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Title: Thomas Chalmers

Creator: William Garden Blaikie

Illustrator: Joseph Brown

Release date: June 23, 2012 [eBook #40081]

Language: English



*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THOMAS CHALMERS ***




Produced by Al Haines.




[Illustration: Cover]



[Illustration: Title page]




                                 THOMAS
                                CHALMERS


                                   BY

                               W. GARDEN
                                BLAIKIE



                                 FAMOUS
                                 SCOTS
                                 SERIES



                              PUBLISHED BY
                           OLIPHANT ANDERSON
                          FERRIER — EDINBURGH
                               AND LONDON




                   The designs and ornaments of this
                    volume are by Mr. Joseph Brown,
                   and the printing from the press of
                Messrs. T. and A. Constable, Edinburgh.




                                PREFACE

I cannot send forth this little sketch of the Life of Chalmers without
expressing anew my admiration of the four-volumed biography by my late
beloved friend, Dr. Hanna.  It is not only admirable as a portrait, but
it cannot be read by any sympathetic reader without a sense of
humiliation, and without a great stimulus to higher things.  It is much
to be regretted that Dr. Hanna was unable to carry out the purpose which
it is understood that he cherished, of condensing the work into a single
volume.

Other memorials of Dr. Chalmers have been given to the world.  Among
these may be noted:—

1. A Biographical Notice of the late Thos. Chalmers, D.D., LL.D.  Read
before the Royal Society of Edinburgh.  By the Very Rev. E. B. Ramsay,
M.A., 1850.

2. Chalmeriana; or Colloquies with Dr. Chalmers.  By Joseph John Gurney,
1853.

3. A Selection from the Correspondence of Thos. Chalmers, D.D., LL.D.
Edited by Rev. W. Hanna, LL.D., 1853.

4. Mr. Isaac Taylor’s elaborate articles in the _North British Review_,
1852 and 1856.

5. Thomas Chalmers, a Biographical Study.  By James Dodds, 1879.

6. Thomas Chalmers.  His Life and its Lessons.  By Rev. Norman L.
Walker, 1880.

7. Thomas Chalmers, D.D., LL.D.  (Men Worth Remembering). By Donald
Fraser, D.D., 1881.

8. Thomas Chalmers, Preacher, Philosopher, and Statesman. By Mrs.
Oliphant, 1893.

9. Recollections of Dr. Chalmers by Professor David Masson, in _Lowe’s
and Macmillan’s Magazines_.

  10. Recollections by the Rev. Dr. Macaulay in the _Leisure Hour_.

11. Funeral Sermons and Lectures by Rev. Dr. Cunningham, Rev. Dr. Jas.
Buchanan, Rev. John Bruce, Rev. W. K. Tweedie, Rev. John G. Lorimer,
Rev. James Julius Wood, Rev. J. A. Wallace, Rev. John Gemmel, Rev. David
Couper, Rev. W. Tasker, Rev. A. J. Ross, Rev. Dr. W. Lindsay Alexander,
Rev. Dr. Sprague (Albany, New York), Rev. Dr. Sharp (Boston), Rev.
Professor Edwards (Andover), Rev. Dr. Smyth (Charleston), etc. etc.

Among the greatest privileges and honours of his life, the writer will
ever regard his having been for one session a student under Dr. Chalmers
at Edinburgh; for three years a co-presbyter and cordial fellow-worker
on his lines, in forming and building up a territorial congregation; and
for many years the occupant of one of two chairs of theology which were
constituted at the Disruption in New College, in place of the single
chair which Dr. Chalmers had held, and thus in a sense, but most
unworthily, one of his successors.


EDINBURGH, _December_ 1896.




                                CONTENTS


                               CHAPTER I

BIRTH, SCHOOL, AND COLLEGE, 1780-1803


                               CHAPTER II

KILMANY, 1803-1815


                              CHAPTER III

GLASGOW, 1815-1823


                               CHAPTER IV

ST. ANDREWS UNIVERSITY, 1823-1828


                               CHAPTER V

EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY, 1828-1843


                               CHAPTER VI

NEW COLLEGE, EDINBURGH, 1843-1847




                            THOMAS CHALMERS



                               CHAPTER I

                       BIRTH, SCHOOL, AND COLLEGE

                               1780-1803


Thomas Chalmers was born at Anstruther, Fifeshire, on the 17th March
1780, when the flowers were appearing on the earth, and the time of the
singing of birds was come. It seems never to have been noticed that this
was St. Patrick’s day, and no one has ever instituted a comparison
between the lives of the two illustrious Scotsmen.  But if only we had
authentic materials for the life of Patrick, whose Scottish birth seems
well established, it would probably be found that there was no slight
similarity. Transferring his labours to Ireland, Patrick, with the
Gospel of Jesus Christ as his instrument, laboured for the double object
of bringing individuals within the Kingdom of God, and elevating and
purifying the condition of the country. The same double aim was ever
present to the mind of Chalmers.  On the basis of the Gospel, he could
not separate the social from the personal, the general from the
particular, the temporal from the spiritual.  He had always an Arcadia,
a Utopia, a new spring-tide for his country in his vista; but a
spring-tide to be realised in one way only—by the coming of the Spirit
from on high.

Anstruther was not a stirring town, for through the union with England
it had lost no little of the trade, whether legal or contraband, which
in former days, along with the other little towns on the Fife seaboard,
it had carried on with France and England.  But an abundant element of
life and activity was supplied within his father’s house, where nine
brothers and five sisters, among whom Thomas came fifth, must have
sufficed to make any household lively.  The father was in fairly
prosperous business, and provost of the town.  He is described as
’dignified and handsome in appearance, highly honourable, courteous, and
kind; and of fervent but not ostentatious piety.’  The mother was in
person short, thick, erect, devoted to her household, sharing her
husband’s piety, but so self-restrained that a smile was seldom seen on
her face.  The family was connected with many members of the
middle-class, some also of the clergy, and a sprinkling of the landed
gentry.

The parish school of Anstruther, to which Chalmers, persecuted by a
scolding nurse, went at the age of three, was taught by a master never
very efficient, and in Chalmers’s time old and nearly blind, who made up
for other deficiencies by his great energy in flogging.  There was an
assistant teacher who was not much more effective in teaching than his
principal, but who was as mild as the other was severe.  This gentleman,
who survived Chalmers, bore a very touching testimony to his kindness.
’No man,’ he exclaimed on one occasion, ’knows the amount of kindness
which I have received from him.  He has often done me good both as
respects my soul and my body; many a pithy sentence he uttered when he
threw himself in my way; many a pound note has he given me; and he
always did the thing as if he were afraid that any person should see
him.’  Of Chalmers as a schoolboy the testimony is that he was ’one of
the idlest, strongest, merriest, and most generous-hearted boys in
Anstruther school.’  Had one chanced to come upon the school-children
engaged in their various amusements (says one of his biographers), one
should soon have distinguished ’one boy above the rest, seeming about
ten or twelve years of age, who is the leader in their sports—strong,
active, merry, and boisterous, with big head, matted dark hair, large
plain features, broad shoulders, well-proportioned but brawny limbs, his
laugh always loudest, and his figure always foremost at football and the
other games in which they are contending.’¹

    ¹ _Thomas Chalmers: A Biographical Study_.  By James Dodds.

The father and mother of Dr. Chalmers, as we have said, were of strong
religious character, hearty followers of the Calvinistic theology, and,
though too busy to bestow much attention on the education of their
family, very desirous that they should all accept their views.  Much
though Chalmers respected and honoured them, he did not at first fall in
with their views of life and duty.  He grew up with a positive dislike
both of the Calvinistic theology and the evangelical life.  It was not
till after he had been some years in the ministry that, under the acute
pressure of personal illness and family bereavements, he came to see as
they did, and to live as they lived.  The change to them must have been
like the conversion of Augustine to Monica.  And yet, in after years,
their intercourse was not wholly without friction. It is touching to
mark in the son’s diary tokens of his humiliation on account of the
crossness with which he sometimes spoke to them.  Both were deaf, and an
aunt who lived with them was deafer still, and it annoyed Thomas, with
his naturally impatient temper, to find himself misapprehended, often to
have to repeat his remarks, and always to speak in that louder tone
which the deaf require.  We may be sure that when he felt and confessed
thus in secret, he would try to make up for it at other times by double
kindness, for of all things that could vex him, to inflict needless pain
was about the worst.  His respect for them was alike sincere and
affectionate; and for his mother’s widow hood—lonely, but bright, calm,
and holy, he had such a reverence that it became the very pattern of all
that he desired most earnestly for his own old age.

Thomas was not yet twelve, when, with his brother William, he was sent
on to the University of St. Andrews. At such an age, common enough then
in Scotland, boys were incapable of grasping the great aims of a
university; and college to them was but an upper school.  But the change
to the university had at first no effect in mending the idle ways of our
student.  He was ’volatile, boyish, and idle.’  Yet, even from the
first, he was noted for strict integrity and warm affection, and in all
that he did undertake he was enthusiastic and persevering.  It was not
till his third session that he became attached to any branch of
learning.  The science that captivated him then was mathematics.  And so
ardently did he devote himself to it, that long afterwards, about the
time when he left Kilmany, he was familiarly known as ’Mr. Chalmers, the
mathematician.’ He might have borne the designation to the very end.
His mind was fashioned on the mathematical model, taking its stand on
realities, the substantial verities of life; striving to explain their
relations and applications, and then pressing them with tremendous
energy on the hearts and consciences of his fellows.  For Professor
Brown, his mathematical teacher, he retained through life the warmest
regard; and when he died in 1836, he wrote to his widow, that of all his
public instructors he was the one that impressed him most, and to whom
he owed most in the formation of his tastes and habits, and in the
guidance of his literary life.

As the termination of his curriculum in arts drew near, it became
necessary that he should choose a profession. Strange to say, although
he had no favour either for theology or religion, he had declared from
his boyhood for the ministry.  Some of the more picturesque sayings of
the Bible had taken a remarkable hold of his mind.  When but three years
old, being missed and sought for, after it had become dark, he was found
alone, pacing up and down in the nursery, repeating to himself the words
of David, ’O my son Absalom, my son Absalom; O Absalom, my son, my son!’
The sister of one of his schoolfellows used to tell of her breaking in
on the two, and finding him on a chair, preaching vigorously to his
single hearer.  It was the soul of the orator asserting itself from the
very first.

But when he entered on his theological course, there seemed to be little
or no development of the real spirit of the ministry.  He was, indeed,
full of reverence for truth, and so impatient of anything like double
dealing, that when his professor represented that certain doctrines of
Calvinism should not be much spoken of, he could not but ask, Why not,
if they be true?  Throughout his whole life he disliked men who were not
above board with everything, and his own regard for truth was
transparent to all.  For a time his mind was clouded with scepticism.
The books that were most useful in restoring his faith were Butler’s
_Analogy_ and Beattie’s _Essay on Truth_.  A very remarkable effect was
produced on him when, some time after, he became acquainted with
Jonathan Edwards on _The Freedom of the Will_.  For a time he could
neither think nor talk of anything else.  What so impressed him was the
idea of the whole series of events in the spiritual as well as the
material world being bound together by unalterable links, and thus
forming one vast scheme—a wonderful tribute to the wisdom, power, and
glory of God.  The incident showed how his mind had expanded, and how he
had come to find delight in large, comprehensive views of things.  Long
after, he spoke of the year in which this subject occupied him as a time
of mental elysium, so great was his delight.  Yet at this time
evangelical truth was positively rejected.  We are reminded of the
experience of another, afterwards a colleague of his own in New College,
Edinburgh, the late Dr. John Duncan, who, even when a student of
divinity, wandered for a time in the gloomy mazes of atheism, but when
brought into the light of theism—apart from Christianity
altogether—expressed his emotion in a way of his own: ’I danced on the
brig o’ Dee when I came to see there was a God.’

It was of course necessary, when he had advanced somewhat in his
divinity course, that he should practise the art of composition.  His
first efforts, we are told, were poor enough.  The composition both of
his letters and his college exercises was bald, unrelieved by any gleam
of fancy or sentiment.  But in two years he had learned to write with
ease and fluency, and he had formed that remarkable, if somewhat turgid
style which he practised ever after.  We know so little of the English
writers who engaged his attention at this time that the natural history
of his style is something of a puzzle.  It has somewhat of the swell and
dignity of Johnson, and much of the diffuseness of Burke—two of the most
prominent writers in his youth.  But its main quality must have arisen
from the burning fervour of his own mind, and the natural outflow of his
thoughts, shaping his language spontaneously, and moulding it into
characteristic forms of beauty and power.

When in 1842, on the eve of the Disruption, Chalmers met four or five
hundred of his brethren in what was known as the Convocation, and
endeavoured to reconcile them to the prospect of an unendowed church,
the task was one that demanded the highest efforts of his eloquence.  It
was his aim to rouse them to an attitude worthy of the occasion, and,
with that view, he concluded an appeal of transcendent power with a
eulogy of enthusiasm which awakened thunders of applause.  Never had he
seemed more eloquent. Yet the passage that had so thrilled his audience
was found after his death to be an exact transcript from one of his
student discourses.  ’Enthusiasm is a virtue rarely produced in a state
of calm and unruffled repose.  It flourishes in adversity.  It kindles
in the hour of danger and rises to deeds of renown.  The terrors of
persecution only serve to awaken the energy of its purposes.  It swells
in the pride of integrity, and great in the purity of its cause, it can
scatter defiance amid a host of enemies.’—Already, ’_fervet, immensusque
ruit_.’

In those days it was the practice of the members of the university to
meet morning and evening in the public hall for worship, the prayers
being led by the students of divinity.  In his first theological
session, Mr. Chalmers’s prayer was an amplification of the Lord’s
Prayer, so eloquent and original as to awaken the wonder of all.  One
who remembered his prayers on these occasions said: ’The wonderful flow
of eloquent, vivid, ardent description of the attributes and works of
God, and still more, perhaps, the astonishingly harrowing delineation of
the miseries, the horrid cruelties, immoralities, and abominations
inseparable from war, which always came in more or less in connection
with the bloody warfare in which we were engaged with France, called
forth the wonderment of his hearers.  He was then only sixteen years of
age, yet he showed a taste and capacity for composition of the most
glowing and eloquent kind. Even then his style was very much the same as
at the period when he attracted so much notice, and made such powerful
impression in the pulpit and by the press.’

Thus already, in his student days, that great outline of character had
begun to shape itself, which, modified afterwards by new and powerful
forces, made him the great man he was.  The intensity of his nature, the
redundant energy that hardly knew fatigue, the largeness of his view,
the warmth of his affection, the independence of his judgment, and the
gushing impetuosity of his style were manifest from these college days.
Whatever he may have derived from his parents, or from the masters that
taught him, or the books he read, a fearless, sturdy independence was
the ruling feature—he was a genuine Scot.


On finishing his theological studies he accepted a situation as tutor in
a family, under the feeling that, as his knowledge of mankind had
hitherto been limited to his own family and his fellow-students, it was
desirable for him to know a little more of the world.  But his
experience was not happy. It was not merely that his hours of teaching
were so arranged as to leave him hardly any time for reading, but that
his treatment was not what he considered due to a gentleman.  Of such
treatment he was sensitive to the last degree, nor was he restrained by
any bashfulness or timidity from expressing his opinion of it.  His
employer wished to throw the blame on himself, and told him he had too
much pride.  He could not deny the charge, but showed a ready wit in
hurling it back on his accuser.  ’Sir,’ was his undaunted reply, ’there
are two kinds of pride: there is the pride which lords it over
inferiors, and there is the pride which rejoices in repressing the
insolence of superiors. The first I have none of—the second I glory in.’
This, to say the least, was tolerably smart for a lad of eighteen. But
it showed not only his independence but his intolerance of opposition.
Soon after, he gave up the situation.

He had not completed his nineteenth year when he applied to his
presbytery to be licensed as a probationer.  He was under the legal age,
but probably his precocity had made a considerable impression, for the
law was evaded under a traditional exception in favour of youths ’of
pregnant parts,’ and on the 21st July 1799 he became a licentiate.  But
he did not show much interest in the work of his new calling.
Immediately after, he paid a visit to friends in England, in the course
of which he preached his first sermon, at Wigan, on 25th August 1799.
His eldest brother wrote to his father: ’His mode of delivery is
expressive, his language beautiful, and his arguments very forcible and
strong....  It is the opinion of those who pretend to be judges that he
will shine in the pulpit, but as yet he is rather awkward in his
appearance.  We, however, are at some pains in adjusting his dress,
manner, etc., but he does not seem to pay any great regard to it
himself. His mathematical studies appear to occupy more of his time than
his religious.’

Returning from England, he spent the next two winters at Edinburgh
attending classes at the university.  Mathematics, chemistry, natural
and moral philosophy, and political economy were the subjects that
occupied his attention. To Dr. Robison, Professor of Natural Philosophy,
he felt himself under very deep obligations.  He had been perplexed by
the views which he found in the _Système de la Nature_, published under
the pseudonym of Mirabeau, but really the work of the Baron von Holbach.
That rigid uniformity of natural law which it enforced seemed to point
ominously to materialism and atheism.  Under Professor Robison’s
instructions he was led to ponder the remarkable harmony between the
human mind and the processes of nature—the wonderful adaptation of the
one to the other; and the conclusion was irresistible that this must be
due to an intelligent Divine Being who had framed these adaptations. In
after years this was the theme of his Bridgewater treatise, and it was
one of the corner-stones of his Natural Theology.  As to preaching
during these Edinburgh studies, it seems to have been almost entirely
neglected.

A new situation, however, opened up to him, as assistant to the Rev. Mr.
Elliot, minister of Cavers, in Roxburghshire. The duties of this office
he discharged for about a year with fair regularity and diligence, but
without hard work, and without his showing any lively interest in the
objects of the ministry.  In the course of his residence there, he
learned that when the parish of Kilmany, in Fife, should fall vacant (as
it was likely to do, but not just immediately, by the appointment of the
incumbent to a chair), he would get the presentation from the University
of St. Andrews.

But what interested him much more was his appointment as assistant, for
the ensuing session, to the professor of mathematics there.  All that
concerned the ministry excited but a languid interest, but his literary
and scientific ambition was irrepressible.  Already it had begun to look
towards a mathematical chair.  As Mrs. Oliphant remarks, ’The life and
energy of a robust young man, full of ambition, eager for achievement,
was in all his veins.’  As a teacher he kindled the enthusiasm of his
students for mathematical science.  To himself the demonstrations of
geometry were alike complete and beautiful.  But he had also a way of
associating mathematics with other pursuits, of bringing all manner of
side-lights to bear on the study, of finding analogies in this quarter
and in that, that greatly increased his popularity as a teacher.  As one
of his students remarked afterwards, ’Under his extraordinary management
the study of mathematics was felt to be hardly less a play of the fancy
than a labour of the intellect—the lessons of the day being continually
interspersed with applications and illustrations of the most lively
nature, so that he secured in a singular manner the confidence and
attachment of his pupils.’

But such popularity among the students was apt to beget a different
feeling among the professors; it especially roused Mr. Vilant, the
gentleman as whose substitute Chalmers had been acting.  Mr. Vilant, it
appeared, had been granting certificates without communication with his
assistant—a grievous offence in his eyes.  Accordingly, at the public
examination of his classes at the end of the session, Chalmers broke out
into a severe invective against him, and delivered a long, sarcastic
speech in condemnation of his conduct.  The professors knew not how to
look, but at last the Principal brought the speech of Chalmers to an
end, and he proceeded with his examination as if nothing had happened.

His capacity of combining strong feeling in one direction with perfect
self-control in every other was very remarkable. Many years afterwards,
when expressing his views with extraordinary energy in the General
Assembly on the question that led to the Disruption, he was interrupted
by a layman, who remarked that they were all pleased to hear him,
excited though he was, but that there were limits, etc., etc.
’Excited!’ exclaimed Chalmers, in great astonishment; ’does the
gentleman say that I am excited?  I am as cool as an algebraic problem.’
His head was in no degree disturbed by the vehemence of his heart.

A short time had to elapse between the close of the session and his
ordination as minister of Kilmany, which Mr. Chalmers devoted to a visit
to Edinburgh.  His father was disappointed and mortified that on the eve
of entering on so solemn a profession, he did not put the interval to
use at home in the way of earnest meditation and prayer.  For that,
however, the son did not see the slightest necessity.  He deemed himself
already sufficiently prepared for his duties, with the nature of which
he was well acquainted.  In this strain he wrote to his father, adhering
to his plan.  A few years later he would have felt most differently,
and, ashamed of his carelessness, he would have most cordially fallen in
with all that his father had written.




                               CHAPTER II

                                KILMANY

                               1803-1815


On the 12th day of May 1803, Mr. Chalmers was ordained by the Presbytery
of Cupar to the ministry of Kilmany. Never did the settlement of a young
man of twenty-three create less interest in the mind of the person
principally concerned.  There is no evidence either of that elation of
feeling which a young man naturally has in taking possession of a church
and manse, and filling an important place in a community; or of that
overwhelming sense of responsibility which so solemn a charge excites in
a serious mind. It was not the ministry but mathematics that held the
first place in his heart.  Notwithstanding his settlement as minister of
Kilmany, he was bent on being re-appointed to the mathematical
assistantship during the ensuing winter. His predecessor in that office
had been minister of a parish for six out of the eleven years when he
had held it; what reasonable objection could there be to his holding it
for a single session?

After what had happened at the end of last session, it was no great
wonder that his employer should inform him that his services were no
longer needed.  This could hardly have been a surprise, though it was a
disappointment; but when it was indicated that inefficiency was the
cause of his dismissal, it was viewed as an intolerable insult.
Inefficiency, forsooth!  If he should submit to that, it would be a
deathblow to all his hopes of literary and scientific advancement, and
it would shut him out for ever from all hope of a university chair.

Unabashed by the treatment of the professors, he resolved to defy them,
and to open classes on his own account during the ensuing session.  He
was too self-confident and self-reliant to care what might be said of
him, either by the professors or the public; but there was one quarter
in which he was desirous to conciliate approval, or at least to prevent
condemnation.  He found it necessary to give reasons to his father for
not confining himself to the duties of his ministerial charge.  The
chief reason was, that, apart from preaching, the duties were slight and
easy, and it was his intention, while spending the week in St. Andrews,
to return to Kilmany on Saturdays for Sunday duties, while two of his
neighbours were willing to attend to any urgent week-day matters that
might arise.  The truth is, he had by a kind of unconscious instinct
accepted the views of the ’Moderates,’—a school, in the language of Mr.
Dodds, ’which was neither true Christian nor good pagan; had neither the
unction of Knox nor the yearning desire for truth and goodness of an
Epictetus or a Cicero.’

When he began his classes at St. Andrews, he of course had to encounter
many hard sayings and much opposition. But he was confident of his
integrity in thus repelling practically an injurious charge; and with no
little dignity and force maintained that he was bound to take this step
in order to uphold his reputation as a teacher.  And such was his
simplicity and geniality of manner that he felt no embarrassment in
going about among the very professors and others who had condemned him
most.  After a few weeks, in addition to his three classes of
mathematics, he announced his intention of opening a class of chemistry.
This created a fresh storm of opposition.  But the class prospered, it
was conducted with the greatest enthusiasm, and the very fact of so
young a man braving the opposition of the whole university in order to
defend his reputation gave a chivalrous aspect to the proceeding, which
toned down the current of opposition.  By the end of the session he and
the professors were all on good terms.  It was a marvellous proof of his
energy alike of mind and body that he was able to do all his academic
work, and at the same time write sermons and deliver them at Kilmany,
without breaking down, without even the appearance of exhaustion.  On
the 14th March, after five months of this labour, he wrote to his
father, ’My hands are full of business.  I am living just now the life I
seem to be formed for—a life of constant and unremitting activity.’  Of
the whole forty-three years that formed the remainder of his life,
nearly the same thing might have been said.

