But he announces his text--1 John iv. 16. "God is love"--a text from which he has preached before; but no matter for that.[17] He commences, with a few broken sentences, pronounced in a harsh tuneless voice, with a strong Scottish accent. The first feeling of a stranger would be that of disappointment, and apprehension that the discourse was to prove a failure. This was the case with Canning and Wilberforce, who went to hear Dr. Chalmers, when he preached in London. They had got into a pew near the door, when "the preacher began in his usual unpromising way, by stating a few nearly self-evident propositions, neither in the choicest language, nor in the most impressive voice; 'If this be all,' said Canning to his companion, 'it will never do.' Chalmers went on,--the shuffling in the congregation gradually subsided. He got into the mass of his subject; his weakness became strength, his hesitation was turned into energy; and bringing the whole volume of his mind to bear upon it, poured forth a torrent of most close and conclusive argument, brilliant with all the exuberance of an imagination which ranged over all nature for illustrations, and yet managed and applied each of them with the same unerring dexterity, as if that single one had been the study of his whole life. 'The tartan beats us,' said Mr. Canning, 'we have no preaching like that in England.'" [Footnote 17: In looking over the Doctor's printed works, we have found this discourse in a somewhat different garb from that in which we have presented it. We were not at first aware of this, or we might have selected some other discourse; for it was our good fortune to hear the Doctor frequently. This and other delineations, however, are taken from personal observation.] It may be well to state here that Chalmers is a slavish reader,--that is, he reads every thing he says,--but then he reads so naturally, so earnestly, so energetically, that manuscript and everything else is speedily forgotten by the astonished and delighted hearer.