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climbing creaking staircases, plunging into dirty closes, diving into cellars, examining schools, lifting the sneck of hovels and garrets, expatiating among the sick and the dying; flinging himself abroad over the district with an enthusiasm of humanity which to many seemed madness, and returning to his dwelling to organize a hundred schemes of philanthropic and Christian enterprise-himself the originating impulse, and the sustaining soul of all of

them."

The astronomical discourses of Chalmers excited Anderson to a perfect furore. At this time he kept a school, and each Sabbath day was divided between his own minister and Dr. Chalmers. An interview which once took place between these two men is thus stated: "One day he was teaching in his school in Kirk-street, when in walked Dr. Chalmers himself. If ever Anderson blushed more deeply than usual, and if ever he trembled at all, it must have been then; when placed suddenly face to face with the man he had never seen before except when he was preaching like an inspired apostle, standing on what seemed unearthly altitudes of thought, or, in the daring flights of his imagination—

"Sailing with supreme dominion

Through the azure deep of air."

Chalmers in his turn, doubtless, looked with interest at the young student, and proceeded to tell him that he had heard of him, and wished to engage him as a teacher in a Sabbath School which he was then establishing in St. John's parish. He asked him to repeat the lesson which had nearly been gone over with the scholars before he entered, and when he had finished, expressed his warm satisfaction, saying, "Well, that is just the thing."

In a course of domiciliary visitation with Chalmers, Anderson was astonished at the intimate acquaintance he seemed to have with every family, but he soon discovered that he kept a note book in which he entered particulars. This discovery lessened his surprise, but showed also the systematic earnestness of this great Scottish divine.

On March 6th, 1821, Dr. Anderson accepted a call to John-street Church, in Glasgow, in connection with which he spent the whole of his long ministerial life.

Such was his admiration of Dr. Chalmers that he seemed to be influenced by his example in all his pulpit habits, which extended to the habit of reading his discourses. Chalmers acquired his habit of reading while he belonged to the Moderates a party somewhat resembling the Broad Churchman in the Anglican establishment, and after he joined the evangelical party he found it impossible to abandon it. A strong feeling of opposition to reading discourses in the pulpit existed in the minds of the more earnest Christians. They conceived that the work of the Christian minister was to preach the gospel, and they preferred this method rather than having it read. In some of the first attempts at pulpit delivery, Anderson tried to do without the use of his MS., but he floundered so much that his fellow-students cried out, "Reciting won't do-read, read;" so he gave up the idea of being a memoriter preacher. Between the memoriter preacher and the reader there is but little difference; the latter reads from his MS., the former recites from it. Both may claim credit for the labour of composition, and one relies more upon his memory than is imperatively required of the other; but it is only once in a generation that a reader attains to the freedom and force of a Chalmers, and about as rarely that the other acquires the dignity and power of delivery of a Flesher; but the preacher is one who is possessed by his subject, who is heated by it, and who grasps it in turn. He is not the prisoner of words, they are his servants, the spontaneous effusion of his genius. Dr. Chalmers read as probably never another man could, and consequently is not to be taken as an example.

Dr. Anderson occasionally told the following anecdote, which shows the vein of humour which ran through his nature. The story illustrates the strong feeling which some entertained against reading, and at the same time the wonderful fascination which marked Dr. Chalmers' reading. Dr. Anderson having stated that the incident occurred at the beginning o his minis