The mathematical classes were not repeated in the following session, but
the chemical lectures were resumed, and carried on twice a week with
increased enthusiasm.  The lectures were subsequently repeated at
Kilmany and at Cupar. Once, when at a loss for means to assist a friend
at Kirkcaldy, who had been associated with him in the volunteer service,
the chemical lectures were trotted out to the rescue. It was necessary,
when he went to a town, to carry materials for experimenting with him,
and Dr. Hanna tells how on one occasion one of the bottles that hung
from his saddlebag having been broken, the contents were discharged on
the flank of his horse, where they left a discoloured belt to tell the
tale.  Of this accident the present writer remembers to have heard a
more detailed version, according to which the accident to the bottle,
which contained sulphuric acid, was not discovered till he was in the
class-room.  The moment it was perceived, Chalmers, in great excitement,
exclaimed, ’Oh, my poor beast!’ and rushed from the lecture-room to the
stable to do whatever was possible to relieve the sufferings of the
unfortunate animal.

It did not escape the notice of the Presbytery that the minister of
Kilmany was so much occupied with work outside his parish.  But the
standard of ministerial activity was low, and Chalmers had not much
difficulty in defending himself.  In a very short time his thoughts were
again turned to the university, but in another connection.  The chair of
natural philosophy became vacant, and he entered the lists as a
candidate.  But as the election was in the hands of the professors, he
could not have seriously dreamt of success.  Nor was he much concerned
for his failure. ’My contempt,’ he wrote, ’for the low, shuffling
artifices of college politics supports and elevates my mind against the
vexation of regret.’

A few weeks later, in January 1805, the University of Edinburgh lost one
of its most eminent professors—Dr. Robison, of whom mention has already
been made.  Professor Playfair obtained his chair, leaving that of
mathematics, which he had held before, to be filled up.  Chalmers was
again in the field, but no qualifications that he could appeal to were a
match for those of the successful candidate—Mr. (afterwards Sir John)
Leslie.  In the course of the contest he came for the first time before
the public as an author.  Among the candidates was the Rev. Dr.
Macknight, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, in opposition to whom
Professor Playfair had written to the patrons, remonstrating against
such a conjunction of offices.  Mr. Chalmers’s pamphlet (which was
anonymous) was entitled, _Observations on a passage in Mr. Playfair’s
Letter to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, relative to the Mathematical
Pretensions of the Scottish Clergy_.  He had ceased to have any personal
interest in the case, and his whole object was to show that a Scottish
clergyman might be abundantly qualified for the duties of a chair in
addition to those of a parish. ’The author of this pamphlet,’ he said,
’can assert from what to him is the highest of all authority, the
authority of his own experience, that after the satisfactory discharge
of his parish duties, a minister may enjoy five days in the week of
uninterrupted leisure for the prosecution of any science in which his
taste may dispose him to engage.’  When the religious views of Mr.
Chalmers underwent the great change which will be described afterwards,
he was much distressed for this publication, and did his utmost to
withdraw it from circulation.  In a discussion on pluralities in the
General Assembly some years afterwards, he argued vehemently against
both the principle and practice of pluralities; and, being twitted with
having at one time pronounced in their favour, he candidly admitted that
he had done so, but it was in the days of his spiritual blindness.  The
chair involved was a chair of mathematics.  ’What, sir,’ he asked, ’are
the objects of mathematical science?  Magnitude and the relations of
magnitude.  But then, sir, I had forgot two magnitudes: I thought not of
the littleness of time; I recklessly thought not of the greatness of
eternity!’

However imperfectly he might have been discharging the duties of his
Kilmany charge, Mr. Chalmers was exceedingly kind and exemplary to the
members of his own family, one of whom, his sister Jane, for whom
through life he had the warmest affection, kept house for him, while
various others were more or less resident in his manse.  One brother,
George, a favourite of the family, spent some months at Kilmany in the
autumn of 1806, in very touching circumstances. He was a sailor by
profession, and at the age of twenty-three commanded a merchant ship,
which being attacked by a French privateer, gallantly drove off the
enemy; but the skipper, lying down on deck, exhausted after the fight,
caught the seeds of consumption, which gradually prevailed against him.
His mother, three of his sisters, and two of his brothers were all
around him at Kilmany, but no material improvement took place.
Returning to Anstruther, George calmly awaited his coming end, with a
firm trust in the merit of his Saviour.  Every evening one of Newton’s
(of Olney) sermons was read at his bedside by one of the family in
rotation.  It was one of the books which his brother had lately
denounced from the pulpit of Kilmany, as drawing men away from the
wholesome teaching of the gospels.  Yet to his dying brother it brought
heavenly comfort.  And evidently that brother enjoyed a secret something
which he had not.  Could he be wrong?  Must there not be reality in the
experience that took away all fear of death, and made the youth of
twenty-three so willing to die?  ’The deep impression made by George’s
death,’ says Dr. Hanna, the chief biographer of Chalmers, ’was the first
step towards his own conversion.’

Less than two years after, his sister Barbara, who was five years older
than himself, sickened and died.  The same fell disease which had cut
off George proved fatal to her.  But her father could write of her that
she showed a cheerful submission to the will of God, and a humble
confidence in the satisfaction of her great Redeemer. Here was another
case of one very near and dear to him deriving all her support and
comfort in the hour of death from a source which he had been accustomed
to associate with superstition and fanaticism.  Again the question could
not but force itself upon him, Must there not be something real in it,
after all?

As to the ordinary management of his household, being under the control
of his sister, it proceeded in the ordinary fashion without much
interference from him.  He was easy, and easily pleased, but he was not
an absent-minded dreamer.  At an early period his chemical studies had
led him to believe that the time would come when coal-vapour would be
purified and used for illuminating houses; and when he got a new manse,
he had pipes laid in it, in anticipation of this domestic use.  When
coffee was introduced as a beverage, he believed that in burnt rye he
had found a rival to it, and used to have it produced for his friends.
Once when it was proposed to subject the two substances to a sort of
competitive trial, and a select company assembled to pass a verdict upon
them, a cup of genuine Mocha was first handed round and much approved
of; then a second cup was presented, and being tasted was pronounced to
be much inferior; whereupon Mr. Chalmers burst into laughter and
exclaimed, ’It’s your own Mocha coffee, the second cup is just the same
article as the first!’  At another time, when some friends were to be at
dinner, it turned out that the whole resources of the larder could
produce nothing but two kinds of dried fish.  Nothing daunted, Mr.
Chalmers had both of them properly served; and the covers being removed,
called on his guests to make their choice.  ’This, gentlemen, is salt
fish from St. Andrews; and that is salt fish from Dundee.’  Of course he
had to be often on horseback; but as a horseman he did not excel.  ’What
most provoked him was the frequency with which his horse threw him.  At
first he was much interested in noting the intervals between each fall.
Taking the average length, and calculating how far a dozen falls would
carry him, he resolved to keep the horse till the twelfth fall was
accomplished.  Extremely fond of such numerical adjustments (a singular
result of the mathematical structure of his mind), he was most faithful
in counting them.  In this instance, however, the tenth fall was so bad
that his resolution gave way, and he told his servant to take the horse
to the next market and sell him forthwith.  ’But remember,’ he said,
’you must conceal none of its faults; you must tell that it has thrown
its master ten times.’  ’But who,’ asked the man, ’will think of buying
the horse if I tell him all that beforehand?’  ’I cannot help that,’
said Mr. Chalmers; ’I will have no deception practised, and if nobody
will buy the horse, you must just bring him back again.’  Nobody did buy
the horse; ultimately in return for a book he was transferred to his
neighbour, Mr. Thomson of Balmerino, whom the animal served quietly and
faithfully for many a year, without showing any vicious tendency; whence
it came to be surmised ’that the peculiarities of the case were not in
the animal but the restless and energetic horsemanship of the rider!’

His patriotism was intense, and not only did he fulminate against
Bonaparte in the pulpit, but he joined the volunteers, and held
commissions both as chaplain and lieutenant.

The early years at Kilmany passed with little change except a visit to
England in the beginning of 1807.  These English visits, rare in those
days, enlarged his horizon, and showed him much that he did not find at
home.  At Liverpool he preached for a Mr. Kilpatrick, and we may gather
the character of his ordinary pulpit lessons from his two subjects—in
the forenoon on the comforts of religion; in the afternoon on
drunkenness.  His impression of Woodstock showed that intense admiration
of nature which remained to the last: ’I spent two hours in the garden.
Never spot more lovely—never scenes so fair and captivating.  I lost
myself in an elysium of delight, and wept with perfect rapture.’  At
Oxford there was kindled a reverence for English academical life and
learning which never left him.  ’I was delighted with the academic air
and costume of the place; and amid the grossness of a mercantile age, it
is the delight of my spirit to recur to the quiet scenes of philosophy,
and contemplate what our ancestors have done for learning, and the
respect that they once paid to it.’

Three weeks were spent among the sights of London. He had a lively
interest in all he saw, especially in all that concerned science and the
mechanical arts.  Among his old friends and neighbours were two sons of
Fifeshire manses, rising to that high distinction which he coveted in
his own department,—John Campbell, afterwards Lord Campbell, and Mr.
(afterwards Sir David) Wilkie.  He was greatly interested in all he saw
of royalty: Windsor, with all its glories; the chapel-royal there, where
the King and Queen and Princess Elizabeth seemed so simple, frank, and
devout; and he noted especially a view he had of these royal personages
at St. James’s, when her majesty returned his salutation with a
’condescending notice.’  Not in the vulgar sense, but as useful and
ornamental elements in the social fabric, he had a high regard for
royalty and the nobility.  ’I am charmed with the cordial and
affectionate loyalty of the people.  I saw a glow of reverence and
satisfaction on every countenance, and my heart warmed within me.’
Sheridan was the great orator of the day, and oftener than once he heard
him speak.  He used to give two instances of Sheridan’s readiness of
repartee when standing the fire of the hustings at Westminster. One
elector complained that he was not satisfied with his treatment of the
Carnatic.  ’My dear sir,’ he said, with a significant bow, ’the affairs
of the Carnatic are in much abler hands.’  Another elector, with a very
ugly face, raised on the shoulder of the mob, said, ’If you do not alter
your ways, I will withdraw my countenance from you.’  ’I am delighted to
hear it,’ said Sheridan, ’for it is the ugliest countenance I ever
beheld.’

Cambridge attracted him even more than Oxford: ’It smells of learning
all over, and I breathe a fragrancy most congenial to me.’  As if he had
foreseen Girton and Newnham, he said, ’The very women have an air of
academic mildness and simplicity.’  He preferred it to Oxford,
apparently because its objects of interest were not so concentrated, but
really, in all probability, because it was the great sanctuary of
mathematical study.  ’In Cambridge, everything wears a simplicity and
chasteness allied to the character of philosophy, and the venerable name
of Newton gives it an interest that can never die.’  The glories of York
Minster entranced him.  Wherever he went he made careful observation
alike of all that was beautiful and all that was instructive.  He
returned to Kilmany in July (1807), after an absence of nearly three
months.

Immediately after his return, Mr. Chalmers set himself to prepare for
the press a work of considerable size and research, entitled an _Inquiry
into the Extent and Stability of National Resources_.  Political economy
had always attracted him.  At the time of this publication, much fear
was expressed that the continued war with Bonaparte, implying the
shutting against Britain of all the ports of the countries to which his
influence extended, and the confiscation of all cargoes of British
goods, would exhaust the resources of the country and ruin its foreign
traders. Mr. Chalmers held strongly an opposite opinion.  Whether he
succeeded in proving his contention may be a question; certainly his
position was paradoxical.  But his sagacity, as the result has proved,
came out in more than one indirect form.  With reference to the
income-tax, he contended strongly that it ought not to be charged on the
whole of a man’s income, but only on the part that remained after
providing for the necessaries of life.  It was only a few years ago that
effect was given to this view in the case of small incomes. Another
matter for which he contended strongly was our obligation to provide a
better living for our soldiers.  He denounced the compulsory system of
enlistment—it ought to be a voluntary service.  And it ought to be a
service of limited duration; the nation had no right to make an
exception against soldiers and sailors when all other servants were
engaged for a limited number of months or years.  ’Let it no longer be a
slavery for life, and let the burning ignominy of corporal punishment be
done away.’  It was many years before these suggestions were acted on;
Chalmers lived to see his proposal of limited enlistment carried out,
when a friend of his own (Lord Panmure, afterwards Earl of Dalhousie)
was Secretary at War.

In this and in later writings on political economy it has been well
remarked that ’he bent the whole energies of his thought, not so much on
its abstruser theories, as on those practical and vital problems which
tend to meet the difficulties and ameliorate the condition of the
working classes.’  ’He was the first political economist,’ says Mr.
Dodds, ’who seized with a forethought and philanthropy equally before
his time upon _the condition-of-the-people question_, as the paramount,
the coming question of the age.’  His opinion as to the dynamic by which
the desired change was to come underwent a great change when his
religious views changed; at the present stage he hoped that the forces
of reason would gradually effect the desired improvement; afterwards he
saw that these forces would be of little avail without the power of the
Gospel.

But a more important publication had now come into his horizon.  One of
his friends, Dr. (afterwards Sir David) Brewster, was at this time
engaged in editing a voluminous work, the _Edinburgh Encyclopædia_.
Chalmers was engaged to contribute several articles, chiefly on
mathematical subjects.  After the death of his sister Barbara (in 1808)
he wrote to the editor requesting that the article on ’Christianity’
should be assigned to him.  Probably he felt, after what he had seen at
the two deathbeds in his family, that he needed to make this great
subject a matter of more careful study.  His own belief in the divine
origin of Christianity had been firmly established long before—the
historical evidence, as presented by Paley, and the analogical
confirmation of it by Butler appearing to him irresistible.  As it
turned out, his article in the _Encyclopædia_ bore mainly on the
evidences; and the historical evidence received by far the most
prominent place.  Indeed, he was disposed to lay little stress on what
was known as the internal evidence. This arose out of the fear he
entertained lest men would substitute their own impressions of
Christianity for the clear, authoritative declarations of God.  Since
God had uttered His voice, the sole and simple duty of men was to
ascertain what He had spoken, and give it their profound and absolute
acceptance.  If they began to discuss the quality of His message, even
though its supreme excellence should be the point insisted on, they
would be bringing their own judgment into the case, and that might prove
a very dangerous element.  It needs hardly to be pointed out that in
this position Chalmers placed himself in antagonism to the current view
of the friends of Christianity.  In point of fact, the internal evidence
is that which carries conviction to the great mass of believers.  At the
present day, the character of Jesus Christ stands far the highest and
most impressive of all the evidences.  Chalmers was influenced, by a
mental tendency which clung to him more or less all his life, to dwell
on one side of a truth, which, to be fully set forth, needed to be
viewed in a variety of lights. But after a time he came to see that the
internal evidence deserved a higher place than he had assigned to it.
When his article was expanded into his treatise on the _Evidences of
Christianity_, the internal branch was duly acknowledged.

But before the article was finished, Chalmers, who was then in his
thirtieth year, passed through the ordeal of a very severe illness,
which confined him to his room for four months, prevented him from
entering his pulpit for six months, and affected him more or less for a
whole year. He believed that he was about to die.  The whole subject of
religion assumed a new aspect of importance in his eyes. He came to see
that he had been living without God, and the discovery appalled him.
The will of God now became an imperative rule to him, and every energy
was bent towards bringing his own heart and life into conformity to it.
In such a man as Pascal the sublime transition had been made from the
highest walks of mathematical science to the still higher walk of faith.
Might not he be able to realise what Pascal had achieved?  For a whole
year Chalmers laboured to effect this change.  His friends could not
fail to mark the difference.  Brief but solemn allusions such as they
had never heard before would drop from his lips.  But in many respects
he was still the same.  ’There were the same cordial greetings, the same
kindly questionings about themselves and all their friends, and the same
hearty laugh at the racy anecdote or stroke of quiet humour; for, great
as was the change effected, neither at the first nor ever afterwards did
it damp or narrow that genial and most social spirit which carried him
into varied intercourse with all classes of his fellow-men, and made the
joy of that intercourse to be a very cordial to his heart.’  But, deeply
solemnised though he was, he had not attained the peace that passeth
understanding, nor had he learned the precious act of free and loving
fellowship with his Father in heaven.

During all this time he was ever keeping a most vigilant eye on his
habits and life, and in a diary now begun we find him pulling himself up
for every little fault, every loss of temper, every bitter word, every
conceited feeling.  And he is constantly praying for forgiveness and for
strength.  He is making progress in theological knowledge, finding, for
example, a far higher place in his regard for the atonement of Jesus
Christ.  A very strong mark of his earnestness is seen in his
determination finally to give up his mathematical reading, and devote
himself to theology.

His views came to a point after the reading of a book then in
vogue—Wilberforce’s _Practical View_.  Fifteen years after, he described
the effect which that book had upon him in a letter to a younger
brother.  ’When I meet with an inquirer, who, under the impulse of a new
feeling, has set himself in good earnest to the business of his
eternity, I have been very much in the habit of recommending
Wilberforce.  This perhaps is owing to the circumstance that I myself
experienced a very great transition of sentiment in consequence of
reading his work.  The deep views he gives of the depravity of our
nature, of our need of an atonement, of the great doctrine of acceptance
through that atonement, of the sanctifying influences of the
Spirit—these all give a new aspect to a man’s religion....  But there
are other books which might be as effectually instrumental in working
the desired change; and in defect of them all there is the Bible, whose
doctrines I well remember I then saw in an altogether new light, and
could feel a power and a preciousness in passages which I formerly read
with heedlessness, and even with disgust.’

We cannot dwell at more length on this most interesting struggle; enough
to say that he emerged from it into the joy and peace of believing; he
laid hold of Jesus Christ as his only Saviour; entered into conscious
reconciliation with God; looked habitually to the Holy Spirit for all
sanctifying grace; and counted it his highest honour and delight to be a
fellow-worker with God, especially in all that concerned the welfare of
his fellow-men.  Yet it was always observed of him that while cordially
agreeing with evangelical divines in the great essentials of the faith,
he would accept of no position which did not commend itself to his own
mind as according to Scripture.  For a class of men who insisted on very
minute orthodoxies, and even questioned his own soundness because he
might not agree with them, he used to speak with little patience and
less respect.

The change became very apparent in his ministerial work. He threw new
ardour into the visitation of his flock and the instruction of the
young.  His preaching passed into those evangelical lines which formerly
he had treated with contempt.  Family worship, morning and evening, was
regularly conducted in the manse, although sometimes it was a great
trial to introduce that much contemned practice when a guest was present
who had little sympathy with the evangelical life.  A Bible Society was
established in the parish, and all the people were exhorted to join it.
Strangers flocked to his church, not merely as of old to enjoy his
eloquent and impassioned delivery, but for guidance and aid in the
service of God.  Converts to living Christianity gladdened his heart and
aided him in his work.  ’Sandy Paterson,’ his first convert, became a
great and earnest worker among his neighbours, and afterwards, as a city
missionary, in the Canongate of Edinburgh, successfully laboured in the
slums.  With a young gentleman in Dundee, Mr. James Anderson, Chalmers
formed a remarkable friendship on the basis of their mutual interest in
religion, and in his great humility corresponded with him more like a
fellow-student or brother than a spiritual father.  And Chalmers himself
became an earnest and laborious student of the Bible; and, in order to
keep up the glow of his spiritual life, instituted for himself a monthly
exercise, in which he reviewed before God the work of the month, and
with much confession and thanksgiving, implored the blessing of God on
all his work and on all his people.

No man was more sensible than himself of the great difference between
his earlier and later ministry.  He told his people that earnest though
he had been at first in pressing honour, truth, and integrity upon them,
he never once heard of any resulting reformation; all his vehemence had
not the weight of a feather on their moral habits.  It was only after he
became acquainted with the true way of approach to God, and the real
fountain of divine strength in Christ, that those minor reformations
showed themselves as the result of that deeper and more vital process by
which the heart was changed.  It was his delight to hear masters
testifying to the scrupulous honesty and conscientious fidelity of their
servants, after they had come under the power of the Gospel.  He prayed
that such servants, while thus adorning the doctrine of God their
Saviour, humble though they were, might reclaim the great ones of the
land to the acknowledgment of the faith.

Though not much addicted to church courts, Chalmers, during his Kilmany
ministry, made a few memorable appearances in them.  His maiden speech
in the General Assembly was delivered in 1809.  The subject was not an
inspiring one; it related to a recent act of the legislature on the
augmentation of stipends.  But his speech was a most logical and
brilliant performance.  The house was taken by storm.  ’Who is he?’ was
the question on every lip; ’he must be a most extraordinary person.’
Later, in 1814, he spoke on a kindred subject—the repairs and
alterations of manses.  A better chance for his powers occurred in the
Assembly of that year in connection with a plurality case, where the
’wonderful display of his talents’ contributed much to the passing of an
enactment that no professorship in a university should be held in
connection with a _country_ charge.

During the latter part of his Kilmany ministry he became a contributor
to the _Edinburgh Christian Instructor_, under the distinguished
editorship of Dr. Andrew Thomson. One of his papers dealt with the
new-born science of geology, and greatly soothed the anxieties of many
good men, by pointing out that the first chapter of Genesis does not fix
the antiquity of the globe, but only that of the human race. To the
_Eclectic Review_ he contributed an able paper on Moravian missions, in
opposition to an ignorant and scandalous misstatement on that subject
that had appeared in the _Edinburgh Review_.  An eloquent pamphlet,
likewise in refutation of injurious statements, vindicated Bible
Societies from the charge of hurting the poor.  It was at this time, and
in connection with this defence of Bible Societies, that he first
published those views of pauperism which he maintained so constantly all
his life.  At Kilmany there was no assessment for the poor, and very
little pauperism.  It seemed to him far better to foster a spirit of
independence, thrift, and industry on the part of the poor, and a spirit
of brotherly consideration on the part of the rich, than to confer a
legal claim on the one, and impose a legal obligation on the other.
’What, after all,’ asks the author of the pamphlet on Bible Societies,
’is the best method of providing for the secular necessities of the
poor? Is it by labouring to meet the necessity after it has occurred, or
by labouring to establish a principle and a habit which would go far to
prevent its existence? ... If you wish to extinguish poverty, combat
with it in its first elements.... The education and religious principle
of Scotland have not annihilated pauperism, but they have restrained it
to a degree that is almost incredible to our neighbours of the south.
The writer of this paper knows of a parish in Fife, the average
maintenance of whose poor is defrayed by £24 sterling a year, and of a
parish of the same population in Somersetshire where the annual
assessment amounts to £1300 sterling.’

