walls--that under the New Testament dispensation men do not worship in temples, which, like the altar of old, sanctified the gift, but in mere places of shelter, that confer no sacredness on their services; and that the 'hour has come, and now is, when they that worship the Father must worship Him in spirit and in truth.' _April 15, 1846._ ----- {1} See _First Impressions of England and its People_, ch. II.--ED. THE LATE REV. ALEXANDER STEWART. Our last conveyed to our readers the mournful intelligence of the illness and death of the Rev. Alexander Stewart of Cromarty,--a man less known, perhaps, than any other of nearly equal calibre, or of a resembling exquisitiveness of mental faculty, which his country has ever produced, but whose sudden removal has, we find, created an impression far beyond the circle of even his occasional hearers, that the spirit which has passed away was one of the high cast which nature rarely produces, and that the consequent blank created in the existing phalanx of intellect is one which cannot be filled up. Comparatively little as the deceased was known beyond his own immediate walk of duty or circle of acquaintanceship, it is yet felt by thousands, of whom the greater part knew of him merely at second-hand by the abiding impression which he had left on the minds of the others, that, according to the poet, 'A mighty spirit is eclipsed; a power Hath passed from day to darkness, to whose hour Of light no likeness is bequeathed--no name.' The subject is one with which we can scarce trust ourselves. There are no writings to which we can appeal, for Mr. Stewart has left none, or at least none suited to convey an adequate impression of his powers; and yet of nothing are we more thoroughly convinced, than that the originality and vigour of his thinking, and the singular vividness and force of his illustrations, added to a command of the principles of analogical reasoning, which even a Butler might have envied, entitled him to rank with the ablest and most extraordinary men of the age. Coleridge was not more thoroughly original, nor could he impart to his pictures more vividness of colouring, or more decided strength of outline. In glancing over our limited stock of idea, to note how we have come by it, we find that to two Scotchmen of the present century we stand more largely indebted than to any of their contemporaries, either at home or abroad. More of their thinking has got into our mind than that of any of the others; and their images and illustrations recur to us more frequently. And one of these is Thomas Chalmers; the other, Alexander Stewart.