terial career, proceeds :-"I had just been licensed to preach, and was dispatched to Kirkintilloch to officiate on the coming Sabbath. The mode of conveyance was. by the night canal boat, leaving Glasgow at nine o'clock. The cabin of these vessels was to narrow that the knees of the passengers sitting opposite touched. In the centre was a long narrow table, at the stern end of which sat a fiddler, whose duty it was so fill up the gaps between the political and theological discussions which often made pleasant those otherwise weary night voyages. Opposite to me sat a grey-headed man, the whole make-up of whom indicated a Cameronian Elder of the 'straitest sect;' and on my right sat a young man going to the same place, the twinkle of whose eye seemed to say, 'Let us have some fun;' and hardly had the boat left the wharf till he looked over to his old friend, and said, 'Ay, David, man, sae ye hae been in Glaskie, hae ye? What i' the world hae ye been there for, man? It's na' a journey that everybody taks, and above a' wha wid ha'e expectat to see ye there?' Weel, ye see,' replied David, 'my dochter gat married to a lad that stays there, an' they wad ha'e me to gang thro' an' see them.' 'Weel, David, an' what think ye o' Glaskie?' 'O, man, it's an awfu' place, it's aboon a' my thochts, I had nae idea o't, an' I'm just gled to get awa' hame again.' 'Weel, David, an' wha did ye hear preachin'?' 'O, ye ken, I gaed to our ain place, o' course; we ha'e a kirk in Glaskie, ye see.' 'But ye dinna mean to tell me, David, that ye didna gang to hear Tammas Chalmers, do ye?' Aweel, aweel (scratching his head as if in a dilemma) I's no say that I didna, but then, do ye see, it was on Thursda' nicht, an' I didna think there wad be meikle sin, when it wisna the Sabbath day; but, man, he's an awfu' man that; I never heard a man like him, for I was sittin' whan, an' afore I kent whar I was, I was on my verra feet, stretchin' o'er the beukboard, wi' my e'en wide starin', an my mouth wide open, feared I wad loss a word. But ca' ye yon preachin'? na, na, it was rank, black prelacy; man, he read ilka word o'd; na, na, nane o' that abomination for me—na, na.

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This opposition to reading sermons although not so strong in the Relief Church as in that to which the Elder in the preceding anecdote belonged, was nevertheless so strong as to throw obstructions in the way of William Anderson's ordination. They were, however, eventually removed, and he entered fully into his ministerial duties, and soon rose to popularity in the Scottish western capital. He does not appear to have had any sympathy for delicately refined euphonisms, which rouse the feelings about as much as the passing shadow impresses the rock, He was an outspoken man; he knew what he meant, and could utter his thoughts with unmistakable distinctness. His style had not the eccentricities of Rowland Hill's, yet he occasionally indulged in extravagancies which provoked a good deal of criticism, sometimes of an adverse, but more generally of a genial kind. Some designated him by the sobriquet of "Daft Willie Anderson." There is a good story told of an English traveller who, stopping of a Sunday in an inn near John Street, inquired of the ostler, "Have you any crack preachers in Glasgow?" "What's your wull?" rejoined the man, rubbing his head, "crack what, sir?" Oh, crack preachers!" replied the bagman; in a large city like this there must be some crack preachers or other." "I dinna ken what ye mean, sir, by crack preachers, but if ye want to hear a crackit one, you have just to step in yonder," pointing to Anderson's church. Mr. Gilfillan remarks: "Crackit or not, daft or wise, our brave-hearted divine persevered, bore the laughter, did the good, retorted the shafts of scorn; resisted, too, the enervating influences of popularity; outlived his own faults, and reared at last a basis for his reputation which has not since been shaken.

The topics on which Dr. Anderson discoursed were of wide range. He did not invariably confine himself to such as were exclusively and directly evangelical; occasionally he would handle secular subjects, but in a religious spirit. His sympathies were broad-whatever affected man affected him, and any movement that had for its object the amelioration of human suffering, or the advancement of human well-being, he entered into it heart and soul.

In 1829 the organ controversy disturbed some of the Scottish churches. Anderson's sympathies were strongly in favour of the introduction of organ music into congregational worship. Mr. Gilfillan's sympathies are in the same direction. He remarks:- Himself all alive and trembling to the influences of melody, the voice of the organ seemed, as Shakespeare has it, 'sweet thunder,' as if descending from a loftier sphere, and he could not feel the force, or see the bearing, of the petty objections which were brought against it by men who apparently preferred the nasal notes of a drowsy precentor, or the creaking voices of septuagenarian men and women to such a swell of sound as might almost, besides enrapturing the living, awaken the dead." But it would not be a difficult thing to invert this representation. We have heard many a leader in the service of song in God's house whose nasal organ was not employed as an instrument through which to sound abroad his snivelling notes, and many a congregation where the creaking voices of septuagenarian men and women (God bless them, we love to see them in his house) have been lost in the full swell of a thousand voices blending together in richest harmony, and with which, in our judgment, no instrumental music could compare.