But the most interesting feature in the pastoral development of Chalmers
during the latter part of his Kilmany ministry was the new direction
given to his power as a pulpit orator.  We have seen that, from the
beginning, his more careful discourses were marked by great force of
argument and beauty of expression, and that there was such a fervour in
his manner of delivery as approached to wild uncouthness.  Certain it is
that from first to last his pronunciation was very broad and his accent
intensely provincial.  But when he struck into a vein of thought that
was full of interest to his own mind and soul, he was wonderfully
arrestive and impressive.  In his earlier years he evidently took but
little trouble with his ordinary discourses; writing shorthand, he could
easily throw off a sermon in two or three hours.  Yet even then he was
at times singularly felicitous; and, for sheer eloquence, no sermon he
ever preached was more remarkable than one delivered on occasion of the
national fast, on 8th February 1809, when, after a five-mile plodding on
foot through a heavy fall of snow, he convened the handful of people who
had reached the church in a room in the damp, uninhabited manse.  After
his change of views, his preparation for the pulpit received much more
attention, and a distinction of longhand and shorthand sermons indicated
that on some he bestowed peculiar pains.  The late Andrew Fuller,
attracted by his fame, having paid him a visit, tried to persuade him to
give up reading his sermons, believing that a more free delivery would
add infinitely to the impression.  Chalmers made various attempts to
carry out the extemporaneous method, but, instead of his acquiring more
freedom, the effect was the reverse.  At last he gave up all attempts at
the extemporaneous, both in his sermons and speeches, except in the way
of parenthetical remarks designed to elucidate some point that had not
been made sufficiently clear.

But we must not close the record of his Kilmany life without adverting
to an important domestic event which took place about two years before
he left the place.  Till near that time he had, like Dr. Livingstone in
Africa at a later period, determined to lead the life of a bachelor.  A
recent disappointment in connection with an application for augmentation
of stipend, confirmed him in that resolve. But neither Chalmers nor
Livingstone had taken into reckoning a mysterious influence which can
make sport of the firmest resolutions, and prostrate strong men at the
feet of Hymen.  Chalmers had fallen in love with Miss Grace Pratt,
daughter of Captain Pratt of the First Royal Veteran Battalion, who had
been living for some time with her uncle, Mr. Simson, at Starbank, in
the parish of Kilmany. The marriage took place on 4th August 1812, and
the union lasted for thirty-five years of unbroken domestic happiness.
His sister Jane, his housekeeper, had been married shortly before to Mr.
Morton, a gentleman in Gloucestershire, and in communicating to her what
was probably a very unexpected piece of intelligence, he veiled the news
under an allegorical form which it may have taken her a little trouble
to elucidate.  Referring to a recent but somewhat unsuccessful process
of his before the Court of Tiends for augmentation of stipend, he said
he had been involved in another process before another court.  He had
been defeated in the one, but he was glad to say he had been triumphant
in the other.  In the latter case he had had to do the whole business
himself.  He had had to frame the summons and to conduct the pleadings.
There had been replies and duplies, and many a personal appearance at
court before the process was settled.  At last a decision had been given
in his favour.  But the law required the decision to be followed by a
proclamation—not a single proclamation at the cross, but two
proclamations, that had to be made within a quarter of a mile of his own
house.  The letter concluded: ’I ken, Jane, you always thought me an
ill-pratted (mischievous) chiel; but, I can issure you, of all the
_pratts_ I ever played, none was ever carried on, or even ended more
_grace_-fully.’  And Mrs. Morton congratulated him on his victory.

His fame as a pulpit orator had now travelled from Maidenkirk to John o’
Groats, and it could not be expected that he should be left in a
secluded country parish.  In Glasgow, the Tron parish church had become
vacant, and Chalmers was suggested as successor to Dr. Macgill. It was
easy for the anti-evangelical party to ridicule the idea of bringing a
madman to such a place; but a deputation from the Town Council, who were
patrons of the church, went to hear him preach.  On the Sunday in
question he preached, at Bendochy, a funeral sermon on Mr. Honey, a
young minister whose fatal illness had been brought on by his exertions
in saving from shipwreck seven exhausted sailors, whom, one by one, he
bore from their stranded vessel to the shore.  The impression of that
sermon was overpowering.  In spite of the opposition of the Duke of
Montrose, Sir Islay Campbell, the Lord Provost, and the College,
Chalmers received from the Town Council a presentation to the Tron, and,
after considerable hesitation, accepted it.  It was a great wrench to
tear himself from Kilmany, which he loved and admired so greatly, and
from the people that were dear to him as his own children.  All his
life, Fife, and especially Kilmany, continued thus dear.  On his way to
Glasgow he had occasion to climb the Calton Hill in Edinburgh, and the
sight of Norman Law, which was visible from the windows of the manse of
Kilmany, quite overcame him. ’Oh! with what vivid remembrance can I
wander in thought over all its farms and all its families, and dwell on
the kind and simple affection of its people, till the contemplation
becomes too bitter for my endurance.’

It was no less a trial to leave the work which was now advancing so
hopefully in the parish.  But he could not be insensible to the claims
of such a city as Glasgow, and the boundless field for usefulness it
afforded.  And so, in great humility, and in great fear lest he should
be giving an undue preference to intellect and culture over poverty and
obscurity, he accepted the call.  He preached a most impressive farewell
sermon on 9th July 1815, which concluded with these words: ’Be assured,
my brethren, that after the dear and the much-loved scenery of this
peaceful vale has disappeared from my eye, the people who live in it
shall retain a warm and an ever-enduring place in my memory; and this
mortal body must be stretched on the bed of death ere the heart that now
animates it can resign its exercise of longing after you, and praying
for you that you may so receive Christ Jesus, and so walk in Him, and so
hold fast the things you have gotten, and so prove that the labour I
have had among you has not been in vain, that when the sound of the last
trumpet awakens us, these eyes which are now bathed in tears may open
upon a scene of eternal blessedness, and we, my brethren, whom the
providence of God has withdrawn for a little time from each other, may
on that day be found side by side at the right hand of the everlasting
throne.’


When we compare Chalmers as he came to Kilmany and as he left it, we
find much that remains the same, and much that has been changed or
modified.

Remaining the same, we find his singularly energetic, forceful nature;
his high integrity and kindliness of heart, as it constantly streamed
out towards his family, his friends, and his flock; his eager desire for
the welfare of his people, for their advancement and elevation in all
that he counted good, pure, and noble; his indomitable energy of purpose
and fearless contending for right and truth; his passionate intensity of
conviction, rolling itself out in whirlwinds and tempests of eloquence,
that swept all before it.  The great change which he has undergone has
not destroyed these fundamental elements of character.

Nevertheless, all things have become new.  He has learned that true
life, in its every department, must be lived in fellowship with God.  He
has learned the way to God, to God reconciled, a loving Father, a
considerate Master, a gracious Friend and Guide.  He has seen the
reality of Christ’s atonement, and of the work of the Holy Spirit, and
found a new value in prayer, and a new use of the sacred Scriptures.  He
has got new light on the true welfare of the people, and especially on
the need for every one of personal contact with Christ; new light, also,
on the true dignity of every individual man and woman in view of the
capacities of their souls and the immortality that is before them.  He
has found a nobler theme and a higher inspiration for that eloquence
which has moulded his labours in the pulpit.  He is not less desirous to
see the people prosperous and happy, but he has been convinced that
their true welfare is dependent on heavenly grace, and, in the case of
the poor, that there is nothing like Christian influence whether for
preventing or alleviating the evils of poverty, or, where there are
poor, raising them above the depressing conditions of their lot.  And
this is just the germ of that more comprehensive view of the conditions
of social welfare to which he will be drawn when he finds himself side
by side with the teeming thousands of Glasgow. He looks forward more
ardently than ever to the full development of the parochial system.  Nor
has his enthusiasm for science abated.  He has seen that, much though he
loves it, it is not his part to devote to it the time needed for his
more immediate duties.  But now that he sees it more clearly than ever a
department of that great kingdom of God in which all interests are
combined in a wonderful unity, his respect for it is greater rather than
less.  And, as a handmaid to the Gospel, he will soon find a noble use
for it in those astronomical discourses which are soon to arrest the
attention of the intellectual world.

Thus equipped, and with these aims, Chalmers proceeds to Glasgow.  He is
inducted into his new charge, 23rd July 1815.  His incumbency there is
to be shorter even than at Kilmany; but the eight years that are now
before him are to witness the commencement of a work and the advocacy of
a cause which will not only bring out the greatness of his character,
but tell on the welfare of the whole Church and country for generations
to come.




                              CHAPTER III

                                GLASGOW

                               1815-1823


It cannot be said that Chalmers took very kindly to Glasgow.  He missed
the wide expanse, the fresh air, the Arcadian simplicity of his
much-loved Kilmany; also, the intimate acquaintance he had with every
individual, and the comparative leisure of a country life.  He found
himself ’cribbed, cabined, and confined’ by streets and lanes and
’lands,’ and flung upon dense masses of population that baffled every
attempt at individual acquaintance and interest.  No doubt the people
were most kind and hospitable, and if dinners and other entertainments
could have satisfied him, he might have had them to his heart’s content.
But, bent as he was on his especial work, and eager to launch new plans
of usefulness, it was irksome beyond endurance to have to devote whole
afternoons and evenings to eating and drinking, considering the very
trifling amount of good that could be expected to come of such
protracted engagements.  And another thing that worried him was the
trifling matters of purely secular interest to which, as a director of
societies, or a member of public boards, he was expected to give
attention.  Fancy an hour spent in debating whether a certain ditch was
to be covered over or not; fancy himself and his brother-directors
engaged in a long controversy whether pork soup or ox-tail soup should
be served to the inmates of an institution, and finally resorting to a
practical test—a portion of each kind being brought to each director to
taste!  Then there was an expectation that much of his time should be
devoted to certain attentions that people liked to be paid to them.
Why, a funeral was hardly counted respectable unless there were four
clergymen in attendance!  Much nervous energy was consumed in resisting
these unreasonable expectations, and if Chalmers had not come to be a
great man, and possessed of a fame which overbore everything, he would
certainly have suffered not a little in reputation from the necessity of
so often applying a snub where kindness was meant, and becoming a
transgressor where tradition had established its law.

During the eight years of his Glasgow incumbency many things happened,
worthy to be noticed even in a short biography like this.  First of all,
his fame as a pulpit orator reached its climax; a climax never surpassed
and seldom equalled in the whole annals of the pulpit.  In the next
place, his ideas of the advantages of the parochial system, brought from
Kilmany, were matured, expanded, and practically applied, with results
that demonstrated in a wonderful way their Christian wisdom and
excellence.  Further, as an author, he rose to a higher platform; his
astronomical and commercial discourses, when published, spread his fame
far and wide; and a quarterly publication which he issued on the _Civic
and Christian Economy of Large Towns_ showed the zeal and wisdom with
which he grappled with his parochial obligations.  Meanwhile, in his
closet, he was intensely occupied with the great problem of his personal
spiritual life; ever and anon placing himself in the immediate presence
of God, detecting and deploring his infirmities and deficiencies,
striving to walk with God in every undertaking, duty, and recreation;
trying hard to resist the subtle influence of human applause; and
longing much for that absolute consecration which would efface self, and
make God all in all.  Still further, he was most assiduous in
affectionate duty to his friends and family; correspondence with father,
mother, wife, children, and friends went on without ceasing, even in the
busiest periods of public life, and always with an eager desire to
promote their highest good.  And many an important call to other spheres
of labour arose from time to time to distract his attention; now he was
offered this important charge, now that; at one time he was entreated to
become a candidate for the natural philosophy chair at Edinburgh, and at
another for that of moral philosophy; now he was called to London to
preach a missionary sermon, and at another time he found it necessary to
make a long tour through England to acquire information about the
working of the poor-law system.  That he was able to sustain life under
the prodigious pressure of all these varied engagements cannot but
surprise us, and cannot but excite our admiration of the remarkable
physical and mental energy that was able to endure it.  But it had its
effects; and one of these was, that feeling himself unable to sustain
the pressure of such an accumulation of burdens, and desirous to
prosecute more vigorously his work as an author, he accepted, in 1823,
the unanimous offer made to him of the chair of moral philosophy at St.
Andrews, though the sphere in itself was absolutely insignificant, and
the salary not more than £300 a year.

The first sermon he preached in Glasgow, a few months before his
settlement as minister of the Tron parish, was on behalf of the Society
for the Sons and Daughters of the Clergy.  The more intellectual part
was an exposition of the principles of Christian charity and his views
of pauperism, and the more eloquent part was a touching picture of the
family of a deceased clergyman, called to tear themselves from all the
beauties of their home, when their hearts were overborne with the far
darker melancholy of a father torn from their embrace.  Dean Ramsay, who
heard this sermon, remarked, in his biographical notice of Chalmers to
the Royal Society of Edinburgh, that the tears of the father and
preacher fell like raindrops on the manuscript, and from many another
eye the like tokens of sensibility were seen to flow.

It is of his appearance on this occasion that an elaborate description
was given by Mr. J. G. Lockhart in his pseudonymous publication,
_Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk_.  It has been reproduced in almost
every biography, but the picture is too striking to be wholly left out
here.  After describing other features of the face, he remarks:—


’The eyes are light in colour, and have a strange, dreamy heaviness that
conveys any idea rather than that of dulness, but which contrasts in a
wonderful manner with the dazzling, watery glare they exhibit when
expanded in their sockets, and illuminated into all their flame and
fervour in some moment of high entranced enthusiasm.  But the shape of
the forehead is perhaps the most singular part of the whole visage; ...
it is without exception the most mathematical forehead I ever met with,
being far wider across the eyebrows than either Mr. Playfair’s or Mr.
Leslie’s....  Immediately above the extraordinary breadth of this
region, in the forehead, there is an arch of imagination carrying out
the summit boldly and roundly, in a style to which the heads of very few
poets present anything comparable, and over this region again there is a
grand apex of high and solemn veneration and love....  Never perhaps did
the world possess an orator whose minutest peculiarities of gesture and
voice have more power in increasing the effect of what he says.’  [The
writer then dilates on his defects in gesture and pronunciation, and the
disappointment caused by his first utterances.]  ’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 flings
from it its chill, confining fetters, and bursts out elate and rejoicing
in the full splendour 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,
whether in England or in Scotland, or in any other country, any preacher
whose eloquence is capable of producing an effect so strong and
irresistible as his.’


It was soon after, that on hearing a speech of Chalmers’s Lord Jeffrey
remarked, ’I know not what it is, but there is something altogether
remarkable about that man.  It reminds me more of what one reads of as
the effect of the eloquence of Demosthenes than anything I ever heard.’

An extraordinary impression was produced by a sermon preached before the
Lord High Commissioner, during the proceedings of the Assembly, from the
text, ’When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon
and the stars, which Thou hast ordained; what is man, that Thou art
mindful of him? and the son of man, that Thou visitest him?’  There was
a reference to the infidel argument that modern astronomy, through the
revelation by the telescope of the boundless multitude of worlds
existing in the heavens, had shown the earth to be too insignificant a
section of God’s universe to justify the incarnation and sacrifice of
the Son of God.  To refute this objection, Chalmers brought forward the
not less wonderful discoveries by the microscope of the minuteness of
God’s works, and the conclusion was irresistibly established that there
is ’not one portion of the universe of God too minute for His notice,
nor too humble for the visitations of His care.’

This sermon was one of a series which Chalmers, on whom the degree of
D.D. had been conferred by the University of Glasgow (21st February
1816), was now delivering there.  It had been an old practice of the
ministers of Glasgow, of whom there were then eight, to preach in turn
on Thursdays in the Tron Church, and Dr. Chalmers, deeming it fitting
that week-day sermons should have a character of their own, selected the
discoveries of modern astronomy as the basis of his course.  The
interest and novelty of the subject, as well as the fame of the
preacher, drew extraordinary crowds to the church.  In January 1817, the
series being completed, the sermons were published in a volume.  The
demand was marvellous. Nine editions were called for within a year, and
nearly 20,000 copies were circulated.  And, beyond the ordinary circle
of sermon readers, men like Hazlitt and Canning were arrested and
impressed.  The sermons necessarily bore the marks of a hasty, and in
some respects a juvenile production; this Chalmers himself afterwards
acknowledged, and his own preference was given to another series—the
’Commercial Discourses,’ which bore ’On the Application of Christianity
to the Commercial and Ordinary Affairs of Life,’ and were published in
1820.

The Astronomicals had been reviewed, not quite favourably, by John
Foster, whose acquaintance Chalmers made about this time.  But, so far
from showing any chagrin at the freedom of his comments, Chalmers at
once took Foster to his heart; and there was no public writer of the day
of whom he thought more highly, or whom he more warmly commended in
after days to his students.  Some of the Reviews treated the sermons
severely; but from Christopher North, in _Blackwood_, they received
hearty commendation.

His popularity in Glasgow was almost surpassed by that which he found in
London.  In May 1817 he preached in Surrey Chapel for the London
Missionary Society.  His publisher, Mr. Smith, who accompanied him,
wrote home, ’All my expectations were overwhelmed in the triumph.
Nothing from the Tron pulpit ever excelled it, nor did he ever more
arrest and wonder-work his audience.  I had a full view of the whole
place.  The carrying forward of minds was never so visible to me; a
constant assent of the head from the whole people accompanied all his
paragraphs; and the breathlessness of expectation permitted not the
beating of a heart to agitate the stillness.’

Preaching for the Hibernian Society, he had a beautiful passage on Irish
character, which affected Mr. Canning to tears.  ’The tartan,’ he said,
’beats us all.’  Mr. Wilberforce had brought Canning, along with
Huskisson and Lord Binning to the chapel, where they found Lord Elgin,
Lord Harrowby, and many others.  In another chapel, on the same day, the
crowd that had gathered in the street was so vast that even the preacher
himself had great difficulty in getting admission.  We know what a
compliment it is, _laudari a laudatis_.  It was about this time that he
formed the acquaintance of the greatest pulpit orator of England, Robert
Hall, who wrote thus to him, ’It would be difficult not to congratulate
you on the unrivalled and unbounded popularity which attended you in the
metropolis....  The attention which your sermons have excited is
probably unequalled in modern literature.’

One might fill a whole volume with notices of his popularity, and of the
remarkable triumphs of his eloquence. To many, the wonder was increased
when they learned the circumstances in which his sermons were sometimes
composed.  On one occasion, while enjoying his holiday, word was brought
to him of the sudden death of the Princess Charlotte, and of his being
looked for in Glasgow to preach on the day of her funeral.  This letter
reached him on a Sunday, while he was preaching at Kilmany; posting on
Monday from Kirkcaldy to Queensferry, he got a seat on the mail to
Edinburgh; he arrived in Glasgow, after a night journey, between five
and six on Tuesday morning, and next forenoon preached one of his most
brilliant discourses. Wherever the coach stopped to change horses, he
rushed into the inn, wrote a few sentences, then rushed out to continue
his journey.  And the sermon was not a mere appeal to feelings.  A large
part of it consisted of an elaborate plea for a larger provision for the
spiritual necessities of great cities,—being the germ of that plan of
church extension and parochial cultivation which was to form the great
business of his life.

Twice every Sunday he usually filled his pulpit in the Tron Church; and
when latterly, in St. John’s, he had the Rev. Edward Irving as his
assistant, the two supplied two pulpits—the parish church and a chapel
of ease—while other engagements were often undertaken in various parts
of the country.  But the work of the pulpit could hardly be reckoned as
the chief of Dr. Chalmers’s labours.  His regard for the old parochial
economy of the Kirk of Scotland was a supreme feeling; he looked on
every minister as having charge of the people of the parish, and held
that it was his duty to watch over their spiritual condition.  It was
his sense of the infinite importance of this, if Christianity was to
retain any hold on the people of our cities, that had made him such an
enemy of pluralities, and that roused his intense opposition to the
settlement of Dr. Duncan Macfarlane as minister of the High Church of
Glasgow, while he retained the office of Principal of the University.
He knew for certain that the result would be the almost total neglect of
a parish of upwards of ten thousand souls.

The population of the Tron parish was between eleven and twelve
thousand.  Dr. Chalmers never devoted himself to the regular visitation
of the extra-parochial families that formed, to a large extent, his
ordinary congregation; where there was sickness or death, he would visit
them, but not in ordinary circumstances.  His concern was with the
people of the parish.  His first object was to ascertain their general
condition, and for this purpose he determined on a house-to-house
visitation.  It was a Herculean task.  He could but spend a few minutes
in each house, give a kindly greeting, put a few questions, perhaps
utter an earnest word of Christian counsel, and then invite the inmates
to the place where an evening service would be held for the benefit of
all.  And on the whole it was a depressing task; for he found that a
great proportion of the people had no seats in any place of worship, and
were in deep ignorance on the high matters of faith and eternity.  He
had his plans of reformation in readiness, but these involved the
enlistment and training of a large body of helpers.  As a first step in
this direction, on, 20th December 1816, he ordained a few younger men to
the office of the eldership, calling on them very earnestly to eschew
the example set by many elders around them, who attended only to things
temporal, and to devote themselves, by household visitation and other
means, to the superintendence of the spiritual interests of their
districts.  So earnestly was he devoted to the welfare of his parish,
that sometimes, when his family were in the country, he would live in a
humble room, at a rent of six shillings a week, in order to be near his
work; at other times he would dine in the little vestry-room attached to
his church.

Next, to meet the alarming ignorance of spiritual truth, he instituted a
Sabbath Evening School Society, and got a few members of his
congregation to work it.  At the end of two years, upwards of two
thousand children were under instruction by this means.  ’Our meetings,’
says one of the members, ’were very delightful.  I never saw any set of
men who were so animated by one spirit, and whose zeal was so steadily
sustained.  The Doctor was the life of the whole. He was ever most ready
to receive a hint or suggestion from the youngest or most inexperienced
member; and if any useful hint came from such a one, he was careful to
give him the full merit of it, generally by his name.  Although we had
no set forms of teaching, we consulted over all the modes, that we might
find the best.’

The outstanding peculiarity of these schools was that they were
territorial.  They were, in the first instance, at least, for the
children of the parish, and for these alone.  The children were gathered
through the visitation of the Doctor’s agents, the result being that, in
this way, an immensely larger number got the benefit of Sabbath-school
instruction than when a general system of schools prevailed, to which
any one might go or not go as he was inclined.

At a later period, he entered on a more costly educational undertaking.
In his Sunday schools, he found many children that could read in a way,
but with such hesitation and difficulty as showed that reading was no
pleasure to them, and that it was sure not to be practised as an
ordinary habit. Glasgow was then very deficient in day schools.  When he
went to St. John’s, he determined to remedy this defect, in so far as
that parish was concerned.  Setting the example himself by a £100
contribution, he soon obtained the necessary funds.  ’Within two years
from the commencement of his ministry, four efficient teachers, each
endowed to the extent of £25 per annum, were educating 419 scholars;
and, when he left Glasgow in 1823, other school buildings were in
process of erection, capable of accommodating 374 additional pupils; so
that the fruit of four years’ labour was the leaving behind him the
means and facilities for giving, at a very moderate rate, a superior
education to no less than 693 children, out of a population of ten
thousand souls.’

