whole and very delightful morning in reading it without quitting the shade of an apple tree." The attractive volume stole an hour or two from the occupations of the greatest statesman and orator of the day. "Canning," says Sir James Mackintosh, "told me that he was entirely converted to admiration of Chalmers; so is Bobus, whose conversion is thought the greatest proof of victory. Canning says there are most magnificent passages in his 'Astronomical Sermons."[23] Four years before this time, through the pages of the "Edinburgh Christian Instructor," Dr. Chalmers had said, "Men of tasteful and cultivated literature are repelled from theology at the very outset by the unseemly garb in which she is presented to them. If there be room for the display of eloquence in urgent and pathetic exhortation, in masterly discussion, in elevating greatness of conception, does not theology embrace all these, and will not the language that is clearly and appropriately expressive of them possess many of the constituents and varieties of good writing? If theology, then, can command such an advantage, on what principle should it be kept back from her?... In the subject itself there is a grandeur which it were vain to look for in the ordinary themes of eloquence or poetry. Let writers arise, then, to do it justice. Let them be all things to all men, that they may gain some; and if a single proselyte can be thereby drawn from the ranks of literature, let all the embellishments of genius and fancy be thrown around the subject. One man has already done much. Others are rising around him, and with the advantage of a higher subject, they will in time rival the unchristian moralists of the day, 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. * * * * *