so very singular, of forms commonly exhibited only in the widest