The management of the poor was, as we have seen, a subject which, even
before he came to Glasgow, had begun to occupy his very earnest
thoughts, and on which he had formed decided views.  To some prevalent
notions on the subject, especially in England, he entertained very
strong objections, for he held that their tendency was to increase
pauperism, so that the more money that was spent, the greater did the
evil become.  There were two beneficial influences in particular that a
system of compulsory poor-rates was fitted to impair—the spirit of
independence, and the readiness of friends and relatives to assist the
poor. When it came to be understood that the poor had a legal claim to
be supported from the rates, they would cease to make any exertion to be
thrifty and independent, and their friends and relatives would cease to
charge themselves with their maintenance.  Dr. Chalmers was persuaded
that, so long as these two beneficial influences remained in active
operation, the poor might be maintained at a far less cost than would be
possible under a scheme of compulsory rates. His plan was to fall back
on the New Testament method—to have a body of deacons specially charged
with the care of the poor; to assign to each deacon a certain limited
proportion of the parish, instruct him to make very full inquiries into
the case of every one applying for help, endeavour in every case where
destitution was caused by want of work, to find work for the applicant;
or where there were friends or relatives able to help, to draw on their
resources before application should be made to the public fund.  So long
as he was minister of the Tron parish, there were insurmountable
difficulties to carrying this plan into execution.  But the creation of
the new parish of St. John’s altered the case. Dr. Chalmers was
determined not to accept the appointment to that parish unless he should
be allowed full liberty to carry out his plans for the maintenance of
the poor.  After a considerable amount of fighting, he at length got all
the liberty he asked.  The turmoil and worries to which he was exposed
in contending with old opinions, old practices and prejudices of all
sorts, were like to prostrate him.  But as soon as this battle was over,
another remained to be fought. He must prove, by practical
demonstration, not only that his scheme was workable, but that in its
effects it would be a great improvement on the other.  He must undertake
the management of all the poor in a parish of ten thousand souls—the
poorest parish in the city.  With this great undertaking he now
proceeded to grapple.

What he undertook was, to relinquish all claim to the fund raised by
assessment, and provide for the poor of St. John’s parish through the
church-door collections alone. It was arranged that the then actual
inmates of the town’s poorhouse, connected with the parish, would be
maintained as before, but that no new cases would be sent there; all the
new outdoor cases, and all the other cases of pauperism, were to be
defrayed from the congregational fund.  Hitherto the cost of the poor in
the parish had been at the rate of £1400 per annum, whereas the
collections amounted to only £480. Thus, though not at first, yet
ultimately, St. John’s Church would be responsible for an amount of
pauperism that had hitherto cost £1400.

The unwearied visitation of the deacons produced highly beneficial
results.  Sometimes very appalling cases of distress were found to be
wholly fabulous.  A poor woman applied to a deacon to bury a grown-up
daughter who had died that day.  He refused until he had made a personal
visit.  This he did, but no such person could be found. Next day the
woman renewed her application: a young man was sent by the deacon to
verify the woman’s statement; but she disappeared in the crowd.  When
the matter was stated to another deacon, he wondered whether the woman’s
husband, whom he had helped to bury six months before, were still alive.
The two went in quest of the family, and found the buried husband and
the dead daughter performing all the functions of life.

In other cases, relatives were induced to take charge of destitute
children, or older children to take charge of younger.  In one case, the
father and mother of a family composed of six children both died; three
of the six were earning wages, and three were unable to work.  The three
elder applied to have the three younger admitted to the poorhouse.  It
was pointed out to them by Dr. Chalmers’s agents that this would be a
great slur on the family; and a small quarterly allowance was promised
if they should keep together.  The advice was taken, and the quarterly
allowance was but twice required.  The family lived together, gaining a
character for independence and brotherliness that in itself must have
been a considerable help to their success in life.  And many other such
cases occurred.

The result of these operations, during the three years and nine months
when Dr. Chalmers personally presided over them, was instructive and
striking.  The whole number of new cases admitted on the roll was
twenty, and the annual cost of these was £66.  The number of cases
originally committed to Dr. Chalmers was ninety-eight, of whom
twenty-eight had died, and thirteen had been displaced in consequence of
a scrutiny, leaving (with the twenty new cases) seventy-seven on the
roll, the cost of whose yearly maintenance was £190.  In the second year
of their operations the church was able to take the whole of the
poorhouse inmates connected with the parish off that institution, at an
expense to themselves of £90 a year.  In this way the pauperism that had
cost the town £1400 was now managed at an expenditure of £280.  And the
pauperism itself became a decreasing quantity.  ’The St. John’s deacons,
mingling as they did familiarly with all the families, and proving
themselves by word and deed the true but enlightened friends of all, did
far more to prevent pauperism than to provide for it.’

It cannot be said that his theory of pauperism was a hasty scheme, the
result of mere benevolent impulse, or that Chalmers did not take
sufficient means to acquaint himself with the subject in all its
aspects.  He had already given expression to his ideas in the _Edinburgh
Review_, and shown that the matter had engaged his most earnest study.
Later, he made an elaborate journey through England in order to become
personally acquainted with the places and the persons there most
conversant with the subject. This visit embraced Liverpool, Manchester,
Birmingham, Gloucester, Wells, Salisbury, Southampton, Portsmouth,
London, Bury St. Edmunds, Bedford, and Nottingham. The journey occupied
seven weeks, and in the course of it he came into contact with many of
the public men who were interested in that class of subjects,
conspicuous among whom were Lord Calthorpe and Mr. Fowell Buxton.  The
anti-slavery leaders, such as Mr. Z. Macaulay, Mr. Babington, and Mr.
Clarkson, were generally sympathetic, but their energies were too much
absorbed in the anti-slavery movement to admit of their throwing them
into Dr. Chalmers’s scheme.  Indeed there were but few men of mark at
that time interested in social questions.  In his sense of the urgency
of these questions, Dr. Chalmers was before his age.  The more immediate
object he had in view, that of gathering information, was sufficiently
accomplished; but there is no indication that he made much progress in
indoctrinating public men with his views.  If ever he cherished the hope
that a party would arise in England who should deal with pauperism on
his lines, that hope was never fulfilled.  Nor was it the privilege of
Dr. Chalmers to find his experiment carried out thoroughly in other
places, or even to witness its permanence in his own chosen locality.
For several years it continued to prosper; in 1830, ten years after the
commencement of the undertaking, he informed a committee of the House of
Commons that the whole annual expense of St. John’s pauperism for the
preceding year had been £384; and in 1833, Mr. Tufnell, an English
Poor-Law Commissioner, reported: ’The system has been attended with the
most triumphant success; it is now in perfect operation, and not a doubt
is expressed by its managers of its continuing to remain so.’  Why,
then, did the system not extend?  Mainly, we believe, because Chalmers
stood alone in that unrivalled energy which could not only conceive and
plan the scheme and fight down its opponents, but likewise find
competent agents, and inspire them with his own spirit in order to carry
it into effect.  It was a scheme that demanded a strong magnetic power
on the part of its head to overcome the _vis inertiæ_ of ordinary men,
and send them into the field, and keep them in the field, vigilant,
alert, unwearied, and hopeful.  No doubt his principles were acted on to
a certain extent in many parishes where there was no pressure of
poverty;² but we are not aware of any instance in which his plan was
boldly made to do duty in the heart of a large city parish.

    ² _E.g._ Dirleton, under Rev. Mr. Stark.  See Hanna’s _Life_, iii.
      121.

And why did the experiment not become permanent? Because two conditions
under which it was established were not kept.  One was, that a law of
residence should be established between the parishes of the city, so
that St. John’s should not be burdened with a pauperism which it had
done nothing to create.  The other condition was, that so long as St.
John’s kept its own poor, it should be exempted from any assessment for
the poor generally. Neither of these conditions was kept.  Moreover, the
expense for lunatics and exposed children grew at a much greater rate
than the population, and a chapel of ease, expected to be a great help,
turned out a failure.  And at no time did the authorities of the city
and the other parishes give the countenance that might have been
expected to so successful and economical a scheme.  The result was that,
in 1837, the parish of St. John’s lapsed into the general system of
Glasgow.  And later, after a vehement opposition from Dr. Chalmers, the
present law, supporting the poor by assessment, was passed, which
virtually put an end to the old paternal method of administration.  It
was easy to represent the plan of Dr. Chalmers as a niggardly system,
which doled out mere driblets of charity, not sufficient to keep soul
and body together.  But it was forgotten that one of its main objects
was to keep those subsidiary streamlets running which the affection of
relatives and the compassion of neighbours supplied, as well as to
encourage the independence, the industry, the thrift, and the sobriety
which would have kept pauperism afar off.  The undeniable result of the
compulsory system has been an enormous addition to the cost of
pauperism, and we fear, it must be added, a serious diminution of those
good old Scottish habits which discouraged and prevented its growth.
The increase of drinking has tended greatly not only to the growth, but
to the unmanageableness of pauperism.  If the drink-curse could be
effectively dealt with, there would be no need for a poor-assessment;
the churches of the country, as in time past, would be quite able, as
they would be cordially willing, to support the poor.


In connection with the literary labours of Dr. Chalmers, reference has
already been made to the publication of the _Astronomical Discourses_ in
1817 and the _Commercial Discourses_ in 1820.  In addition to these, we
have to note a volume of _Miscellaneous Discourses_ published in 1819.
While this volume was passing through the press, he expressed his belief
that it would bring another nest of hornets about him, in the shape of
angry critics and reviewers.  ’It has been singularly the fate of my
publications to be torn to pieces in the journals, but at the same time
to be extensively bought and read.’  An edition of seven thousand copies
of the new volume was printed, but the result was the reverse of what he
anticipated; the journals did not cut it up, nor did the public buy it
up, with the same avidity as before.  But even in this our day of vast
editions, seven thousand copies of a volume of sermons would be an
unprecedented undertaking.

A much more out-of-the-way publication, in the successive numbers, was
the _Civic and Christian Economy of Large Towns_.  This was most
emphatically a Chalmerian project. It originated about the time of his
appointment to St. John’s, in his determination to set himself right
against a calumnious charge that he was secretly aiming at a vacant
chair in the University of Edinburgh, and ready to leave in the lurch
the friends who were to aid him in the St. John’s undertaking.  Nothing
could have hurt him more than a charge of underhand scheming.  A
fugitive pamphlet might have served his purpose; but a wider project
took hold of him, of enlightening his congregation and the public
generally from time to time on all that concerned the prosperous
administration of the parish, and of large towns generally.  The first
number was published on 24th September 1819, and the succeeding numbers
followed quarterly in unbroken succession until his removal to St.
Andrews. We see again how far he was in advance of his age in the
importance which he attached to a sound Christian economy of large
cities.  Seventy-eight years ago, large towns were far fewer than they
are now, and of course much smaller, and they had scarcely begun to
attract attention as a novel and difficult feature of our social
condition.  Yet Chalmers was all alive to their importance, and keenly
pondered the measures necessary for their administration.  And the
result shows how true his forecast was.  Not only had he thought out the
problem, and arrived at its solution, but he had set to work practically
to carry his plan into execution; and to this he now added the
additional function of expounding and defending it in a quarterly
publication. And all the while he was carrying on his unrivalled work in
the pulpit; he was superintending all the machinery of the parish; he
was cultivating most conscientiously the vineyard of his own soul; and
he was interesting himself in all that concerned his friends, and in a
thousand other objects and projects that were continually pressing upon
his attention.


It is not easy to describe the earnest personal dealings with God which
he maintained during the whole time of this busy Glasgow ministry.  To
those who can enter into this high phase of life, no aspect of his
character is more remarkable. Sometimes the intensity of his thirst
after a high spiritual life appears in his letters, but more directly in
his diary. Immediately after the commencement of his Glasgow ministry,
he formed an almost romantic friendship with a young man of the name of
Smith, whom he looked on as his first convert.  Alongside of this youth
(as of Mr. Anderson at Kilmany) he placed himself as if they were on the
same footing—fellow-learners, fellow-pilgrims, fellow-suppliants,
equally in need of the grace and guidance of God.  ’O God, do Thou look
propitiously on our friendship.  Do Thou purify it from all that is
base, sordid, and earthly. May it be altogether subordinated to the love
of Thee. May it be the instrument of great good to each of our souls.
May it sweeten the path of our worldly pilgrimage: and after death has
divided us for a season, may it find its final blessedness and
consummation at the right hand of Thine everlasting throne.’  During Mr.
Smith’s last illness he wrote to him at least once a day and saw him
very often. Sometimes he would carry his manuscript to his room and
write his sermon there.  It was during an absence of Dr. Chalmers from
Glasgow that he died.  ’On my return, Thomas Smith was dead.  I have
been thrown into successive floods of tenderness.’  In the prayer
offered at his funeral, which has been preserved, he expressed the
warmest thanks for all the grace given to this young man, and all the
good his example and influence had done; and for himself as well as for
others he prayed most fervently that they might all ’retire from the
scene with hearts bettered, with minds resolved to forsake all for
Christ, with affections weaned from this world and all its lying
vanities.’

Very beautiful, too, was the outpouring of his feelings towards her who
had become the partner of his life, his best beloved and most longed for
on earth.  Before she was his wife the prayer had risen, ’O my God, pour
Thy best blessings on G.  Give her ardent and decided Christianity; may
she be the blessing and the joy of all around her; may her light shine
while she lives; and when she dies, may it be a mere step—a transition
in her march to a joyful eternity.’  And afterwards he wrote to her: ’I
have to request of my dear G. that she stir herself up to lay hold of
God.  Do act faith on the great truths of divine revelation.  Do cry
mightily to God for pardon in the name and for the sake of Christ; and,
relying on the power of His blood and of His Spirit, commit yourself to
Him in well-doing as unto a faithful Creator.’

How well worthy Mrs. Chalmers was of being the wife of such a man was
best known to those who enjoyed the intimate friendship of the family.
The late Dr. Smith of St. George’s, Glasgow, who knew them intimately,
from having been Dr. Chalmers’s assistant, held her to be ’in all
respects a helpmeet for her distinguished husband.  She strengthened his
hands and encouraged his heart in every labour of love.  As a wife, a
mother, a mistress, a friend, a disciple of Him who was meek and lowly
in spirit, few are better entitled to affection’s warmest tribute.’

But it was in the direct communings of his spirit with God that the
depth of his humility and the ardour of his desires for a higher life
were most apparent:—


’_March 3rd_, 1818.—Cannot say much of my walk with God.  Do not burn
with love to man.  _5th_.—Cannot yet record a close walk with God.  Got
impatient with a man who called on me and with —— in the evening.  O for
a humbler and nearer course of devotedness to the will of my Saviour.
_6th_.—Have not yet attained such a walk with God that in looking to the
day that is gone I can see anything like the general complexion of
godliness.  _7th_.—Cannot yet speak to my walk with God.  Will a quiet
confidence in Christ not bring this about? _8th_.—Not yet.  O my God,
help me.  _9th_.—Not yet.  Trust that I am finding my way to Christ as
the Lord my Strength. O guard me against the charms of human praise!’


At a later period he is equally humble and equally fervent.


’_Feb. 24th_, 1822.—Was greatly impressed with Erskine’s talk about
realising God every quarter of an hour.  O heavenly Father, let me do
it, and free me from the sense of guilt towards Thyself, and enable me
rightly and rejoicingly to lift up my head, too, in the presence of mine
enemies. _25th_.—Disturbed, but feel great alleviation in habitual
realisings of God, which I have had all this day.  _28th_.—O my Saviour,
I can do nothing for Thee!  _April 7th_.—It is humiliating amid the busy
externals of religion to think how little my soul is taking up or making
progress therein.  _9th_.—O my God, cause me to hold thee in constant
remembrance.  Restore energy to me, but let me never lose sight of my
creatureship and my worthlessness.  May I be pure in heart, and so see
God.  Loose all my bonds, and may I serve Thee with delight and
thankfulness all my days.’


It is obvious to modern readers, though it was not to him, that when he
was most depressed, a share of the depression was due to physical
exhaustion.  The number, the constancy, and the intensity of his labours
could not but dull the faculties that soar highest of all, and call as a
remedy for physical rest; while, like so many others in the like
circumstances, he was laying all the blame on the wickedness or the
earthliness of his heart.


With the members of his family he maintained the closest fellowship.
When he heard of his father having had a paralytic stroke, he hurried to
his bedside, and was present at the end.  His affection and respect for
him were unabated.  ’My dear father is lovely in death.  There is all
the mildness of heaven upon his aged countenance.’ Writing on the
following Sunday to his much-loved sister Jane (Mrs. Morton), he says:
’It is truly affecting when the thought of former Sabbaths in Anster
presents itself to my mind, and I think of it as the day he loved, and
how the ringing of the bells was ever to him the note of joyful
invitation to the house of God; the sight of the people going to and
from the church—the interval—the everything connected with the Sabbath,
bring the whole of my father’s habits in lively recollection before me,
and call forth a fresh excitement of tenderness.’

Towards his widowed mother he ever acted with the most tender and
respectful affection.  His letters to her were both frequent and
regular, full of concern for her temporal and spiritual comfort, and
manifesting that interest in all the members of the family which is so
grateful to a mother’s heart.

But the fullest outpourings of his heart, in his correspondence with
friends at a distance, were to his sister, Mrs. Morton.  Well could he
assure ’my ever dearest Jane’—’one of the purest and most delightful of
all my feelings in this world of many distractions is the feeling of
tenderness which I ever associate with you and all your concerns’; nor
was he less sincere in saying that he could think of ’no more delightful
scene of occasional rest and recreation than the neighbourhood where
Providence had ordained her habitation, so rich in the beauties of
nature, and still richer in the pieties and charities of the excellent
people that lived in it.’  To her he writes freely of all the events of
his life, and still more of the vicissitudes of his Christian
experience, and of the ever open refuge alike from domestic sorrows and
spiritual infirmities which we have in the grace of our Saviour and in
the love of our Father.  All the more tenderly did he write when the
deep shadow of bereavement fell upon her home; when a heart full of
humility and somewhat disposed to despondency was liable to be swallowed
up with over much sorrow, and to forget (as he reminded her) that even
when the day is overcast and lowering, the sun is shining with
undiminished lustre.

His eldest brother, James, who lived in London, was a hard subject to
deal with.  He seemed to shut himself up from all his family, and to
stand in awe lest they should come to visit him.  He had resolutely
abstained from hearing his brother preach after he became famous. Hardly
any case could have more convincingly verified the remark, how unlike
brothers may be to each other.  James had a kind of mania for balancing
his personal accounts to the minutest fraction, and on one occasion
worried himself for months in the endeavour to account for a penny, till
a year after, when about to cross a toll-bridge, he remembered that he
had crossed it a twelvemonth before, and forgot to enter the penny in
his accounts.  Yet Thomas bore with him patiently, and dealt with him
affectionately but faithfully, evidently in the hope that he might
change.  And before the end he did become more amiable.  In announcing
his father’s death, Thomas pathetically, and with an obvious practical
design, remarked that if their beloved parent looked down upon them,
’nothing could afford his spirit a more delightful spectacle than that
of his children seeking the Gospel which they had aforetime despised,
praying for grace, and not ceasing to pray, till they had obtained.’

His own children were hardly old enough, while in Glasgow, for more than
the ordinary fondness of a father. Yet we find him, in his absences from
home, and when driven hither and thither by manifold engagements,
writing, in imitation of print, those elaborate letters to his little
daughter Anne, of which her future husband, Dr. Hanna, has given us a
sample in the second volume of the _Life_ (p. 410).  One cannot but
admire the extreme neatness and clearness of the printing, a memorable
contrast to the hieroglyphics he used to dash off on ordinary occasions,
which were so illegible that, in his early days, when a letter came from
him, his father suggested that it had better be kept till he should
himself arrive to read it for them. Once, in the absence of Mrs.
Chalmers, when he had been constituted head nurse, an elder and a
deacon, on calling in the evening, found him squatting on the floor and
playing at marbles with the children.  And nothing would serve him but
that they should join in the game.

The ever-warm affection of Dr. Chalmers for all the members of his
family was the more remarkable that he was so rapidly extending the
circle of his friends, receiving so much notice from the most
distinguished men and women of the country, and carrying on so
voluminous a correspondence with many of them.  Among those whose
acquaintance he made in his Glasgow period we may note a few.  There was
James Montgomery, Moravian and poet, whom he saw at Sheffield; whom he
greatly perplexed when he told him that when at the Moravian settlement
of Fulneck, near Leeds, he had invited the Scotch lads to the inn, and
found there were no fewer than ’saxtain or savantain of them’; but whom
he charmed no less by the admiration he expressed for the Moravian
missions, and by his undertaking—what he more than fulfilled—to raise
£500 for them in the course of the year.  Another new friend was Mr.
Wilberforce, for whose character, talents, and work he had unbounded
respect, but who amazed him by the singularity of his movements—’he
positively danced and whisked about like a squirrel.’  He had an
important correspondence with him, beseeching him to support the repeal
of the Corn Bill, which he held to be the great danger to the country.
There was the Gladstone family at Liverpool, with whom he was greatly
taken—William could then have been but a boy of six (A.D. 1817).  Legh
Richmond visited him at Glasgow, and Chalmers says, ’I had most
congenial talk with him, and am greatly humbled by the very superior
attainments of other Christians.’  When Edward Irving, in hopeless
disappointment, was about to leave the country, it was Chalmers that
arrested him, having formed such an opinion of his pulpit gifts and
noble character that he engaged him as his assistant.  We have already
noticed some of the friends he met when engaged in his poor-law inquiry;
to these we may add Robert Hall, the cleverest man in conversation he
ever knew, but surpassed by John Foster in the depth and grandeur of his
thoughts.  With Mr. Malthus, too, he had much congenial converse.  About
this time he found a close ally in Mr. Douglas, the proprietor of
Cavers, where he had been assistant in his youth, who became so well
known as a thoughtful Christian writer, and who placed more than one
£500 in his hands to assist him in his schemes for St. John’s.  Among
other things that Mr. Douglas owed to Chalmers’s example and influence
was the habit of systematic working.  Mr. Erskine of Linlathen was
another Scottish layman for whom he had remarkable regard, his
spirituality of mind being to Dr. Chalmers most impressive and
stimulating.  Mr. Erskine’s work on the _Freeness of the Gospel_, though
looked on suspiciously by some very orthodox persons, was to Dr.
Chalmers very delightful. Afterwards Mr. Erskine adopted some views with
which he could not sympathise.  With Lord and Lady Elgin he appears to
have been on terms of most intimate friendship. Mr. Colquhoun of
Kellermont may be added to the list of distinguished Scottish friends;
and, besides these, there were his coadjutors in the St. John’s
undertaking, the members of his congregation, and nearly all the men of
mark and Christian worth in the community of Glasgow.

His manner of life in Glasgow was as simple and regular as was possible
for one so full of occupation and so eagerly sought after by all sorts
of people.  As a rule, the forenoon was set apart for reading and
composition, and no one was allowed to intrude on him then.  But
sometimes two or three rooms would be filled with persons waiting for
him, and it was remarked that, however overwhelmed, he had a kindly
smile and greeting for all.  The afternoon was devoted to pastoral work;
then, if possible, he had a walk in the Botanic Gardens or elsewhere;
dinner was at half-past four, and very often he had some public
engagement in the evening.  In the course of this busy day he found time
to read aloud to his wife Milner’s _Church History_ or some other such
book.  His hospitality was boundless. Breakfast, dinner, tea, and
supper, almost every day but Sunday, brought a succession of guests;
for, apart from his own large circle, hardly a stranger visited Glasgow
who did not bring an introduction, and whom he did not invite to his
house.  His conversation generally was singularly genial, racy, and
lively; whoever was in his society was charmed. Formal dinner-parties he
held in great abhorrence as a waste of time and worse, and very seldom
did he join them. For occasional recreation, his favourite resort was
his native Fifeshire; but in the suburbs of Glasgow and other parts of
the country he had dear friends with whom he delighted to spend an
occasional day or more.  And, though no man had more respect for the
poor, or more pleasure in his intercourse with them, he had an especial
delight in the society of families of the highest rank, when refinement
was blended with Christian worth, and the obligations of high station
were conscientiously and gracefully fulfilled.


