Messrs. THOMAS CONSTABLE & Co. beg to announce that it is intended to issue a new and handsome Edition, in Four Volumes Crown 8vo, of DR. CHALMERS'S SABBATH AND DAILY SCRIPTURE READINGS, which occupied the first Five Volumes of the Original Edition of his POSTHUMOUS WORKS. The price of each Volume of this Edition will be Five Shillings, and specimens of the size of Page and Type will be found in pp. 4-6 of this Prospectus. Vol. I. of the HORA BIBLICE SABBATICA, embracing the New Testament, is just published. Vol. II. will be ready about 20th December. Vols. III. and IV. comprising the HORE BIBLICA QUOTIDIANÆ will follow at intervals not exceeding two months. The Trade may be supplied with copies of this Prospectus on application to the Publishers, 31, St. Andrew Square, Edinburgh, or to Messrs. Hamilton, Adams, & Co., London. In Two Handsome Volumes, Crown 8vo, Cloth, Price 108., BY THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D., LL.D. Two chapters, one in the Old, the other in the New Testament, were read by Dr. Chalmers each Sabbath, and those trains of meditative thought passing frequently into ejaculatory prayer, which the reading of each chapter suggested, were committed to writing. The Sabbath Readings begin with Genesis, and are continued down to the Second Book of Kings. They embrace the whole of the New Testament. Opinions of the Press. "We can now easily comprehend the glowing description which the Editor gave of the work, and his reluctance to trespass on the region of solemn thought and heartfelt experience into which it carries us. Had he yielded too far to his feelings of Christian delicacy, he would have withheld from the Church a work which will make many, we trust, both of its ministers and members, wiser and better, and which exhibits its author in still a new and most deeply interesting light,-communing on a sacred day, and, by the help of the Sacred volume, with his God and Saviour, waging the spiritual warfare with the failings of his nature and the strength of his intellect and will, testing by the light of the Word of God his conduct and creed, both as a Christian and a Minister, and alike watchful against the dangers to which he was exposed, from the deceitfulness of the heart, the fetters of human orthodoxy, and the allurements of speculation, and, while dealing thus faithfully with himself, never omitting to give utterance to the feelings of which his heart was full, on behalf of his family, friends, and pupils, and the Church of Christ.”—Biblical Review. "There is in these volumes, the personal interest, the distinct individual characterization, formed as with the very breath of the living Chalmers. The man himself is here, in almost every page so devout, so simple, so ingenuous, yet so large-minded in his lowliness. The work indeed is a journal of devotion and self-examination rather than a fasiculus of Scripture Commentaries. Commentary there is, but it is the mere rind, the husk; the fruit itself lies beneath."-Atlas. "Dr Chalmers's week-day contemplations of the Sacred Word belong legitimately, if we may so express ourselves, to the Temple, from its exterior porches and Courts of the Gentiles and the Israelites, to its central Court of the Priests, with its great sacrificial altar and brazen sea; but his Sabbath readings belong to that final recess of the erection, into which the high priest entered unattended and alone, and where, when the thick curtain had fallen behind him, he worshipped, unseen by human eye, in the immediate presence of his God."-Witness. "As an assistant to private devotion, we know of nothing to equal these two volumes; and if they should be the means of forming in their readers' minds the habit of communing with God, in like manner, over the pages of His inspired Word, their value will be inestimable."-Baptist Magazine. "In every sense the work is valuable and important. If we regard it as a commentary upon Holy Scripture, it sheds new light upon the Inspired Record, elucidating what is mysterious, reconciling apparent contrarieties, and refuting the erroneous views of superstition and infidelity. If we look upon it as a transcript of the mind and feelings of the writer, it furnishes a faithful delineation of the character of an exalted servant of God, in all its chequered phases."