appearance of constraint about
him that affects and distresses you. You are afraid that his breast is
weak, and that even the slight exertion he makes may be too much for it.
But then, with what tenfold richness does this dim preliminary curtain
make the glories of his eloquence to shine forth, when the heated spirit
at length shakes from it its chill confining fetters, and bursts out
elate and rejoicing in the full splendor of its disimprisoned wings....
I have heard many men deliver sermons far better arranged in regard to
argument, and have heard very many deliver sermons far more uniform in
elegance both of conception and of style; but most unquestionably, I
have never heard, either in England or Scotland, or in any other
country, any preacher whose eloquence is capable of producing an effect
so strong and irresistible as his."[21]

* * * * *

FIRST DELIVERY OF THE ASTRONOMICAL DISCOURSES.--At the time of Dr.
Chalmers's settlement in Glasgow it was the custom that the clergymen of
the city should preach in rotation on Thursday in the Tron Church, a
duty which, as their number was then but eight, returned to each within
an interval of two months. On Thursday, the 23d of November, 1815, this
week-day service devolved on Dr. Chalmers. The entire novelty of the
discourse delivered upon this occasion, and the promise held out by the
preacher that a series of similar discourses was to follow, excited the
liveliest interest, not in his own congregation alone, but throughout
the whole community. He had presented to his hearers a sketch of the
recent discoveries of astronomy--distinct in outline, and drawn with all
the ease of one who was himself a master in the science, yet gorgeously
magnificent in many of its details, displaying, amid "the brilliant glow
of a blazing eloquence,"[22] the sublime poetry of the heavens. In his
subsequent discourses Dr. Chalmers proposed to discuss the argument or
rather prejudice against the Christian Revelation which grounds itself
on the vastness and variety of those unnumbered worlds which lie
scattered over the immeasurable fields of space. This discussion
occupied all the Thursday services allotted to him during the year 1816.
The spectacle which presented itself in the Trongate upon the day of the
delivery of each new astronomical discourse, was a most singular one.
Long ere the bell began to toll, a stream of people might be seen
pouring through the pa