Most memorable in the history of Glasgow and in the history of Scottish
Christianity were the eight years of labour spent by Dr. Chalmers in
that city.  Of individual cases of conversion the number was beyond
reckoning; beginning with his dear friend, Thomas Smith, and ending with
a Camlachie weaver—a reckless infidel till Dr. Chalmers came across him,
but won by the simplicity and earnest sympathy which he showed in weekly
visits during the months when he was dying of consumption.  And the
circumstances of his various converts were very different. The
thoughtless young officer, who entered his church with the crowd as he
would have entered the theatre; the fashionable lady, whose curiosity
led her to hear the great popular orator; the busy merchant, with no
thought nor desire beyond material things; the aspiring student, bent
only on literary distinction—each person, arrested and brought to Christ
by the force of his appeals, represented the many classes from among
which, as Dr. Hanna tells us, it was the privilege of Chalmers to gather
recruits for the Kingdom of Heaven.

But more than that: under Chalmers the tide of public sentiment turned
decisively to evangelical religion.  Before he came, evangelical
preaching had been looked on as a combination of sour fanaticism and
weak sentimentalism; under his preaching it attained its true rank and
glory as the very essence of the Gospel message.  Before his time, as
the population of the city grew from year to year, thousands had been
quietly allowed to fall away from all Christian observances, and to form
a community of paganism, leavening the city with carelessness and
corruption.  It was his powerful voice that roused attention to the evil
and the danger, and organised the machinery best fitted to grapple with
it. Previous to his time, even the most earnest of the ministers in
their week-day ministrations had seldom gone beyond their own
congregations, or thought much of the careless and godless families
around them; it was Chalmers that, by the emphasis he laid on the
territorial method, brought into operation that system of aggression
which affords the only hope of arresting and reclaiming the outcast
mass. Before his time infidelity was doing its deadly work among the
more intellectual and cultivated classes, and the spirit of indifference
was widely spread even where a formal profession of religion continued;
it was in a large measure the influence of Chalmers that restored a
living faith in Christ and in redemption, and aroused concern in that
class of society for the life to come.

Still more remarkably, perhaps, had Dr. Chalmers succeeded in inspiring
men and women in Glasgow, young men very emphatically, with the spirit
of Christian service. His ’agency,’ as he called it, resembled the
followers of Saul, ’a band of men whose hearts God had touched.’  In
after years they formed the very _élite_ of the earnest Christian laymen
of the West; and to this day, though all of them have passed away, their
fervour and devotedness are still found in some of their children and
children’s children.

Nor had he failed to secure the esteem and affection of the great
community of Glasgow.  They honoured him personally, and they were proud
of his greatness and fame. They were ready with their purses to support
whatever scheme he deemed it necessary to set on foot.  A more attached
or warm-hearted company could not have been found anywhere than the
three hundred and forty friends who, ere he left, sat down together at
the largest dinner-party that had ever assembled in the city in honour
of a single individual.

Why, then, did he abandon the field where his labours had been so
eminently successful?

Simply because these labours had grown to such multiplicity and variety
as to demand an expenditure of bodily and mental energy that could not
be continued.

His incumbency had lasted during eight years of his prime—from
thirty-five to forty-three.  Happily he had not been prostrated by any
severe illness, and the systematic regularity of his life, with the
attention he had given to diet, sleep, and exercise, had kept him from
breaking down. But who that thinks of all he was doing, the problems
with which he was grappling, the schemes he was working, the constant
demands of the pulpit, the incessant labours of the parish, the use he
was making of the press, the toil of his correspondence, amounting on an
average to fifty letters a week, the perpetual turmoil in which he was
living, amid crowds of visitors, and all the other fruits of unrivalled
popularity, as well as the demands of an increasing and growing family,
and his desire to keep up friendly intercourse with his brothers and
sisters—can fail to see that the indefinite continuance of such a mode
of life was more than could be thought of?  Had it continued much
longer, a breakdown was inevitable.  Very pathetically he wrote to one
of his most intimate friends, Mrs. Coutts, of the constant feeling of
exhaustion which at times was like to overbear him altogether.  Besides,
Chalmers was coming to see that through the press there opened to him a
way of spreading his views and extending his usefulness which was as
full of promise as it was agreeable to himself.  But as a minister of
Glasgow he could not do through the press what, with a little more
leisure, he could fairly expect to accomplish.

And then the prospect of an academic chair was very congenial.  It had
been his earliest dream while the world was all before him, and it had
not yet lost its charm.  The tenacity of his affections was very
remarkable.  Towards the close of his life we shall have occasion to
note the long-continued vitality of a strong but unavowed attachment
which had sprung up in his boyhood, and it is no wonder that to such a
nature the early vision of an academic chair continued to retain its
brightness and its fascination.  Once and again he had set it aside when
it seemed to be within his grasp, because his Glasgow experiments and
arrangements were not ripe enough for the change.  Now, when the Glasgow
work was fairly consolidated; when the bustle and pressure of Glasgow
life had become almost unbearable; when, through the press, the prospect
had opened of impregnating not Glasgow only, but the whole empire with
his views; and when his own _Alma Mater_ had sent him a unanimous
invitation to fill a chair which formed a connecting-link between
philosophy and religion,—it is not wonderful that he made up his mind to
the wrench that was to sever him from his Glasgow friends, and resolved
to accept a chair in the university with which his earliest memories
were connected, and in which he could look forward to a career of peace
and comfort to himself, and great usefulness to his church and country.




                               CHAPTER IV

                         ST. ANDREWS UNIVERSITY

                               1823-1828


On the 9th November 1823 Dr. Chalmers preached his farewell sermon at
Glasgow, and on Friday the 14th he delivered his introductory lecture at
St. Andrews.  He had not a single day of rest between the toils of the
office he laid down and those of the office he took up.  Four of his
most esteemed Glasgow friends had accompanied him to St. Andrews in
token of gratitude for the past and good-will for the future.  At first
Dr. Chalmers was alone, and for a time he was the guest of his old
friend, Professor Duncan. It was not till the beginning of 1824 that
Mrs. Chalmers and his children joined him.

St. Andrews had been familiar to him from his boyhood, and its
historical associations had dawned on him gradually, but with a firm
hold, as such things usually impress boys.  Its traditions went back to
a remote antiquity. Fordun’s legend of the Greek saint, Regulus, being
ordered by the Lord to carry the bones of St. Andrew into the
’north-west corner of the earth,’ was too obviously the offspring of
superstition to be much regarded; yet it seemed to indicate that the
’East Nook’ was one of the earliest seats of Christianity in Scotland.
In pre-Reformation times St. Andrews had been the headquarters of the
Roman Church, and, under successive archbishops, Patrick Hamilton and
George Wishart had been burnt at the stake for their noble testimony to
the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Before their day, Peter Craw, a Bohemian,
and thus of the same stock as the Moravian Church for which Dr. Chalmers
always had a very special regard, and other witnesses for the truth had
perished in the flames.  It was here that John Knox first opened his
mouth as a preacher; hither, too, he retired for a time at the close of
his life, and preached in the church when danger threatened him in the
metropolis. Here, also, Andrew and James Melville, Robert Rollok, Robert
Bruce, Robert Blair, Samuel Rutherford, Thomas Halyburton, and many
other familiar names in the history of the country, had gathered wisdom
as students, or imparted it as professors, or as ministers of the
Gospel.  The first university in Scotland had been set up at St.
Andrews, and men like Buchanan and Melville had made it illustrious by
their learning.  Nor was it very long since Chalmers himself had found
the powers of his intellect awakened as he sat in its mathematical
class-room.  It must have been with no ordinary feelings that he
returned as a professor to his _Alma Mater_, and girded himself for the
duty of influencing its students; not, however, in the spirit or with
the aims of his early years, but under the influence of those intense
evangelical convictions that, twelve years before, had revolutionised
his soul.

During the first session, in preparing his lectures, he was truly from
hand to mouth; to be but a few days in advance of the time for their
delivery was all that he could achieve. His second session, 1824-25, was
regarded as the most brilliant in his academic career.  The number of
students was more than double what it had ever been in former years, and
the enthusiasm was intense.  Chalmers was well aware of the fear
entertained in some quarters that, amid the blaze of his popular
eloquence, he would not be able to attain to an academic level in the
more solid qualities of thinking and exposition of thought, appropriate
to a university.  But in point of fact there was more than enough of
solid thought and ingenious speculation in his lectures to do away with
any such impression.  Eloquent they often were, nor did he scorn the aid
of imagination and illustration in handling the topics of his course;
but his main object was to exercise the minds of his students, and to
set them thinking upon his themes.

At the very outset, he disabused his class of the idea that moral
philosophy was the same as mental philosophy. Moral philosophy was the
science of ethics, the science of duty, and, in his view, it ought to
embrace duty in all its relations, and to make use of all the light that
could be brought to bear on that high theme.  In particular—and here was
the peculiar feature of his course—he desired to make the fullest use of
what had been communicated on this subject by supernatural revelation.
He justified this method of proceeding by an illustration.  If natural
philosophy were divided into two courses, and if one of them should
relate to terrestrial objects and such parts of astronomy as might be
prosecuted _without the telescope_, it would be strange indeed were the
professor to make no allusion to that instrument, and to ignore, or even
repudiate, all the light which it threw on the general scheme of things.
So also, in investigating the science of ethics, it would be an
extraordinary thing if no use were made of the Christian Revelation,
supposing that its authenticity could be established as a revelation
from heaven.  Natural theology would form an important branch of his
subject; but, in its very nature, natural theology was an incomplete and
inadequate science.  Following the light of nature, it proved the
insufficiency of that light; it created the thirst and the longing for
more light than it could itself supply.  This further light revelation
brought in.  He held moral philosophy to be the study that ought
immediately to precede that of theology; without theology it was
incomplete.  It would be no part of his course to set forth at full
length the evidences for the Christian Revelation, but he would give a
general view of them; he would show at least that there was a _primâ
facie_ presumption in favour of the divine origin of Christianity; and,
therefore, that it was consistent with the principles of the Baconian
philosophy to make use of its light in dealing with the great questions
of moral obligation.

In fact, Chalmers in this matter took ground precisely opposite to that
more recently taken by one of his countrymen—the munificent founder of
the Gifford Lectures. According to Gifford, it becomes us to investigate
the whole subject of natural theology and moral obligation without the
slightest reference to any alleged supernatural revelation. This he held
to be the sound, impartial, unprejudiced course of true philosophy, and
the best way of attaining to simple, absolute truth.  In the view of
others, this is like the act of a man blindfolding himself before
entering on a difficult investigation; or of a man walking in sparks of
his own kindling, while, if he chose, he might be at work under the
bright influence of electric light.

One might have thought that, after finishing his first course at St.
Andrews, Chalmers would have held himself entitled to a long rest.  But
as soon as the session was ended, he set himself, during the fortnight
that intervened, to prepare for the General Assembly.  The question of
pluralities, the question of pauperism, and the question of the amount
of time to be spent by students in theological study were to be before
the house, and Chalmers was interested in all.  On one of these
occasions he came into collision with Dr. Inglis, the leader of the
Assembly; but, even on a point of order, Chalmers was equal to him, and
in a division, he carried his motion.  At the close of the Assembly, on
the invitation of Mr. Leonard Horner, he took part in a meeting in
Edinburgh on behalf of a then infant institution—the School of Arts.
The motion which he made on that occasion was seconded by Sir Walter
Scott. This was the only occasion on which these two eminent men
appeared on the same platform and were associated in the same work.

The Assembly is past, but the time of rest has not yet come.  Dr.
Chalmers hurries back to Glasgow.  Now that he has got breathing-time,
his heart returns to the great experiment which he had begun there, and
an unrestrainable eagerness takes possession of him to help it on.  The
next six weeks are spent in incessant labour in the old field.  In
looking back on this period he remarked in his peculiar phraseology, ’I
think that I never spent a season of more crowded occupancy.’  On his
way to Glasgow he took Perth, where he preached a missionary sermon on a
week-day, the collection amounting to £81, 8s.  In Glasgow he preached
steadily in the chapel of ease, and he had the great satisfaction,
though of course it was but a temporary one, of adding four hundred to
the sittings let, no doubt to accommodate the many persons who were bent
on hearing him during the few weeks of his stay.  During these six weeks
he preached ten times in the chapel, writing all the lectures, and
apparently the sermons too—seven of his texts being from the Epistle to
the Romans, part of the exposition afterwards published.  Apart from
spiritual impulse and spiritual fruit, his six weeks in Glasgow
benefited the chapel to the tune of £200.  In the midst of his incessant
public work he contrived to write to his wife a full journal of all his
proceedings, and he gave her most explicit instructions to give the
children a feast of strawberries on the arrival of each letter, and to
let them know that they were from him.  With all his greatness and
eloquence, it is amusing to find him showing that nervousness in the
prospect of a speech at a public dinner which but few men have been able
to overcome.  ’It kept me anxious all day.’  One is reminded of Sir
Robert Peel, who could hardly eat anything at public dinners when a
speech was forthcoming, but sat in misery, crumbling his bread.  ’One
touch of nature makes the whole world kin.’

A source of greater trouble and annoyance arose after his Glasgow visit
in connection with a promise to deliver a missionary sermon at Stockton,
near Manchester.  After his arrival, he found that an advertisement had
been issued from which it appeared that the sermon would come in as a
sort of interlude in a vast musical entertainment, in which an orchestra
of at least a hundred persons, supported by drums, trumpets, bassoon,
organ, serpents, violins without number, violoncellos, bass viols,
flutes, and hautboys would take part.  Chalmers was most indignant.  He
felt it an affront to himself, to be stuck up like a mountebank, as if
he had come to help in the entertainment of a pleasure-seeking audience.
But not less did he feel it a prostitution of his office, as if the
Ambassador of Heaven, dealing with men on their state before God and
their need of reconciliation, were to be mixed up with such a clatter.
He was on the verge of refusing to preach at all.  But remembering his
promise, he compromised the matter by refusing to appear except at the
time when his sermon was delivered. ’I stopped in the minister’s room
till it was all over.  Went to the pulpit, prayed, preached, retired
during the time of the collection, and again prayed.  Before I left my
own private room, they fell too again, with most tremendous fury, and
the likest thing to it which I recollect is a great military band on the
Castle Hill of Edinburgh.’  In spite of all, the collection exceeded
£400.  In telling the story, as he often did to his friends, he said
that they hardly let him alone even while he was preaching; ’the fellows
were tuning their trombones in my very ear.’

November 1825 found him again at his work in St. Andrews, with a better
prepared course, and a very numerous class.  Notwithstanding the labours
of the recess, no symptom of exhaustion appeared; on the contrary, he
seemed to thirst for further labour, and whereas the subject of
political economy had been considered to fall to the professor of moral
philosophy, he intimated that in the following session he would make
political economy the subject of a separate course.  A numerous class
was enrolled, but instead of teaching the subject by lectures, he
treated it by means of a text-book.  The text-book was Dr. Adam Smith’s
_Wealth of Nations_, on portions of which the students were examined,
the professor occasionally adding explanations or little dissertations
of his own, or referring to more modern books which gave the latest
aspects of the subject.

It should be added that Dr. Chalmers always opened his class with
prayer.  This was an innovation in a class of philosophy.  The prayers
were short and pithy, often bearing on the subject of the preceding
lecture, and the language was often felicitous, and even sublime.  Of
the like quality were the prayers he offered when he became a professor
of divinity. Many of these will be found in the _Institutes of
Theology_.

But at St. Andrews he was very far from confining himself to academic
labours.  He could not look round him without feeling that, small though
the town was, it was not less in need than crowded Glasgow of efforts to
dispel its spiritual darkness, and awaken young and old to the things of
eternity. The place had fallen from its high estate; it was no longer
like the St. Andrews of those days when, fragrant with martyr memories,
it formed one of the chief centres of evangelical influence in Scotland.
The first form of pastoral activity to which Dr. Chalmers betook himself
was that of a Sabbath-school teacher.  As soon as he had leisure after
the first session, he marked out for himself a district of the town in
the neighbourhood of his house, visited the families, and invited the
children to attend a class of his own on the Sunday evenings.  For that
class he made as careful, though not as elaborate, preparations as for
his students in the university.  By and by it increased to rather
burdensome size.

Meanwhile, another class of young persons engaged his attention, and the
Sabbath school was handed over to others. It had been suggested to him
that great good would result from a students’ class, from gathering
together, on Tuesday evenings, such students as desired to receive from
him religious instruction of the same kind as they had been accustomed
to receive in their fathers’ houses before they came to college.  The
first winter of this meeting, five students came for the purpose.
Chalmers instructed them and dealt with them, gave them books for
Sabbath reading, examining them as to their contents, and at the same
time taking a book of his own, _Scripture References_, as a kind of
doctrinal text-book of his expositions and examinations.  Next year, the
number was about a dozen.  In the third year, the number became so great
that his dining-room was crowded with students.  One of them remarked
afterwards that they learned more of Christian ethics at these meetings
than from all his class-room lectures on moral philosophy.

In some instances, the fruit of these meetings was very remarkable.
According to the testimony of Dr. Duff, who was one of Chalmers’s young
men, the students of St. Andrews, previous to his coming, were a godless
lot.  To make a profession of piety was to incur universal derision. Nor
were the divinity students much better; some of them, indeed, were more
notorious than other students for impiety, immorality, and riotous
revellings.  Dr. Chalmers was the instrument of a great revival.  In
1823-24, some of the students formed themselves into a missionary
society, which held meetings next session in the room of a remarkable
man, John Urquhart, one of those saintly youths whose early death puts
an end to the boundless promise of their student careers.  Dr. Chalmers
had already become president of a missionary society, embracing
different denominations. At the monthly meetings of this society, which
became so large that they had soon to be held in the Town Hall, he gave
addresses on missionary topics, not only communicating information, but
also pressing the motives and encouragements to missionary effort,
answering objections, and gathering from the reports on the state of the
heathen confirmations of Scripture, and evidences of the divine origin
of Christianity.  A university missionary society had now become
possible, and its career began in 1825-26 under more favourable
conditions than could have been looked for.  The blessing of God rested
on it, for it furnished some of the first and noblest missionaries that
the Church of Scotland sent into the foreign field.  The first was the
Rev. Robert Nesbit, who spent many laborious and effective years at
Bombay.  Before Dr. Chalmers left St. Andrews, another of his students,
Mr. Adams, had begun his missionary career.  In 1829, Chalmers presided
at the ordination of Alexander Duff, now one of the brightest names in
the record of missions.  The Rev. A. Mackay and the Rev. David Ewart
followed, and John Urquhart was preparing to go when illness and death
arrested his career.  A more beautiful or promising springtime of
missionary activity could hardly be imagined.  And the same course that
had thus been begun at St. Andrews was also being followed in Edinburgh.
On 27th December 1825, the Edinburgh University Missionary Association
was founded, chiefly through the influence of John Wilson, afterwards so
well known as Dr. Wilson of Bombay.  Chalmers has sometimes been called
a man of one idea, and in some minds the notion got hold that all his
interest was in home missions, and that he looked with comparative
indifference on foreign.  It would be more correct to say that he was a
man of all manner of ideas, but that he worked out only one idea at a
time.  In that large heart there was room not only for the welfare of
Scotland, but of the whole world too.  His identification of himself
with the missionary cause, at a time when many derided it, was an act of
high moral courage.  So was another act, his taking sittings for his
family in the dissenting chapels, that they might be nourished with
evangelical food, not then to be obtained in the Established Church.
Occasionally he would attend these chapels himself, both on Sundays and
week-days; not disdaining the devotional services of a pious mechanic at
the prayer-meeting, and deriving far more help therefrom than from the
dreary ministrations either of the town church or that of the college.

In one respect Dr. Chalmers’s course did not run smoothly at St.
Andrews.  He got into loggerheads with his colleagues on the subject of
college finance.  In dealing with the funds of the college, it had been
the practice of the Senatus to lay aside a certain amount for general
expenses, and to divide the balance as a supplemental salary among the
different professors.  Chalmers was not clear that this was a legitimate
course, and for some years he refused to receive his share of the
supplemental fund, which accordingly accumulated until it amounted to
some £700.  Reflecting as this refusal did, or was supposed to do, on
the honesty of his colleagues, it gave him more pain than any other
public duty he was ever called to perform.  After he had left St.
Andrews, the university commissioners having looked into the matter,
recorded it as their judgment that there was no good reason why he
should not accept of the sum standing at his credit; and as Dr. Chalmers
had desired only that the matter should be settled by competent
authority, he accepted the money.  But nothing could exceed his surprise
and indignation when he found, in the published report of the
commissioners in 1831, a statement that ’the principal and professors
appear to have made these appropriations without any authority.’  In a
letter addressed to the commissioners, and published in 1832, after
quoting their judgment in his own case, he said he could not divine what
they really thought of these appropriations—whether they were honest or
fraudulent.  ’If you think them wrong, how is it that to me you have
called the evil good?  If right, how is it that to your Sovereign you
have called the good evil?’

During his five years’ incumbency in St. Andrews, he issued two volumes
from the press.  The first was the third and concluding volume of _The
Christian and Civic Economy of Large Towns_.  Among the topics embraced
in this volume were the Poor-Laws and the Combination-Laws.  The
particular aspect of the Poor-Laws with which he dealt, and which he
most thoroughly condemned, was the application of the poor-rates, as in
England, to supplement the wages of ill-paid labourers.  Though kindly
meant, this arrangement, he held, was an invasion of the relation
between master and men so ruinous, and involved a bounty to the masters
so unjust, that no toleration ought to be found for it.  This was also
the general opinion; and the practice was discontinued by law.
According to Dr. Chalmers’s biographer, his exposure of the practice
formed a powerful contribution towards its removal.

In regard to the Combination-Laws, which imposed severe and stringent
penalties on any united movements of workmen for increasing their wages,
a bill for repealing them had been introduced and carried by Mr.
Huskisson, whose efforts to free industry from the fetters of Protection
were hailed by Dr. Chalmers with great delight.  Unfortunately, the
carrying of this measure into law was accompanied by certain deplorable
excesses on the part of some classes of workmen, who did not understand
how to use their new-found liberty.  Dr. Chalmers strongly upheld the
righteousness of the repeal of the old laws, mainly on the ground that
we ought not to manufacture crime out of acts (such as workmen’s
combinations) which the natural conscience does not condemn.  But with
equal firmness he denounced any interference with the freedom of labour,
especially when men on strike coerced and persecuted those that might be
willing to work.  The experience of seventy years has not materially
changed the position.  ’Strike, if you please,’ is the voice of reason
and justice to workmen; ’but leave those who do not concur with you at
perfect freedom to do as _they_ please.’