-Londonderry Sentinel. In Two Handsome Volumes, Crown 8vo, Cloth, Price 108., DAILY SCRIPTURE READINGS, ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THREE VOLUMES, BUT WITHOUT ANY ABRIDGEMENT OF THE MATTER, NOW TO BE PRODUCED IN TWO VOLUMES OF THIS SIZE. This work was commenced by the Author in October 1841, and continued till the time of his decease. A portion of Scripture, extending generally from ten to twenty verses, was read daily, and the reflections which it suggested were embodied in a few brief paragraphs. Dr. Chalmers's own description of the work was that it comprised his first and readiest thoughts upon the passage coming daily under review. The READINGS beginning with Genesis are carried down to the end of Jeremiah. Opinions of the Press. ... "In a manner the most simple and artless, Dr. Chalmers throws a light upon expressions, upon customs, upon passages, the elucidation of which we have often sought for in vain, in works of professed criticism. The work itself we can confidently recommend to our readers, as conveying to us the most interesting and instructive comments upon the transactions recorded in Holy Writ; as affording the purest and most consolatory views of the Divine Governor of the world, and as holding out the most powerful persuasives to a holy and religious life."-Morning Chronicle. "Commentators write what they wish us to think. Here we have unreservedly what Dr. Chalmers thought. And he was no ordinary thinker. The originality of remark sustained throughout would shew it, had we nothing else. And we have his thoughts clothed in a natural colloquial language, which will be new to our readers in a work of this nature, and constitutes, to our mind at least, no inconsiderable portion of its attraction."-Douglas Jerrold's Weekly Newspaper. "As his last great work, Dr. Chalmers, has for the materials now before us, taken to reading over the history of the world as the story of human nature is told in the 'Old Book.' In them are successively brought under review all the great questions of life :The science of Job, the economics of Moses, the wisdom of Solomon, the poetry of David, the morality of Christ, the problem of creation, the game of human life, the promise of eternity. On all these his mind, with its extraordinary measure of knowledge and of power, is seen in these pages at work, as it were, before our eyes. Daily for six years has the phenomenon of a great mind working out all the highest questions of humanity been continuously recorded and preserved for us here to study."-Athenæum. "The presence of Dr. Chalmers is predominant throughout. The singular vitality which was the characteristic of his genius, and which kept him as active and unwearied to the last day of his ministry as at the first, is transfused into every Scriptural comment."Examiner. "Dr. Chalmers does not appear in these pages merely as a great moralist or a great divine. He is at once the divine, the moralist, the man of science, the artist, and, in the better sense of the phrase, the man of the world. They who erroneously connect an idea of sectarianism with the name of Thomas Chalmers will do well to study these commentaries. There is no tinge of sectarianism upon them. They are imbued, indeed, throughout with a Catholic spirit, and glow with that universal kindliness which was so distinguishing a characteristic of the man."-Atlas. 4 SABBATH SCRIPTURE READINGS. [Extract from Editor's Preface.-We have here the mature fruits of a whole lifetime's study of the Divine Oracles, conducted by one who tells us more than once that the verse in all the Bible most descriptive of his own experience is the utterance of David, "My soul breaketh for the longing that it hath unto thy judgments at all times."] JAMES III. ... Could I but bridle my tongue I should be able to bridle my whole body. Give me this perfection, O Lord, else my religion is vain. (Ch. i. 26.) And O that I could restrain my effusions on every occasion, too, of real or conceived personal injury, and give up my cause in silence unto the Lord, committing myself to Him who judgeth righteously.—"Grudge not one against another, the Judge is at the door." I pray for the government of my tongue; what mischief might ensue, from its unchecked effusions!-Save me, O Lord, both from the anger which impels and the inconsideration that allows it free scope and indulgence. Give me more especially to feel the identity of the first and second laws. If I love God, how can I but have that love to my neighbour which worketh no ill? O that I had the consistent and universal grace which would lead me to breathe congenially in the element of a universal love-such a love as would endure all things, and more especially the contradiction of my fellows; and such a love, as superior to the feelings of provocation and resentment, would enable me to overcome all my adversaries by heaping coals of fire upon their head. Let me conquer by kindness and humility; and then shall I have part in the sayings, that he who humbleth himself shall be exalted, and that the meek shall inherit the earth. But to rectify the efflux let me rectify the fountain whence it proceeds; or, in other words, keep my heart with all diligence, and so repress or make my escape from those broodings which are so apt to arise and tumultuate within me. O for the meekness of wisdom-it cometh only from above. The tongue, it is said, no man can tame. The impellent force that gives rise to all its unruly ebullitions no man can subdue ;—but all things are possible with God. |