But Dr. Anderson entered into other and nobler controversies, and notably the Popish controversy. From his inmost soul he was a hater of shams, and he looked on Popery with disgust as a vast system of shams. Mr. Gilfillan remarks: "He looked on Popery as the caricature of Christianity, bearing to it such a general, staring, impudent resemblance, connected with a total dissimilarity of spirit and expression, as we sometimes notice in two countenances-like as eggs in one sense, and yet as unlike as is an egg to a diamond. It is a counterfeit of the religion of Jesus, though executed by a masterly hand. At a distance how similar the two! You are reminded of the famous story of the two bunches of flowers, one natural, and one artificial, by which the Queen of Sheba is said to have tested the wisdom of Solomon, and tortured, as well as tested it, till at his command the window was opened, and along with the air of heaven came in the bees like a cloud of witnesses and settled the question." The opposition of Anderson to Popery was not the opposition of a bigot, but the opposition of a friend of truth and liberty. He had taken an active part on behalf of Catholic emancipation, but while he abhorred, as a Liberal, the very appearance of persecution for conscience sake, he thought that many Liberals took far too light and shallow a view of Popery, which he regarded, not as a bad form of Christianity, but as an untameable monster, a ferocious and Anti-Christian intruder upon the Church, or, as he had a great delight in always entitling it, "The Man of Sin." Opposition to Popery is by some regarded as merely agitation on a religious question, as simply a difference of religious opinion or belief. But Popery is not simply a religious system, it is a political institution, and aims at the subordination of all political power in earthly governments to its own sacerdotal infallible will, and against whose decisions there can be no appeal in this world. The organizations which Popery is now making to modify as far as possible the returns to Parliament at the next general election is one thing out of a thousand others which illustrates its political character.

Dr. Anderson was a man of tender sympathies. A story is told of him in which this trait of his character is associated with his bold independence of spirit and hatred of hypocrisy. On one occasion he was expounding the words, "He that putteth not out his money to usury. "Does that mean," he said, "asking ten per cent. or more? Not entirely. It means also the spirit in which the per cent. is taken. There was once in this church a poor widow, and she wanted £20 to begin a small shop. Having no friends she came to me, her minister; and I happened to know a man, not of this church, who could advance the money to the poor widow. So we went to this man, the widow and I, and the man said he would be happy to help the widow. And he drew out a bill for £20, and the widow signed it, and I signed it too. Then he put the signed paper in his desk, and took out the money and gave it to the widow. But, counting it, she said, 'Sir, there

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are only £15 here.' 'It is all right,' said the man, charge. And as we had no redress we came away. pered; and she brought the £20 to me, and I took it myself to the office of the man who lent it, and I said to him, Sir, there are the £20 from the widow.' And he said, 'There is the paper you signed, and if you know any other poor widow I will be happy to help her in the same way.' I replied, "You help the widow! Sir, you have robbed this widow, and if you do not repent you will be damned." And my friends, I kept my eye on that man, and before six months were over God smote him, and he died. And when his will was produced and read, it appeared that on the very day 1 had spoken to him he had put to it a codicil leaving £50 to the poor. Poor deluded mortal, to think his soul's salvation could be bought for £50!"

Dr. Anderson was a man of great versatility of talent. Seldom do we take up a biography in which we see a man so many-sided as he. Evidently he was an extensive reader and an independent thinker. The voluntary movement, the temperance question, the anti-slavery agitation, social politics, such as the relation of employers and their employés, the Corn Laws, the American war, the struggles of the Italian patriots Garibaldi and Mazzini, and of the Hungarian patriot, Kossuth,-these were subjects into which he entered with a noble and commanding enthusiasm. But his efforts in connection with these and kindred subjects were not put forth at the expense of his ordinary ministerial duties. These alone were more than enough for many a man of even respectable ability. At one time he entered upon a course of systematic theology which extended over two years. another time he delivered a series of lectures on the Popish controversy in the Glasgow City Hall, having usually an audience of four thousand persons. And thus he was continuously employed under the impulses of a generous nature. No wonder that he became a power in the West of Scotland. He possessed great powers of endurance, and was impelled by the fire of an ardent constitution. Eut we also gather from his "Life" that he was also a man of deep-toned piety. We should have been glad had Mr. Gilfillan in addition to the graphic sketches he has given us of the man placed before us at the same time a sketch of his inner life as a child of God. Perhaps this may be intended for a subsequent volume.