The other publication of this period was a book on Literary and
Ecclesiastical Endowments.  It was devoted chiefly to the case of the
Scottish universities.  Among the reforms which he advocated, a foremost
place was given to the raising of the standard of scholarship for those
joining the university.  Though apparently disregarded at the time, it
was seen, whenever serious attention began to be given to the state of
our universities, that this was indeed the most important change to
begin with.  What Dr. Chalmers proposed was, that an entrance
examination should be instituted, and that a gymnasium, or, as we now
call it, a secondary school, should be attached to each of the
universities, for instruction that would qualify for the entrance
examination. Modern opinion has so far transcended the modest proposal
of Chalmers, that instead of a preparatory school in each university
seat, the demand is now for adequate secondary schools scattered over
all the land.

It was a very congenial thing for Chalmers to advocate in this way the
elevation and ample equipment of our universities.  His old love of
science and general culture had never died in him, although he had
learned to give them a secondary place, and to feel profoundly that the
first duty and the chief interest of man concerned his relation to the
great God, without whom nothing could be great, nothing strong.  But the
spirit of Chalmers was stirred within him as often as he thought of the
great leaders of science, and their splendid achievements in astronomy
and in other departments.  The very name of Newton sent a thrill through
every fibre of his being, and roused the desire to follow in his steps,
as well as to see every youth around him inspired by his spirit, and by
all that was noble in his example.  Speaking of the universities of
England, which were more successful than the Scottish in cultivating
particular branches, but gave less complete attention to learning as a
whole, he said, ’We cannot conclude this passing notice of the
universities of England without the mention of how much they are
ennobled by those great master spirits—those men of might and high
achievement—the Newtons, and the Miltons, and the Drydens, and the
Barrows, and the Addisons, and the Butlers, and the Clarkes, and the
Stillingfleets, and the Ushers, and the Foxes, and the Pitts and
Johnsons, who within their attic retreats received that first awakening
which afterwards expanded into the aspirations and triumphs of loftiest
genius.  This is the true heraldry of colleges.  Their family honour is
built on the prowess of sons, not the greatness of ancestors.’


It remains for us to take a glance at some of the more miscellaneous
engagements of Chalmers during this period, including his journeys, his
speeches in public, the new friendships he formed, his spiritual
progress, and his letters to his family and friends.

In the autumn of 1826, after his hard work in Glasgow, Dr. Chalmers
treated himself to the rare luxury of a ramble in the south of Scotland.
The character of the man was singularly shown in the objects that
attracted him as he proceeded from place to place.  In the neighbourhood
of Kelso, he stopped his gig opposite Roxburgh Castle, and running up to
it, feasted his eyes, even in the midst of rain, on an old-remembered
scene—’one of the most glorious panoramas I ever beheld, where the
blended beauties of Teviot and Tweed were concentred upon the environs
of Kelso and the Palace of Fleurs, with the seats and plantations of
other grandees.’  But it was places with an historical association that
charmed him most.  The church of Anwoth, Samuel Rutherford’s early home,
greatly delighted him. The church, which was like that of Kilmany, but
smaller, still remained, but a new one was in course of erection; the
manse had just been pulled down.  Sir Walter Scott could not have more
emphatically denounced such Gothicism, and the soul of Chalmers
sympathised deeply with some of the masons that had refused to
perpetrate the barbaric act, and had been dismissed from their
occupation in consequence. To see Rutherford’s ’witnesses,’ he went up
among the hills and inspected the stones which he once called to witness
against some of his parishioners who were indulging in amusement on the
Sunday.  Not less enthusiastic was he at Kirkmabreck, where Dr. Thomas
Brown, the son of the minister, was buried.  At Dumfries he visited Mrs.
Burns, the widow of the poet, with whom he had a pleasant conversation,
and whom he was pleased to see so comfortable. Among the gentlemen whose
acquaintance he made was Mr. Cunninghame of Lainshaw, a well-known
writer on prophecy, and Mr. Buchan of Kelloe, in Berwickshire, whose
house was ’just delicious.’  When the panorama of Berwickshire suddenly
burst on him, he was overwhelmed. Perhaps what strikes one most in his
account of this and other journeys is his readiness to be pleased, his
power of finding enjoyment in everything.  There is not a single cynical
remark in all his narrative, not a flout, nor a grumble, nor a bitter
word; he is always happy.

In May 1827 he went to London to open the new church of Mr. Irving in
Regent Square.  This took place on a Friday; the prayer which Mr. Irving
offered was forty minutes in length, and it was an hour and a half ere
Chalmers was allowed to begin.  He preached again on the Sunday, the
crowd comprising Mr. Peel, Lord Bexley, Lord Farnham, Lord Mandeville,
Mr. Coleridge, and many other notables.  At this time he made the
acquaintance of Mr. Coleridge, with whom he spent three hours at the
Gillmans’ house in Highgate; but while he marvelled at the flow of
conversation, he said he could only catch occasional glimpses of what he
would be at.  He had a pleasant talk in the House of Commons with Mr.
Peel, who showed a great interest in his views on pauperism, the college
commission, and likewise in his sermons, all of which he said he had
read.  He had some intercourse with Macaulay, and heard Brougham; saw
also Sir Francis Burdett (father of Lady Burdett-Coutts), a conspicuous
radical politician of the day.

Among home friends, Chalmers remained as simple, unsophisticated, and
kindly as before.  ’Of all men,’ said Mrs. Grant of Laggan at this time,
’he is the most modest, and speaks with undisguised gentleness and
liberality of those who differ from him in opinion.  Every word he says
has the stamp of genius; yet the calmness, ease, and simplicity of his
conversation is such, that to ordinary minds he might appear an ordinary
man....  He is always powerful, always gentle, and always seemed quite
unconscious of his own superiority.’  About the same time, Mrs. Grant
received a visit from her friend, Sir Walter Scott, and it is
interesting to observe the resemblance she saw between the two men. ’His
good-nature, good-humour, and simplicity are truly charming.  You never
once think of his superiority, because it is evident he does not think
of it himself.  He, too, confirmed the maxim that true genius is ever
modest and careless.’

In the autumn of the same year he paid his first visit to Ireland.  He
had been asked to preach, and crowds as usual thronged to hear him.  He
was greatly interested in the Giant’s Causeway and the surrounding
scenery, and seems to have relished the new aspect of character which
Ireland furnished.  But the place which had the deepest interest for him
was Gracehill, a Moravian settlement, where his wife had been educated,
and in the cemetery of which was the tomb of her mother.  To be on the
spot where his mother-in-law, whom he had never seen, departed this
life; to converse with the physician that had attended her in her last
hours; and to walk through the school-house where his wife had received
her education, thrilled his susceptible nature; it was with reluctance
that he tore himself from these ’bowers of sacredness.’  We can hardly
conceive a warmer or more delicate tribute to his wife, or a clearer
evidence of his affection for her and her family.


We have already adverted to some of his appearances in the General
Assembly, but to these we must now add a remarkable pleading, in 1828,
in favour of the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts.  The royal
assent had just been given to a bill repealing these Acts, but so vital
did the matter appear to Dr. Chalmers, that he proposed that the
Assembly should present a humble Address to his Majesty, expressing its
satisfaction that it was no longer requisite to take the sacrament as a
qualification for civil office.  In his speech he compared the old law,
viewed as a buttress to the Established Church, to those wooden props
which one sometimes sees leaning obliquely against the walls of a
house,—creating the impression that when a house needs such props, it is
one of the craziest in the street.  Yet he was careful to affirm his
high regard for an established church in itself, apart from such
miserable buttresses.  His motion was lost by 123 votes to 77, but in
spirit the Assembly agreed with him.

As he was making his speech, his eye met that of Edward Irving, who was
sitting opposite him, and who was wild on the opposite side.  Irving was
then delivering lectures on prophecy in Edinburgh to enormous audiences.
Already he was manifesting symptoms of that disordered judgment which
ultimately carried him so far astray, and Chalmers was sorely troubled.

As to his dealings with his own family, the same warmth of heart
continued to show itself toward them which his earlier years had
manifested.  When his sister Isobel, next younger to himself, was dying,
in the middle of his first session at St. Andrews (January 1824), he
charged himself with her case as if it were his chief interest, and for
a twelve-month wrote letter after letter to her, pressing on her with
equal tenderness and earnestness all that bore on her spiritual welfare.
He was greatly cheered to learn that she was full of peace and joy in
believing, and able to sustain with cheerful patience the sore pains
that accompanied her illness.  Her life closed with the closing year,
and with her declaration that Jesus was fulfilling to her His latest
promise, for He was now coming to receive her to Himself.

Very beautiful, too, was his spirit to his mother.  Now that he lived at
St. Andrews, he could see her often.  In 1826 her last remaining
daughter was married, and she was left alone.  Deaf and lame, she was
cut off, to a large extent, from intercourse with others.  Yet her son
could write: ’What a season of delight and of ripening for heaven has my
mother’s old age turned out to her, who, in the absence of all foreign
resources, enjoys a perpetual feast in the happy repose of her spirit on
that Saviour whom she trusts—that God whom she feels to be reconciled to
her!’  The dear old woman wrote of herself to her eldest son, James, in
her seventy-seventh year: ’Since I last wrote to you I have had several
severe complaints.  I am very frail and very infirm; but what a blessing
it is that my memory and the faculties of my mind are as active as if I
were twenty!  I bless God that it is so.  I feel a pleasant contentment
and peace of mind that the world cannot give nor take away. I amuse
myself with working and reading.  God is very good to me, who gives me a
contented and happy frame of mind; and I trust my God will never leave
nor forsake me, that when death comes, He will also be with me, and give
me good hopes through Jesus Christ our Lord.’

It was her son’s privilege to be much with her during her last illness.
’My mother’s has been to me by far the most impressive deathbed I ever
attended.  The predominant feature of it has been the deep and immovable
trust of her spirit upon the Saviour.  This has been growing apace for
some years, and it shed a singular and beautiful light on the evening of
her days.’

It could not have been said of Dr. Chalmers that they made him the
keeper of the vineyards, but his own vineyard he had not kept.  How like
the Apostle he was in being jealous over himself with a godly jealousy
will appear from such extracts from his journal as this: ’I live as if
in exile from God, in a dry and thirsty land where no water is. Erred in
levity with Mr. Duncan in our reading-room; more kind and hospitable to
Mr. Dwight than formerly on a similar occasion; marvelling little of God
when moving through His delicious air upon our ride, and in the midst of
His unnumbered beauties.  Oh that I could associate with everything the
first great Cause of all things!  Absolutely nothing of the serious or
sacred in me when sitting among eighteen immortals in the evening.  What
an exclusion of religion from the world’s companies!  Give me wisdom and
principle, O God.  Oh! let me redeem the time, and give myself to the
work of an entire and spiritual Christianity!’

Sometimes we find an entry in his journal: ’Fasted somewhat this
day,’—so eager was he to leave no means of spiritual quickening unused.
But still we find severe judgment against himself.  ’Old things are not
wholly passed away: the love of literature _for itself_, and the love of
literary distinction, have not passed away.  Let me love literature as
one of those creatures of God which is not to be refused, but received
with thanksgiving.  Let me desire literary distinction, but let my
desire for it be altogether that I may add to my Christian usefulness,
and promote the glory of God; then, even without these, I would be a new
creature. The impression of my defects is not such as to overwhelm me,
but stimulate me.’

During his St. Andrews incumbency, Dr. Chalmers had been offered various
offices, notably that of professor of moral philosophy in the University
of London.  To none of these offers did he accede; but when, on 31st
October 1827, the Magistrates and Town Council of Edinburgh unanimously
elected him to fill the chair of theology in the university there, he
gladly accepted the office, the more especially that it had been
arranged that he was not to enter on his new duties till November 1828.
It was a trial to him to part with the calm and quiet he had enjoyed at
St. Andrews, and again plunge into a vast and bustling community like
that from which he had escaped five years before, and which had left
little more than ’the dazzling recollection of a feverish and troubled
dream.’  But theology was a higher department than moral philosophy, and
Edinburgh was a centre of wider influence than St. Andrews.  His course
was clear; nevertheless, in his closing lectures, he assured his
students that nothing in what was before him was fitted to displace them
from his recollections; but, on the contrary, from his individual
acquaintance with them all, he would ever regard his connection with
them as a more tender relationship than he could hope to enjoy with the
students of Edinburgh.




                               CHAPTER V

                          EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY

                               1828-1843


It was but natural for Chalmers, in entering on his new duties as
professor of divinity in the University of Edinburgh, to rally all his
energies for a task so important—to be performed, too, in so commanding
a sphere.  The course of theology through which he had to conduct his
students occupied three sessions, and for each consecutive winter it was
necessary for him to produce a fresh set of lectures. Happily the
subjects discussed in his first session were already familiar to
him—natural theology and the evidences of Christianity.  What was
necessary for him in this session, was to expand, complete, and combine
materials that, in a very limited measure, he had already used at St.
Andrews.

A greater contrast can hardly be imagined than the divinity class-room
under his predecessor and under himself. The last professor was a
striking illustration of what the essential dulness and lifelessness of
Moderatism could produce when matured and crowned by old age and
infirmity. Two years before the appointment of Chalmers, a deputation of
students, including the late Principal Cunningham and Dr. Wilson of
Bombay, had waited on the professor, requesting him (but in vain) to
provide a substitute, as his voice could not be heard.  Naturally the
attendance had fallen to a fraction, and utter lifelessness prevailed.
With the appointment of Chalmers, an enthusiasm sprang up unprecedented
in the history of the university.  ’The introductory lecture,’ says Dr.
Hanna, ’was delivered amid rapturous applause, and, with scarcely any
sensible abatement, the excitement of that first meeting was sustained
throughout the whole of the succeeding session.’  Besides the regular
students of the church, a very large body of amateurs attended the
course.  From these the professor exacted no fee; but at the end of the
session, through the Rev. Robert Morehead, an episcopalian clergyman,
they asked his acceptance of a sum of money, and, in an elaborate
address, expressed the delight and benefit with which they had listened
to the course.

In subsequent years, Dr. Chalmers re-wrote his divinity lectures, and
after his death these were published in two volumes, entitled,
_Institutes of Theology_.  Besides delivering his own lectures, it was
his practice to comment on his textbooks,—Butler’s _Analogy_, Paley’s
_Evidences_, and Hill’s _Lectures in Divinity_, his notes on these now
forming a separate volume of his _Posthumous Works_.

Most Calvinistic treatises on systematic theology start from the divine
point of view, setting forth the nature of God; and, on the basis of His
Sovereignty, explaining his relation to man.  Chalmers preferred to
start with the actual condition of man, the diseased and disorganised
state into which he had fallen, and to rise from that to the provision
which God had made for his recovery through Jesus Christ.  It is not
difficult to see what led him to prefer this order.  In his course of
moral philosophy, he had come to an abrupt and impassable barrier.
Natural ethics gave abundant proof that man’s moral nature was
disordered, and that he had lost fellowship with God; but it threw no
light on the awfully important questions how that nature was to be
healed, and how that fellowship was to be restored.  The answer to these
questions, as Chalmers often insisted, must come from a higher source.
It was tantalising to a teacher of moral philosophy to have to leave man
in this predicament, and to be restrained from dwelling on the response
of revealed theology to his eager questionings.  And hence, when
revealed theology became his theme, Chalmers was eager to set forth at
once the point of junction between the two theologies, to show how the
revealed took man up at the point where nature left him; in a word, to
bring the remedy of revelation into connection with the disease of
nature. If, in general, this order is more acceptable to Arminian than
Calvinistic divines, this was not Chalmers’s reason for preferring it.
We have seen that the sovereignty, the all-sufficiency and universal
operation of God, was the first theological truth that took a powerful
hold of his mind, even before he became reconciled to evangelical
doctrine.  That hold it retained ever after.  The root of Calvinism, or,
we should rather say, of Paulinism and Augustinianism, was planted at
the beginning in the very heart of his being.

But, from the eminently practical character of his mind, it was not his
habit to put the higher doctrines of Calvinism in the forefront of his
preaching, or even of his theology. Man must be dealt with as a
responsible being; his responsibility must ever have its place beside
God’s sovereignty.  It would be ruinous to handle either of these
doctrines in such a manner as to destroy or even impair the force of the
other.  The combination of the two was one of the great objects of his
theological teaching.

Chalmers’s style of theological discussion was very unlike the common.
It was not fashioned on the anvil of the schoolmen.  There was a
remarkable combination in it of the philosophical and the popular.  His
mind was deeply philosophical, delighting in first principles, and eager
to concatenate truth, to establish comprehensive laws, to reconcile
apparently conflicting doctrines, and to bring what seemed unreasonable
into harmony with reason.  But his style was so diffuse and flowing that
he appeared to want the exactness and correctness of a philosophic mind.
Moreover, he could not confine himself to the strictly intellectual
aspects of theology; he could not but include its moral and practical
aspects.  In bringing out the practical bearings of doctrines, he was
liable to become somewhat declamatory.

Another peculiarity was his fondness of illustration, the product, as it
seemed, of the poetical rather than the philosophic faculty.  The result
was that, as a philosophic theologian, Chalmers hardly got justice.  And
since his day philosophic theology has passed into a quite different
groove.  He was just beginning to know something of German philosophy
when he died.  He was greatly interested in it, and had he survived, he
would in all likelihood have given much of his attention to it.  But he
could only have known it at second hand, and any discussion of it in
these circumstances must have been of but secondary weight.  And now
that the German standpoint has become so common, the theology of Dr.
Chalmers, as well as that of his successor, Principal Cunningham, has
fallen into the background.  But it would not be easy to say how much is
missed by even philosophical students when they give the go-by to his
writings.

The academical and other honours conferred on him had more respect to
his position as a preacher and a philanthropist than a professor of
theology.  In 1830 he was appointed one of her Majesty’s chaplains for
Scotland, the letter from Sir Robert Peel in which the announcement was
made to him saying emphatically that the honour was conferred in
consideration of his high character and eminent acquirements and
services.  At the Disruption, when he ceased to be a minister of the
Established Church, he resigned this appointment.  It was but the other
day that it transpired that her Majesty wished him to continue to hold
it.  But such was his conscientiousness that, though the salary was
placed at his credit by the Queen’s Remembrancer till his death in 1847,
no part of the salary was ever drawn either by him or his family.  In
1834 he was elected a corresponding member of the Royal Institute of
France, and in the following year he received the degree of D.C.L. from
the University of Oxford.  Such honours as these last were without a
parallel in the case of any Presbyterian minister. About the same time
he was elected a Fellow, and thereafter a vice-president, of the Royal
Society of Edinburgh.  Among other honours, he was asked by the
Bridgewater Trustees to write one of their eight treatises on natural
theology, the subject assigned to him being ’The Adaptation of External
Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Man.’  This essay
was afterwards merged in his work on _Natural Theology_.  In his visits
to Oxford and Cambridge he received almost unbounded attention from the
most distinguished men in both universities, and in his intercourse with
them he had much enjoyment.  At Cambridge he could not restrain his
delight at being entertained in the college of Newton—a name which held
an extraordinary place in his regard.  In recognition of his appointment
as a corresponding member of the French Institute, he visited France in
1838, and read a paper to the Institute on the ’Distinction, both in
Principle and Effect, between a Legal Charity for the Relief of
Indigence and a Legal Charity for the Relief of Disease.’

The right treatment of pauperism continued to exercise his mind and to
draw forth his testimony on every available occasion.  In 1829 he was
summoned to London to give evidence before a Parliamentary Committee on
the Irish Poor-Law.  His view was ever the same.  A compulsory rate
created a spirit of dependence, and thereby tended to the increase of
pauperism and the degradation rather than the elevation of the people.
It was often said that comfort tended to the improvement of character.
His belief was the very opposite; it was character that tended to the
increase of comfort.  His success in Glasgow led him to believe that the
same system would succeed in Ireland.  He had sought to stimulate
friendship and kindliness among all classes, so as to induce them to
help one another in times of need; nothing had had a greater effect in
diminishing pauperism.  This was far too valuable and efficient a weapon
to be carelessly thrown away.

But to all his schemes for remedying pauperism there came a death-blow
in 1844.  In 1840, Dr. Pultney Alison of Edinburgh, a medical
practitioner of great eminence and not less benevolence, published a
pamphlet in which he drew a painful picture of the miserable condition
of the poor, especially in many parts of Glasgow and Edinburgh, and
strongly urged the necessity of an ampler provision for them, secured by
law, though one result of this would be the increase of the cost of
Scottish pauperism from £150,000 to £800,000 per annum.  Chalmers did
what he could to counterwork Dr. Alison.  When the British Association
met in Glasgow in 1840, he contributed a paper on the subject, and the
public interest was so great that the meeting where it was discussed had
to be adjourned to a church. He delivered several lectures to his
students, which were afterwards collected and published in a volume.
But the absorbing interest which had arisen in the Church question that
was now under vehement discussion, and other causes, chilled the
interest of the public in pauperism; and in 1844 a measure was enacted
by Parliament, in opposition to the views of Chalmers.  To him it seemed
that even though an immediate improvement in the condition of the poor
might be thus obtained, it must be at the sacrifice of many of the
virtues that went to elevate them.

In the political world two great questions were agitating the community
about the time when Chalmers came to Edinburgh—Catholic Emancipation and
the Reform Bill.

Chalmers was a strenuous advocate of Catholic Emancipation. It did not
seem to him just, as a general principle, to exclude any body of the
people from a share in the government of their country on account of
their religious opinions.  Not only so, but he had a strong conviction
that the effect of such exclusion was to create a prejudice against the
religion of their opponents and prevent them from giving an impartial
consideration to the arguments in its favour.  In urging his views at a
public meeting in Edinburgh, he rose to a height of eloquence that
carried his audience by storm.  As long as the Roman Catholics were
excluded from political privileges they would not listen to any
arguments against their faith.  But let this injustice be removed, let
them be admitted to the same platform as the rest of the community, and
he looked for a change.  And what might they not expect if the Bible
were to become a familiar book to their Catholic brethren, and they were
to receive its lessons with open and candid minds?  The very thought
seemed to open a most interesting and hopeful vista, well adapted to be
expanded and enforced by his gorgeous eloquence.  But even had he known
that expectations of this sort were groundless, he would still have
advocated emancipation simply as a matter of justice.

On the question of the Reform Bill he did not take the popular side.
His opposition to it comes on us as a surprise. We should have expected
that a man whose motto was ’Honour all men,’ who had already befriended
Catholic Emancipation and the repeal of the Corporation Test Acts, and
who was afterwards an advocate of the repeal of the Corn-Laws, would
have approved of the very moderate degree of political privilege implied
in the ten-pound suffrage.  In a speech in the Presbytery of Edinburgh,
Dr. Chalmers once said: ’I have already professed myself, and will
profess myself again, an out and out and, I maintain it, the only
consistent Radical.  The dearest object of my earthly existence is the
elevation of the common people, humanised by Christianity and raised by
the strength of their moral habits to a higher platform of human nature,
and by which they may attain and enjoy the rank and consideration due to
enlightened and companionable men.’  But, though he offered no active
opposition to the measure, he did not approve of it.  In this he seems
to have been actuated by various motives.  In the first place, he did
not think that this was the true way to elevate the people.  He had
always maintained that it was mainly by a moral and Christian education,
by the cultivation of right principles and habits, that their true
welfare was to be secured, and he dreaded anything that might lead them
to value material or political benefits more than this. Further, he had
a dread that any loosening of the old foundations of society might
encourage a spirit of anarchy and recklessness which would ultimately
bring the country to ruin.  He knew that such a spirit slumbered, and
more than slumbered, in many breasts, and he was opposed to any measure
that would give it the slightest encouragement. He did not reckon on any
abatement of discontent from the extension of the suffrage, and did not
believe that the political appetite would be satisfied with anything
short of a social revolution.  So great were his fears, that on one
occasion he expressed his apprehension that if the government then in
office were to be removed, anarchy would immediately take possession.
Nothing would have surprised or alarmed him more than to be told that by
and by a Conservative Government would bring down the suffrage to a much
lower point than the then Reform Bill proposed.  But still more would he
have wondered had he learned that fifty years after his death, and under
all these radical changes, so far from the country being abandoned to
anarchy, the law-abiding habit of the people would be as strong as ever,
and the foundations of society as firm.

