I have heard many men deliver sermons far better arranged in point of argument; and I 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, a preacher whose eloquence is capable of producing an effect so strong and irresistible as his.

[Footnote:  Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk, vol. iii. p. 267.]

The best proof how much Chalmers owed to his manner, is, that in his latter days, when he was no longer able to give them with his wonted animation and feeling, the very same discourses fell quite flat on his congregation.

It is long since Sydney Smith expressed his views as to the chilliness which is the general characteristic of the Anglican pulpit.  In the preface to his published sermons, he says: 

The English, generally remarkable for doing very good things in a very bad manner, seem to have reserved the maturity and plenitude of their awkwardness for the pulpit.  A clergyman clings to his velvet cushion with either hand, keeps his eye rivetted on his book, speaks of the ecstacies of joy and fear with a voice and a face which indicates neither; and pinions his body and soul into the same attitude of limb and thought, for fear of being thought theatrical and affected.  The most intrepid veteran of us all dares no more than wipe his face with his cambric sudarium; if by mischance his hand slip from its orthodox gripe of the velvet, he draws it back as from liquid brimstone, and atones for the indecorum by fresh inflexibility and more rigorous sameness.  Is it wonder, then, that every semi-delirious sectary who pours forth his animated nonsense with the genuine look and voice of passion, should gesticulate away the congregation of the most profound and learned divine of the established church, and in two Sundays preach him bare to the very sexton?  Why are we natural everywhere but in the pulpit?  No man expresses warm and animated feelings anywhere else, with his mouth only, but with his whole body; he articulates with every limb, and talks from head to foot with a thousand voices.  Why this holoplexia on sacred occasions only?  Why call in the aid of paralysis to piety?  Is sin to be taken from men, as Eve was from Adam, by casting them into a deep slumber?  Or from what possible perversion of common sense are we all to look like field preachers in Zembla, holy lumps of ice, numbed into quiescence and stagnation and mumbling?

Now in Scotland, for very many years past, the standard style of preaching has been that which the lively yet gentle satirist wished to see more common in England.  Whether successfully or not, Scotch preachers aim at what Sydney Smith regarded as the right way of preaching—­’to rouse, to appeal, to inflame, to break through every barrier, up to the very haunts and chambers of the soul.’  Whether this end be a safe one to propose to each one of some