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One of our most pleasing duties as editor of this magazine is to place before our readers the memorials of departed worth; and we often experience it to be as a means of grace to read the various memoirs that pass into our hands, and especially do we feel richly rewarded as we witness the simplicity, and the power, and joyous triumph of faith at the moment when the darkness of death is relieved by the breaking light of approaching eternity. Some think that in these descriptions there is an uninteresting sameness; it may be so to them, but to ourselves there is a glorious uniformity showing the unity of the vital principle of personal religion, and now and again diversified with what is merely circumstantial. Denominational distinctions may be many, but religion is one, and we see this in the last moments of Dr. Anderson. "He had marvellous firmness of conviction. And hence on his death-bed we find nothing of that yearning desire to know which has characterised many nobler men in their last hours-no cry like that of Goethe's More light!' or like Schiller's Many things are now becoming plain and clear to me.' He lay before the great unfolding gates of the universe, quiet and calm, as if he saw what was within already-not like one straining his eyes towards some unexpected burst of intelligence or blaze of glory." His last words were, "Near the kingdom." He then fell on sleep, having nobly served his generation by the will of God. We commend this volume to the attention of our readers as one of the best biographies which has lately come from the press.

The Oxford Methodists; Memoirs of the Rev. Messrs. Clayton, Ingham, Gambold, Hervey, and Broughton, with biographical notices of others. By Rev. L. TYERMAN. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Demy 8vo, pp. 416.

OUR readers will remember that on two or three occasions we have referred,

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in our notices of books to the voluminous "Life and Times of Wesley," by the Rev. Luke Tyerman. The materials collected from time to time for this work, however, accumulated to such an extent that it was found impracticable to incorporate all of them in it. A portion of what was laid aside constitutes this volume, which consequently must be regarded as a companion volume to "The Life and Times of Wesley." As is indicated in the title this volume is biographical. Of the Wesleys and Whitfield the general public have been, for some time now, in possession of ample means of information; but no biographies have been previously written of the other Oxford Methodists, except Hervey, and that not of a satisfactory character. The origin of Methodism must be a matter of interest to every intelligent Christian, but to Methodists particularly so. "It is a great mistake," Mr. Tyerman observes, "and not a just acknowledgment of the grace of God, to regard the results of the revival of religion in the Oxford University as confined to Methodism." The men who constituted what was sneeringly designated the "Holy Club," on leaving Oxford betook themselves to different spheres of Christian work, and thus the influences of the revival at Oxford extended far beyond the pale of Methodism. The object of the Almighty in that revival was not the formation of a sect, but extensively to bring the truth of his gospel to bear upon the hearts of men; and those Methodists, at the offset of their career, and scarcely through its continuance, had not the most distant idea of a separate ecclesiastical organization. This was the necessary result of their labours, we speak now of Methodism, unpremeditated by them, but manifestly an integral part of that grand scheme formed in the mind of Divine Providence for the regeneration of our world.

An enlarged acquaintance with the character of those men would in many respects, we think, modify our feelings; and, looking at what the Almighty has caused to result from their labours, would inspire us with increased confidence in His far-extending and overruling providence in relation to His kingdom on earth. Many would be shocked at the insinuation that there is a connection between Methodism and ritualism; affinity would be denied, antagonism affirmed. Mr. Tyerman affirms there is a relationship. Such a statement is not only enough to startle a Methodist, but enough also to make a High Churchman fall out of conceit with his ritualism. But hear what Mr. Tyerman says:—“The Oxford Methodists, up to the time of their general dispersion from that seat of learning, were all (excepting perhaps Whitefield) Church of England Ritualists. Their moral conduct was most exemplary. They were studious, devout, self-denying, charitable. Their study of the Bible gained them the nicknames of Bible-bigots,' and 'Bible-moths.' Every morning and every evening they spent an hour in private prayer; and, throughout the day, habituated themselves to the use of ejaculations, for humility, faith, hope, and love. They communicated at Christ Church once a week, and persuaded all they could to attend public prayers, sermons, and sacraments. They were constant visitors of the inmates of the parish workhouse, and of the prisoners in the Castle; and it was the practice of all of them to dispense in charity all they had, after providing for their own necessities. They also observed the discipline of the Church of England to the minutest points; and were scrupulously strict in practising the rubrics and canons. Every Wednesday and Friday they fasted, tasting no food whatever, till three o'clock in the afternoon. Though perhaps, they never held the doctrine of the human nature of the Divine Redeemer being present in the elements of the holy sacrament, they held something approaching this, and spoke of an outward sacrifice offered therein.' They more than approved of the mixture of water with the sacramental wine; and religiously observed saint days, holidays, and Saturdays. They maintained the doctrine of apostolical succession, and believed no one had authority to administer the sacraments who was not episcopally ordained. Even in Georgia, Wesley excluded Dissenters from the holy communion, on the ground that they had not been properly baptised, and would himself baptise only by immersion, unless the child, or person, was in a weak

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