When the great question of the Corn-Laws came up at a later period,
Chalmers was in favour of the repeal; not chiefly for any important
economical results that he expected from that step, but because it
would, as he used to say, ’sweeten the breath of society.’  He would
have been surprised at the remarkable commercial results which the
abolition of the Corn-Laws, and the institution of the system of Free
Trade have produced on the resources of the country.

In addition to these considerations, another ground of his opposition to
the Reform Bill was his respect for an aristocracy and the influence of
an aristocracy, as contributing important elements to the welfare of a
country.  He held that ’in every land of law and liberty, with an order
of men possessing large and independent affluence, there is better
security for the general comfort and virtue of the whole than when
society presents an aspect of almost unalleviated plebeianism.’  But,
’it is not for the sake of its ornaments and its chivalry alone that we
want the high rank of our aristocracy to be upholden.’  It was for the
spirit that they circulated through all ranks—a more noble spirit, he
thought, than either France with its ’Citizen King,’ or the United
States with their universal social equality, could inspire.  In his
intercourse with the aristocracy, it was the best and most congenial of
them that admitted him to their society, and nothing charmed him more
than to find a combination of rank and wealth with Christian principle
and philanthropic activity, along with the charm of refined and gentle
but unassuming manners.  Such movements as the Reform Bill he deemed
hurtful to the influence of the aristocracy, and therefore
disadvantageous to the welfare of the country.  It was a different set
of aristocrats, and a different kind of policy he had to criticise when,
on occasion of his last visit to London, he gave evidence to a
Parliamentary Committee in connection with the hardships suffered by
congregations of the Free Church from the refusal of sites by
aristocratic landowners.

Undoubtedly the main activity of Chalmers during his Edinburgh life was
connected with the work of the church. But before proceeding to this, it
may be well to advert to his literary activity, which, amid all his
other occupations, was very remarkable.  We have already noticed his
Bridgewater treatise, afterwards reconstructed in his _Natural
Theology_.  We have also noticed his volume on the subject of the
Poor-Laws.  It was during this period that he completed and published in
four volumes his _Lectures on the Epistle to the Romans_, which had been
begun but not finished as pulpit discourses in Glasgow; regarding which
the late Mr. Isaac Taylor gave his judgment that they would probably be
the most enduring of his writings.  In this period likewise he collected
and edited his whole works, amounting to the goodly number of
twenty-five volumes.  Of a large number of his pamphlets, introductory
essays, articles in reviews, and other miscellaneous writings, our space
allows us to say nothing.  But the work of this period which Chalmers
himself thought most of was, his treatise in two volumes on _Political
Economy_.  The subject had an attraction for him ever since his
attendance on certain classes in the University of Edinburgh in
1799-1801. His first published volume had been on one of its topics. In
the University of St. Andrews he had given a course of lectures upon it.
It may seem strange that, after his change of views and intense
consecration to spiritual work, he should still have felt so lively an
interest in a subject usually considered the driest and most secular in
the whole round of the sciences.  But, as he remarked in his preface,
there were two ways of presenting political economy.  One was merely to
expound its doctrines; the other, along with this, to consider its
applications.  It was with this latter object in view that Dr. Chalmers
bestowed so earnest attention on the subject.  On the doctrines of
political economy, indeed, he held and expounded many original
views,—views which were treated with undeserved contempt by the
_Quarterly Review_, but of which so high an authority as Mr. Stuart Mill
wrote in a very different spirit.  Accepting it as the great aim of
political economy to make the most of a country’s material resources,
and advance to the utmost the comfort and prosperity of its people, Dr.
Chalmers urged with great earnestness that all its methods were in
themselves incompetent to secure this end.  Without due provision for
the moral and spiritual nature, the true welfare and the true comfort of
men could never be achieved. Besides this, he held that society was ever
tending to a condition which could not but defeat the very ends which
political economy had in view.  It was the constant tendency of
population to increase, and thus outgrow production—outgrow the
provision for the supply of its material wants. However much production
might be increased, it could not be increased in the ratio of
population, so that at length a time must come when, in spite of every
expedient, destitution must set in.  The only safeguard against this was
to raise the intelligence and the moral habits of the people, to inspire
them with a desire for a more civilised kind of life, to give them a
taste for higher enjoyments, and induce them to cultivate the industry,
the skill, and the self-control by which these might be attained.  But
how would this check population?  Dr. Chalmers was in this respect in
sympathy with Malthus; he wished to check early and improvident
marriages, and the best means of doing this was to elevate the standard
of living, so that marriage should be delayed until the means of
reaching this standard were realised.  It must be owned, we think, that
this was a one-sided view.  There are undoubted moral risks of a very
serious kind involved in the delay of marriage until an age when the
passions have somewhat cooled down.  It was the habit of Chalmers to let
his mind dwell at one time on but one aspect of a subject, and not give
full weight to counterbalancing considerations.  Most readers will agree
thoroughly with him in his view that improved taste and enlarged views
must bring in their wake increased comfort and a higher social standing;
but the system of political economy that rested on the Malthusian
principle is not entitled to be placed much higher than other systems;
and the only security for moral improvement lies in that Christian
education and Christian influence on which Chalmers laid so much stress,
and which came not from political economy, but from the Gospel of Jesus
Christ.

Whatever we may think of his outlet from the insoluble problem of
political economy, we must recognise with admiration his overwhelming
sense of the value of this Christian education and training with a view
to the highest welfare of mankind.  This indeed was the reigning idea of
Chalmers, pursued steadily throughout his whole life, alike in his
sermons, his books, his scientific researches, his practical schemes,
his intercourse with his fellows, and, we may add, his communion with
his God.  If ever a life had unity, it was that of Chalmers.  To get men
impregnated with the spirit of Christ, and alive to the lessons of His
Gospel was, one way or other, his continual aim.  Not only did he strive
to bring individual men into contact with Christ, so that they should
receive salvation, and partake of spiritual life, but he desired that
all the influences that played on society should be such as to encourage
the Christian spirit and Christian habits.  National education without
Christianity was a blunder not to be thought of. The rulers of the state
ought to encourage the church as the highest instrument of good to the
people.  The division of the country into parishes and districts was
important as securing a more efficient ministration of Christianity to
every section of the community.  A rate-supported system of relief to
the poor was atrocious, because it hindered the exercise of Christian
habits, it deadened the very charity which it professed to promote.
Interference with the spiritual function of the Christian church was an
evil not to be endured; it was putting chains on the great instrument of
the world’s emancipation; it was arresting the one great force through
which all things were to be made new.  Daily, and almost hourly, it was
the prayer of Chalmers that he might be guided from above in all his
efforts to bring individuals and the community alike under Christian
influence and Christian habits.  And it was the practice of these
private devotions that brought to him the wisdom, the strength, and the
patience with which he laboured at the utmost stretch of his powers, and
without intermission, for the Christian good of his country.


But we must now glance at some of his labours in connection with the
church during the period now under review.  In 1832 we find him
occupying the chair of the General Assembly, and signalising his year of
office by bringing about, in conjunction with Lord Belhaven, the Lord
High Commissioner, the abolition of a practice of Sabbath dinners and
Sabbath breakfasts that had hitherto prevailed.  Next year, as a member
of Assembly, he introduced the celebrated measure known as the Veto, but
without success, his proposal being rejected by a majority of twelve.
As the evangelical revival advanced, dissatisfaction with the law of
patronage advanced apace.  When the Reform Act came into operation, it
was felt to be but reasonable that as the voice of the people was now to
be heard in the choice of their rulers, it ought to be heard likewise in
the choice of their ministers.  To give them this voice was the object
of the veto law.  Even under the law of patronage there was a provision
by which the presentee must have a ’call’ from the people; but it had
never been settled what this call meant, and in practice it had
degenerated into a mere form.  It was thought by some that it would have
been wiser for the church to define the call; but the ’veto’ was
preferred, because it was held to imply a smaller measure of change.  It
made it the law of the church that if a majority of male heads of
families, being communicants, objected to the settlement of a presentee
as their minister, the presbytery were not to take him on trial for
ordination.  It appeared to Dr. Chalmers that it would have been well
for the church before passing this law to have the authority of the
Legislature in her support, but he was assured by lawyers of the highest
eminence, including the law officers of the Crown, that there could not
be a doubt as to the legal right of the church to enact this measure.
Next year it was again brought forward, the motion in its favour being
made by the first Lord Moncreiff.  On this occasion it was carried, and
became the law of the church; but events showed that it would have been
well had the advice of Chalmers been followed before it was enacted; for
it was on the very question of the competency of the church, as by law
established, to enact it that the great conflict arose which, ten years
after, rent the church in two.

It was impossible for Dr. Chalmers to be long in Edinburgh without
having his attention turned to the religious wants of the people there.
In the course of a local controversy, carried on with much bitterness,
regarding the ’Annuity Tax’—an unpopular impost for defraying the
salaries of the city ministers—a proposal had been made to abolish
collegiate charges, and thus reduce the number of ministers from
eighteen to thirteen.  Chalmers had strongly protested against the
proposal, and claimed in the interest of the city that the ministers set
free from collegiate charges should be intrusted with new parishes,
wherever additional churches were needed.  Under the Town Council,
things had been so managed that the incomes of the clergy had sunk to
£400 a year; and the idea of new charges was unpopular, because the
Council would have had to provide churches; this opposition grieved
Chalmers, and the only consideration that comforted him (as he wrote to
a friend) was the increased readiness of the friends of the church to
contribute for its extension.  For himself, he had hitherto been working
in the Cowgate, in the hope that a new parochial charge would be set up
for that district.  But at the time (1834), the Town Council had refused
to make the necessary arrangements for that purpose, although a few
years later, the parish of St. John’s was erected, and Dr. Guthrie
appointed to it.  Meanwhile, Dr. Chalmers resolved to transfer his
attention to another needy and neglected district—the suburban village
of Dean, or Water of Leith. He had good hopes that he would be able to
erect a parochial economy there.  The Assembly of that year had
appointed him convener of a committee for church accommodation; and in
the summer, besides encouraging local efforts, he tried to collect a
central fund, for which in July he had made a beginning, having raised
the sum of £1677, 10s.  He had begun, as he said, with the higher kinds
of game—dukes and marquises, but by and by he would come down to
parochial associations and subscriptions of a penny a week.  He believed
that the ’ditchers’ of the country properly cultivated might be found as
productive as the ’dukes.’  Anyhow, the moral influence would be
greater, because every man that gave a penny a week would be sure to
feel a lively interest in the cause.

And this was the beginning of that great scheme of church extension
which for several years engrossed his energies, as it proved also the
forerunner of his Free Church Sustentation Fund, which has proved such a
monument of his financial sagacity and skill.

From Glasgow an important proposal had been made by his friend and
former coadjutor, Mr. William Collins, that steps should be taken at
once to add twenty churches to the Established Church.  Thirteen years
before, Chalmers had made the same proposal, but it had been scouted as
visionary.  Evidently his influence had been telling on the community.
It was no longer a devout imagination.  Mr. Collins and his friends
resolved to take no steps in the way of building, till £20,000 should be
subscribed.  In the month of October that amount was realised.  The
success of this local effort gave a great impulse to the general scheme.

The proposal under the general scheme was, that the churches should be
erected from voluntary contributions, but that the Government should
grant a small endowment to each congregation towards its annual
expenses.  To promote this part of the scheme, a deputation was sent to
London, to solicit the support of the Prime Minister and other
influential members of the Government.  At first it seemed as if Lord
Melbourne and his cabinet would cordially agree to the proposal, but
vehement opposition being offered to it by the dissenters, a change soon
came over the spirit of their dream.  Unwilling to offend an important
section of their supporters in Scotland, they resolved, as a sort of
compromise, to appoint a commission that should go over the country,
take evidence as to the amount of the existing provision for the
religious wants of the people, and report the results from time to time.
It was a great disappointment to Dr. Chalmers that in this way a long
delay would have to take place, and still more that the _personnel_ of
the commission showed a tendency unfavourable to the scheme.  The
commission buckled to their work, and at intervals issued reports which
in the main bore out the contention of Dr. Chalmers.  Then it was
announced that a measure would be introduced; by and by it was said that
that measure was abandoned.  Dr. Chalmers and his friends were more
favourably received by Sir Robert Peel and other leading Conservatives;
but as they were not in power at the time nothing was done.  The
vacillating conduct of the Whig Government made no favourable impression
on Chalmers: among his friends he was ready enough to proclaim, in his
Fifeshire dialect, ’I have a moral loathing of thae Whugs.’

But if there was disappointment from the Government, there was
extraordinary encouragement from the people. In 1838 he was able to
announce to the General Assembly, as the fruit of four years’ labour,
that there had been added to the Establishment nearly two hundred
churches, and that upwards of £200,000 had been contributed for their
erection.  It was a result wholly unprecedented, and on all hands was
regarded with amazement, and as a most wonderful testimony to the
eloquence and energy with which he had advocated the cause.  Worn out,
and much in need of rest though he felt himself to be, he was induced to
remain for some time longer at the head of the committee, and among
other labours he added that of a tour over the whole country, in which
he advocated his plan with his usual eloquence.  But, in the Forties,
the shadow of the conflict between the civil and ecclesiastical courts
had fallen on the Extension Scheme, and it began to languish.  In the
course of his convenership the progress of the undertaking had been as
follows:—

In 1835, 62 churches, £65,620   1   11-¾
In 1836, 26    "       32,359  12    6-¾
In 1837, 67    "       59,311   6    0
In 1838, 32    "       41,183   1    1-¾
In 1839, 14    "       52,959  14   14-¾
In 1840, 15    "       36,055   8    8-¾
In 1841,  6    "       18,252   6    6-
       ---           ------------------
Total,  222    "     £305,741  11    3-½


Unhappily, a painful controversy arose among the home-churches out of
the effort to obtain a national endowment for the new parishes.
Nonconformists, for the most part, viewed the application with great
dislike, and opposed it tooth and nail.  It was bad enough, in their
view, that a particular church should be maintained from the public
funds, and enjoy peculiar social privileges; but it was not to be borne
that it should receive a further grant of public money, of which, of
course, nonconformists would have to pay their share.  The right way to
support ministers, according to the New Testament, was by the voluntary
contributions of the people.  This, moreover, was a benefit to the
people themselves; it led them to take a greater interest in their
church, and to attach more value to its ministrations. Thus it happened
that every church-extension meeting was more or less an anti-voluntary
meeting, the speakers who pled for the scheme vehemently upholding the
principle of an establishment.  Of the younger men who fought on this
ground with Chalmers, none was more strenuous than the late Dr. Guthrie.
But Guthrie lived to change his view; and in an autobiographical
fragment he tells us, that even when he was denouncing the voluntary
system, in his secret heart he honoured, and even envied, the men whose
living was derived solely from the freewill offerings of their people.

The great objection of Chalmers to the voluntary system was that it was
inadequate.  He held it incapable of making provision for the wants of a
whole community, and especially incapable of those aggressive efforts
that were needed for bringing in the masses who had fallen from the
profession of religion.  In planting churches, voluntaryism acted on the
principle of attraction, aiming mainly at drawing in those who were more
or less in sympathy with itself, and disposed to accept its
ministrations.  The theory of an established church, on the other hand,
demanded a provision for the whole of the population, and supplied a
ministry whose duty was to look after all the people, and ply them with
the offers and the injunctions of Christianity.  It was to make the
practice and theory of the church in some degree to correspond that he
had undertaken and prosecuted his great church-extension movement.

For the nonconformists themselves he always cherished a profound regard,
and a grateful sense of the invaluable service they had rendered to the
country when the Gospel was seldom preached elsewhere.  Of this he had
given signal proof when he took sittings in a congregational chapel for
his family at St. Andrews.  Nothing could have been further from his
desire than to drive nonconformists into a corner, or make them feel
that they stood in the way of his more comprehensive enterprise.  Yet
many of them did feel, and could hardly fail to feel, that they were
obstacles to the working of a complete territorial scheme.  They were
like squatters or interlopers in a territory allocated and divided among
regular settlers.  Unconsciously Dr. Chalmers stimulated a feeling among
the Established clergy that they, and they only, were the rightful
spiritual guides of the people; a spirit of which he himself was wholly
destitute, but which was highly agreeable to human nature, and in many
cases rears its arrogant head at the present day.

It was a favourite argument of the voluntaries that an established
church could not be a free church; it was subject to the authority of
the state, and could not be free, as the nonconformists were, to obey
its divine Head in all things.  This position Chalmers and his friends
resolutely denied.  The alliance between church and state was an
alliance between two independent powers, each of which was supreme in
its own department.  In forming a connection with the state, the church
did not surrender one particle of its independence; it remained as free
as ever to follow the guidance of its divine Head in every point where
He had expressed His will.  Nay, this freedom was expressly secured by
the statutes of the realm.  It knew to its cost how eager the rulers of
the country had often been to deprive it of its freedom, and at every
important crisis of its history, when it renewed or revised its alliance
with the state, it had taken care that its freedom should be expressly
conceded.  It was while the voluntary controversy was at its height that
the collision between the civil and ecclesiastical courts became acute,
for this very question, the independence and freedom of the church, was
the great bone of contention.  When the decisions of the Court of
Session and the House of Lords were given, it became only too apparent
that, in the judgment of the civil courts, the church did not possess
the independence it had claimed. This was a dreadful, a shattering blow
to Dr. Chalmers, and when it was authoritatively declared,
notwithstanding all his intense partiality for an established church, he
at once severed his alliance with the state.  The main ground on which
he acted was, that a church enthralled to the state could never be that
beneficent instrument, that powerful moral agent, for which he valued
it,—could never be the means of training the people in those holy ways,
those high moral and spiritual habits, on which their highest welfare
depended.

It was partly in order to advance his church-extension scheme, but more
especially to maintain the true theory of a church establishment, and
the church’s independence in its union with the state, that he delivered
in the Hanover Square Rooms, London, in April and May 1838, that series
of lectures on the ’Establishment and Extension of National Churches’
which raised his fame as an orator to its very highest pitch.
’Nothing,’ wrote the late Dr. Begg, who accompanied him, ’could exceed
the enthusiasm which prevailed in London.  The great city seemed stirred
to its very depths.’  At the fourth and fifth lectures, an American
clergyman who was present wrote that he found the room densely packed
long before the hour, and evidently for the most part by the higher
classes.  ’Dukes, marquises, earls, viscounts, barons, baronets,
bishops, and members of Parliament were to be seen in every direction.
After considerable delay and impatient waiting, the great charmer made
his entrance, and was welcomed with clappings and shouts of applause
that grew more and more intense till the noise became almost deafening.’
’The concluding lecture,’ says Dr. Hanna, ’was graced by the presence of
nine prelates of the Church of England.  The tide that had been rising
and swelling each successive day now burst all bounds.  Carried away by
the impassioned utterance of the speaker, long ere the close of some of
his finest passages was reached, the voice of the lecturer was drowned
in the applause, the audience rising from their seats, waving their hats
above their heads, and breaking out into tumultuous approbation.’

An event that somewhat disturbed the line of Dr. Chalmers’s argument for
the freedom of the church had taken place just before he left Edinburgh.
On the 8th March 1838, the Court of Session, in giving judgment on the
famous Auchterarder case, found the veto law of the church to be illegal
and _ultra vires_, and began to take steps for the reversal of all that
the church had done in connection with it.  The judgment had not become
final, for it was subject to appeal to the House of Lords, and in his
lectures Dr. Chalmers made no reference to it.  But when, in 1839, the
House of Lords affirmed the decision of the lower court, and when Lords
Brougham and Cottenham, in expressing their views, scouted alike the
principle of the veto and of the independence of the church (although
Lord Brougham had at one time strongly commended the veto), Dr. Chalmers
made a full statement of his views in the General Assembly.  Before that
time he had been disposed to think that if the judgment of the Court of
Session should be affirmed by the Lords, the best course for the church
would be to give up the veto, reserving power to judge of each case by
itself, and act accordingly.

In such a case as that of Auchterarder, for example, where the presentee
had been vetoed by 287 out of 300 male heads of families and called only
by two, the presbytery might have decided that in these circumstances
the call was really no call, and therefore the presentee could not be
taken on trial.  But, according to the views expressed by the judges,
this course would have been as illegal as the veto itself.  Dr. Chalmers
therefore moved that, while the Assembly would make no claim to the
temporalities of Auchterarder, they would still maintain the principle
that no minister be intruded on an opposing congregation, and that a
committee be appointed to confer with the Government, in order to
prevent any further collision between the civil and ecclesiastical
authorities.  A magnificent speech of three hours was delivered in
support of this motion, which, after a long discussion, was carried by a
majority of forty-nine.  It has been remarked, that never was the
eloquence of Chalmers more Demosthenic than in his orations for the
freedom of the church.  And this intense regard for her freedom was no
new notion of his: so far back as 1814, in a speech in the Assembly on
the plurality question, he had maintained that ’the church had power to
reject a presentee for any reason, or for no reason at all.’  To
Chalmers, the enforced intrusion of unacceptable presentees was not the
only, perhaps not even the chief, interference with the liberty of the
church.  When it was decided that the church had no power to erect new
parishes or to give their ministers the usual status of her clergymen;
and, likewise, that she had no power to readmit into her pale any of
those who in former years had left it,—cases in which no shadow of
temporal interest was involved—it seemed to him that such restrictions
on her liberty were not only intolerable, but that they tended
completely to shatter her efficiency.

Of the four years of long and weary negotiation that followed the
passing of this resolution, we have no space to write at any length.
Alongside of negotiations with Government there ran a stream of
decisions both by the civil and church courts which greatly complicated
the situation.  New cases of intrusion occurred, pre-eminent among which
was the case of Marnoch, where the presentee was vetoed by 261 out of
300 male heads of families, and had the name of but a single parishioner
attached to his call.  For insisting on his settlement, the seven
members of presbytery who took this course were first suspended and then
deposed.

As to negotiations with Government, a considerable share of the
interviews and correspondence fell to Dr. Chalmers.  With Lord
Melbourne, the Prime Minister, he did not hit it off.  On a former
occasion, as Chalmers himself told Dr. Gordon, when his lordship heard
of a deputation from the Scottish church, he expressed a hope ’that that
d—d fellow Chalmers was not among them.’  Unable to make anything of the
Whigs, Chalmers and his friends now turned to the Tories, who at one
time seemed friendly, but with them, too, negotiations finally broke
off. In these negotiations there was a painful episode between Dr.
Chalmers and Lord Aberdeen.  A bill introduced by his lordship did not
come up to what Chalmers understood him to have promised, and he was
unable to support it. Lord Aberdeen complained bitterly, and in the
House of Lords accused the Non-intrusion Committee of giving an
unscrupulous report of their conversations with him, and he believed
they had behaved in the same way to the Government. For Dr. Chalmers he
had a special gibe.  ’A reverend gentleman, a great leader in the
General Assembly, having brought the church into a state of jeopardy and
peril, had left it to find its way out of the difficulty as well as it
could.’  Evidently these were the words of a man who had lost his
temper, and forgot what was due in courtesy, to say nothing of charity,
to absent men.  Unfortunately his son and biographer, Sir Arthur Gordon,
has made the matter worse by a vulgar charge against Dr. Chalmers, that
he was overborne by the violent men in the non-intrusion committee, and,
being afraid of losing his leadership, succumbed to them, and had not
the moral courage to avow his change of opinion.  Dr. Chalmers was not
in the habit of succumbing to any one, for no one stood more
independently on his own judgment; and, as to trimming and shuffling,
his whole life showed him to be incapable of such conduct.  The event
proved who was in the right; Lord Aberdeen afterwards carried his bill,
which proved a miserable failure.  As Dr. Donald Fraser has remarked, it
had to be given up as a nuisance.  And then, under a Conservative
Government, came the abolition of patronage!³

    ³ Sir Arthur Gordon allows (1) that under the unworthy influence of
      the then Dean of Faculty (Hope) Lord Aberdeen was induced to omit
      certain provisions he had at first inserted; and (2) that the then
      Lord Advocate (Sir W. Rae) said in public that the Government
      measure would exceed in liberality even the liberal measure
      proposed by the Duke of Argyll.  In the course of Sir Arthur’s
      narrative we find the astounding statement, that though Lord
      Aberdeen sat as an elder in the Assembly from 1818 to 1828, he
      never once received the Sacrament in a Presbyterian church!

Chalmers had now had experience of both the great political parties, and
with equally disappointing results. His grand project of a church
commensurate with the necessities of the country (so far as these were
not provided for by the nonconformists) was nearly as far off as ever.
But his experience in raising money for church extension gave him hope
in another direction.  When he knocked at the door of the Whigs on
behalf of church extension he was refused.  When he knocked at the door
of the Tories, he found that they might have endowed the church, but
they would have enslaved her.  They viewed the church ’as an engine of
state, not as an instrument of usefulness.’  He was now about to knock
at the door of the people; and he cherished no little expectation that
through them he would yet succeed in his scheme of making Scotland a
spiritual garden.

Dr. Chalmers concurred cordially with the measures taken by the church
to resist, or at least protest against, the encroachments of the civil
courts.  He approved of the Claim of Right as affirmed by the Assembly
in May 1842.  He preached the opening sermon at a convocation of
ministers in November 1842, and was a leading counsellor at that
remarkable gathering where from four to five hundred ministers pledged
themselves to leave the Establishment if no measure of relief were
passed by the Legislature.  His view, as to the duty of the church, when
no such measure of relief was provided, was as clear as day.  Amid the
numberless perplexities that for years past had caused such anxious
consultations and fears lest a wrong step should be taken, he found it
an unspeakable relief that the path of duty in the last and most
important step of all was so clear.  And so, on the famous 18th of May
1843, Dr. Chalmers was at the side of the Moderator, who happened to be
his own colleague in the university, Dr. Welsh; the names of both were
subscribed to the Protest that was laid on the table of the Assembly;
and when Tanfield was reached, and a General Assembly of the Free Church
of Scotland was constituted, its first act was to call to its chair the
man whose reputation throughout the Christian world was by far the
highest, and whose influence in bringing about the Disruption had been
by far the greatest.  Regarding that Assembly, Chalmers wrote to his
sister, ’Never was there a happier Assembly, with a happier collection
of faces, than in our Free Church, with consciences disburdened, and
casting themselves without care and with all the confidence of children
on the Providence of that God who never forsakes the families of the
faithful.’

All must see, whatever their own opinion of the case, that it could only
have been considerations of extraordinary force that constrained Dr.
Chalmers to forgo that connection with the state which he had so long
held to be indispensable for the successful work of the church, and to
cast her on the voluntary offerings of the people. From the hour when
the noble ambition to turn Scotland into a spiritual garden first filled
his soul, the aid of the state had appeared a sine quct, non to the
accomplishment of this great object.  What then induced him to part with
it?  Only because he was profoundly convinced that the subjection which
the civil courts demanded would prove fatal to its spiritual life and
power, fatal to its spirit of enterprise and activity, fatal to that
largeness of heart and confidence of success which were necessary for
great undertakings, and fatal to its own character as a consistent and
fearless witness for the supremacy of the church’s head.  If it should
flinch in its hour of trial, it deserved to be flung aside as a
dishonoured and useless thing.  If the decisions of the Court of Session
and the House of Lords had been less extravagant, if they had even left
to the church a vestige of power to give effect to the voice of the
people in the settlement of ministers, and in the other matters
involved, Chalmers would still have clung to the connection of church
and state.  It was simply the extravagance of the claims of the civil
courts to supreme jurisdiction that placed Chalmers among the leaders of
the Disruption, for he did not take the strong view that some of the
other leaders took of the divine right of the question. Whether he was
sanguine enough to hope that the Free Church disestablished would be
able to do for Scotland all that might have been done by a free
Established Church, he certainly believed that, in the circumstances,
the Free Church was by far the more likely body to grapple with the
enterprise that had ever floated before him.  Writing to Sir George
Sinclair in 1841, he said, ’Looking to the Christian interests of
Scotland, I believe that more good could be done by the instrumentality
of a disendowed church than by an established church exposed to such
interferences as those of the Court of Session during the last few
years.’  And, under this belief, what remained of his life was devoted
to the building up and strengthening of the Free Church, in the earnest
hope that much of the blessing for which he had longed and worked and
prayed so intensely would in this way be realised for his country.


From the heated atmosphere of public controversy we make a pleasant
transition when we accompany Chalmers on the visits he paid from time to
time to London and other places, and when we sit by him in the privacy
of his home.  We see something of the spontaneous outflow of both mind
and heart; we are charmed with his genuine humanity, his interest in
life, his humour and simplicity, and, in his devotional hours, with his
profound humility and intense aspiration after holiness.  He was not
much of a traveller, and he lost not a little thereby.  All that he ever
saw of the Continent was Paris and its environs. Had it been his lot to
gaze on the sublimities of the Alps; had he looked on the city of the
seven hills, and wandered by the Po and the Tiber; had he pursued his
way to Egypt and the East, and familiarised himself with those objects
that bore, in his own phrase, so much of the ’hoar of antiquity’; had he
visited Berlin, and Leipsic, and Halle, and Tübingen, and become
familiar with the working of the German mind, he would have experienced
new developments of soul and spirit, and cut off all ground for the
estimate of Carlyle that he was a man of narrow culture. It is
remarkable that the United States seem never to have come within his
horizon till about the very end.  But when he did travel, no man could
have enjoyed travelling more, whether his attention was turned to the
objects of nature or of art, or whether he regaled himself with the
society of new and interesting friends.

With a loyal and lively remembrance of his family, he continued the
habit of writing journal-letters to his wife and daughters, giving the
fullest details of all that he saw and heard.  Usually his journeys to
London were occasioned by church business, and on these occasions he had
little to say except of any interesting persons that he met.  But as he
came in contact with not a few of the greatest celebrities of the age,
and invariably received much attention from them, these brief notices
are very interesting. Sometimes he would quite captivate an Englishman,
and lay the foundation of a lifelong intimacy and correspondence. With
all the members of the Earlham family that he met (the Gurneys) he was
greatly taken; but one of them, Joseph John Gurney, became so attached
to him, and so delighted with his conversation and character, that we
might almost apply to him the language of Scripture on the attachment of
Jonathan to David.  _The Chalmeriana_ of Mr. Gurney remind us of
Boswell’s _Life of Johnson_.  Quaker though Gurney was, there was but
one subject on which there was any serious difference of opinion between
them—the desirableness of a connection between church and state.  Gurney
had given no little study to the ’evidences,’ and his views corresponded
to those of Chalmers.  Of the gifts and mental power of Chalmers he had
the most exalted opinion; all the more was he struck with his remarkable
humility, his entire freedom from the airs of a great man.

Another new acquaintance with whom he was greatly charmed was the Rev.
Charles Bridges, of Old Newton, Suffolk, the author of _The Christian
Ministry_ and the _Exposition of the 119th Psalm_.  Of his visit to his
house he said: ’The breath of heaven is here; without, a scene of beauty
that to the eye of sense is altogether delicious, and within, a
sanctuary of love and holiness....  I never witnessed such closeness and
efficiency of pastoral work as he exemplified in his addresses to the
mothers of families. He makes a real business both of the Christianity
of his own soul and the Christianity of his family and parish, watching
over the souls of all as one who must give an account.’  It was the very
singular quality of Chalmers, that while he could hold kindred
fellowship with so many kinds of men, it was with the holiest and most
devoted of God’s servants that he found himself in closest sympathy. He
could find points of contact with Sir James Mackintosh on ethics, with
Malthus on the law of population, with Daniel O’Connell on the Irish
poor-law, or with Dr. Whewell on physics, because he had a genuine
interest in all their pursuits, and considered that they all had a
bearing on the welfare of man.  But such pursuits were but outworks: the
citadel itself was under charge of men like Mr. Bridges. Their specialty
was to deal with the very essence and marrow of truth, and especially
that great redemptive scheme by which alone the world could be truly
blessed; they lived under the shadow of the tree of life, whose leaves
were for the healing of the nations.

It was later in life (1845) that he made the acquaintance of Professor
Tholuck of Halle; but, though both were old men, there was all the
warmth and joyousness of youth in their short fellowship.  Dr.
Rutherfurd Russell, in whose house he met Tholuck, related that ’he
seated himself on a low chair close to the learned German, and listened
with an air of genuine docility to all he said, throwing in a
characteristic observation now and then, always, however, in the way of
encouragement, never of contradiction....  Tholuck turned to his host,
and said, in German, that he had never seen so beautiful an old man....
The result of the interview was an amount of mutual confidence and
esteem, as deep and sincere as it was mutual....  The day before
Tholuck’s departure, Dr. Chalmers called upon him, and found him at his
midday repast.  He sat with him only for a few minutes and said little,
but looked at him steadily, with an expression of constant interest and
affection. He rose to take leave, and, instead of taking him by the
hand, he threw his arms round his neck and kissed him, while "God bless
you, my dear friend!" broke with apparent difficulty from his
overcharged heart.  After he was gone, it was noticed that a tear had
gathered in the eye of him who had received the apostolic benediction
and seal of brotherhood from one he loved and venerated so much. His
only observation was a half-muttered, half-spoken, _Eben ein Kuss_—even
a kiss.’

The visits to London were not always on controversial business.  On the
accession of William IV. in 1830, he formed one of a deputation from the
Church of Scotland appointed to present a congratulatory address.  He
saw many public men, and was introduced to a few.  His description of
Talleyrand, then French ambassador, is graphic: ’I gazed with much
interest on the old shrivelled face, and thought I could see there the
lines of deep reflection and lofty talent.  His moral physiognomy,
however, is a downright blank.’  His letter to his family, giving an
account of the presentation, is full of little touches, showing, among
other things, how well he appreciated the incidents that are specially
interesting to the female mind.  Far from desiring to magnify his own
importance, he dwells in a humorous way on the defects of his toilet.
’My Geneva gown did not lap so close as I would have liked, so that I
was twice as thick as I should be, and it must have been palpable to
every eye at the first glance that I was the biggest man there—and that,
though I took all care to keep my coat unbuttoned and my gown quite
open.  However, let not mamma be alarmed, for I made a most reputable
appearance, and was treated with the utmost attention.’

After being presented to the King, the deputation paid their respects to
Queen Adelaide.  When she ascended the throne, ’the most beautiful
living sight,’ says the Doctor, ’I ever beheld burst upon our delighted
gaze.  The Queen, with twelve maids of honour, in a perfect spangle of
gold and diamonds, entered the room.  I am sorry I cannot go over in
detail the particulars of their dresses; only that their lofty plumes
upon their heads and their long sweeping trains upon the floor had a
very magnificent effect.... On each side the throne were maids of
honour, officers of state, the Lord Chancellor, a vast number of
military gentlemen, and, among the rest, the Duke of Wellington.’

In 1837, on the accession of Queen Victoria, he was intrusted with an
address from the University of Edinburgh, which, he tells us, after
kissing her hand, he forgot to present till he was checked by one of the
lords-in-waiting, when he turned and put it into her Majesty’s hand.
His opinion of the young Queen is interesting to us, after sixty years’
acquaintance with our Sovereign: ’A most interesting, girlish
sensibility to the realities of her situation, with sufficient
self-command, but, withal, simple, timid, tremulous, and agitated, that
rendered her, to me, far more interesting, and awoke a more feeling and
fervent loyalty in my heart than could have been done by any other
exhibition.’

In the summer of 1833, after four years of almost incessant labour, he
treated himself to a two-months’ holiday, in pursuance of an old
ambition which he had fondly cherished to visit all the cathedrals of
England, and survey the country round them from the top of their towers.
There was hardly one of the cathedrals that did not in some way excite
his admiration.  Canterbury and Ely seem to have come in for a special
share.  Though black and rusty with age, Canterbury, with its tower
between two hundred and three hundred feet high, and a fabric studded
with massy buttresses of high-wrought Gothic, was a splendid structure.
’But my admiration, though high, was greatly heightened on seeing the
interior, which is the most perfectly beautiful of all I can recollect,
consisting as it does of a stately vista of confronting arches and
pillars, with an effect greatly enhanced by the contraction of the sides
towards the east end, and the dying away of the columnar vista into
narrower and narrower recesses.’  At Ely, ’aided by the printed guide, I
studied the whole of this elaborate and highly ornamental pile with a
particularity and a feeling of satisfaction greater than I had ever
before experienced.... Expatiated over this noble edifice for hours....
Dined with Mr. Evans at four, but made one more round of the cathedral
before dinner.’  On every occasion he was ready for the ascent of the
cathedral stair, even where such a climb was unusual; once, he tells us,
after the guide had refused to go further, how he came on some jackdaws’
nests on the steps, the owners being very much amazed at the sight of
visitors.  Nor did one climb in a day always suffice.  On 5th August he
climbed the tower of Boston Church in the morning, and that of Lincoln
in the afternoon—the one 351 steps, the other 336.  At this time he was
an elderly and not very lightly-built man of fifty-three.

Some gentlemen’s mansions, like Haddon and Chatsworth, were visited with
much interest.  But Chatsworth, with all its wonders, did not impress
him so much as some other castles.  What he liked was a grand baronial
residence, befitting the time when the owner was really the head of his
people, ready for any expedition which the public interest required, and
not merely a landlord drawing his rents.  Places that had a connection
with great men were peculiarly attractive.  We have noticed his
reverence for Trinity College, Cambridge, as the abode of Isaac Newton.
Kingston, near Canterbury, acquired a classic character, because the
rector’s wife was great-grandniece of Bishop Butler, and showed him a
snuff-box, a memorandum-book, and an annotated Greek Testament, which
had belonged to the author of the _Analogy_.⁴  In the immediate
neighbourhood of Kingston was the church where Richard Hooker
ministered.  House and church were accordingly visited.  And when he
came to Sunderland, its great interest was that Dr. Paley had been its
rector, and that he saw the study in which he wrote, the room in which
he died, and the field around which he took excursions on horseback.
Newton, Butler, and Paley were among the very chief of Chalmers’s
instructors and friends.

    ⁴ When asked to record in this Testament his opinion of Butler, he
      declined, because he did not feel worthy of the honour, but, being
      pressed, he wrote as follows: ’Butler is in theology what Bacon is
      in science.  The reigning principle of the latter is that it is
      not for man to theorise on the works of God; and of the former
      that it is not for man to _theorise_ on the ways of God.  Both
      deferred alike to the certainty of experience, as being paramount
      to all the possibilities of hypothesis; and he who attentively
      studies the writings of these great men will find a marvellous
      concurrence between a sound philosophy and a sound faith.  July 3,
      1833.’

Not less characteristic of the man were the free and friendly relations
into which he entered with some of the common people who were thrown in
his way.  Usually he travelled on the stage-coach, but occasionally he
hired a carriage, and not unfrequently a gig, with the driver at his
side.  He had the feeling that he would enjoy his holiday all the more
if it were mingled with a little study. Accordingly we find that, when
passing slowly in his gig over some monotonous part of the road, he
would pull from his pocket a grave book, like Mede’s Latin Lectures on
Prophecy, and have a spell of theological reading.  But his eye seemed
always to be open to any object of interest, whether in the scenery or
in the places he passed.  With his driver he entered into friendly
relations, although he sometimes found him a very dolt.  At Huddersfield
he hired a gig to carry him through some of the remarkable scenes of
Derbyshire.  The driver was a grave, silent, and simple lad of
twenty-two, and he made a practice of taking him with him to the caverns
and other places of interest that he visited.  At the Peak Cavern he had
to change his coat and hat, ’and a worse coat or a worse hat I never saw
on the back or head of any carter or scavenger in the land, insomuch
that I was a spectacle to the children of the village, who shouted and
laughed behind me, and even the driver of the gig could not restrain his
merriment.  I always take him to the sights along with me; first,
because I found a great ignorance of Derbyshire curiosities in
Huddersfield, and I want to make him more enlightened and enlarged than
his fellow-citizens; secondly, because I always feel a strong reflex or
secondary enjoyment in the gratification of other people, so that the
sympathy of his enjoyment greatly enhances my own; and thirdly, because
I get amusement from the remarks of his simple wonderment and not very
sagacious observations; and it has now passed into a standing joke with
me, when leaving any of our exhibitions, that "there is no such fine
sight to be seen at Huddersfield."’  At Chatsworth, the Doctor gave the
lad his hat and silver-headed cane to carry; he followed at a respectful
distance, while his master went before with a book in his hand, taking
notes of whatever was memorable.  He found afterwards that his
picturesque appearance and unusual employment had excited much
speculation among other visitors as to who he was, and that the
conclusion to which they all came was that he was a foreign nobleman.
At Matlock he parted with his driver, who, he found, could hardly read;
he warned him that many perish of lack of knowledge, and that he must
learn to study his Bible, which was able to make him wise unto salvation
through faith in Jesus Christ.

Chalmers did not always show the same patience and consideration for his
fellow-travellers.  Once, in Yorkshire, waiting at the door of the
coach-office, he found himself beside a herd of swine, whose motions and
operations he studied with interest; on the top of the coach he found a
company much of the same order—’fat and unintelligent, with only pursy
and vesicular projections on each side of their chins, and a
superabundance of lard in their gills, whose manners well-nigh overset
me, overloading our coach with their enormous carcasses, and squeezing
themselves, as they ascended from various parts of the road, between
passengers already in a state of compression, to the gross infraction of
all law and justice, and the imminent danger of our necks.’  It was
enough, he said, to make any man a Tory. Naturally, Chalmers had much of
the passion which bursts out in this bit of sarcasm; but, before the end
of his letter, he feels that he has gone too far, his better nature
asserts itself, and he gives utterance to a milder spirit.  ’I feel it
wrong to nourish contempt for any human being: "Honour all men," is the
precept of Scripture.  We should not despise any of those for whom
Christ died; and the tendency to do so is one of those temptations to
which refinement and knowledge are apt to expose us, and which ought to
be resisted.’  The ’old Adam’ was not extinct; but at the bottom of his
heart Chalmers wished him destroyed.

Even with a London barber he could have a merry time. To be sure the
barber began the fun, for he undertook, by clipping out all the white
hairs and leaving only the black, to make his client look forty years
younger.  This greatly tickled the Doctor, and he proceeded to
compliment the barber’s profession, inasmuch as, though he heard
universal complaints of a bad hay-crop, his haymaking in the metropolis
went on pleasantly and prosperously all the year round. On the
completion of the job, the man assured the Doctor that he looked at
least thirty years younger.  ’I told him how delighted my wife would be
with the news of this wonderful transformation, and gave him half a
crown, observing that it was little enough for having turned me into a
youthful Adonis.  We parted in a roar of laughter, and great mutual
satisfaction with each other.’

His tour in France was undertaken in 1838, on occasion of his reading
his paper to the French Institute, and lasted about a month.  He was
struck with the airiness and brightness of Paris, and the apparent
leisureliness of the people as compared with London; he remarked, too,
how inferior the equipages were to those of England.  Among other
persons of mark whom he met with were Guizot, who told him that the
combination of the moral and economical was wholly unknown in France;
Mignet, Madame de Staël, and the Duc and Duchesse de Broglie, with all
of whom, and many of their friends, he had most agreeable intercourse.
The duke had borne a distinguished part in political history; he was a
sort of head of the Liberal party, but with the utmost aversion to noise
and violence.  The duchess, a daughter of Madame de Staël, was a lady of
many gifts and of eminent piety.  The company of such persons,
aristocratic yet simple, cultured yet humble, and deeply interested in
the welfare of the people, was a great enjoyment to Dr. Chalmers.  But,
vanity of vanities! a few months after his visit, the duchess was cut
off by sudden illness, and the bright and happy home of the family made
desolate.  Dr. Chalmers expressed his sympathy in a very tender letter
to the afflicted duke.

Along with Mr. Erskine of Linlathen, whom he found at Paris, he made a
short provincial tour, embracing Evreux, Broglie, Alençon, Lemans,
Tours, Orleans, Malesherbes, and Fontainebleau.  The scenery pleased him
much; it was the kind he liked best, for he did not so much care for the
sublimely picturesque as for fertile valleys and well-wooded uplands.
While in France, he was much interested in the law of succession,
especially to landed property, and its effects on the condition of the
people.  He had supposed that, by giving rise to endless subdivision of
the land, the law must bring down the people to a very low standard of
living.  In point of fact, he found it less disadvantageous than he had
thought.  On one point he was more convinced than ever, that to elevate
a country, moral and economical forces must go together.


We must now glance at Chalmers in his family and inner life during this
busy and trying period of his life.  A man who is forming new
acquaintances by the hundred, and is constantly receiving the
enthusiastic applause of thousands, is in no small danger of two
things—of letting his home-affections become somewhat languid, and of
neglecting his inner life.  But in the case of Chalmers, we can find no
evidence of either of these results.  Shortly before his departure from
St. Andrews, his domestic affections had been profoundly stirred by the
death of his mother; and hardly had his first session in Edinburgh
closed, when he was called to follow to the tomb the remains of
Alexander, his youngest and favourite brother.  His journal for 25th
April 1829 has the following entry: ’It was a large funeral.  The sun
shone sweetly on the burying-place.  I was like to give way, when, after
leaving the grave, I passed Mr. Fergus; neither of us could speak.  Oh
that God would interpose to perpetuate the impressions of this day! This
is the fifth time within these few years that I have been chief mourner,
and carried the head of a relative to the grave.  But this has been far
the heaviest of them all.’

Dr. Chalmers himself had an alarming illness in 1834, though, happily,
it passed without serious results.  He had been at a meeting of the
Presbytery of Edinburgh, at which he had vehemently opposed the proposal
of the Town Council to curtail the number of the city ministers; and he
had been greatly excited by the thought that the real welfare of the
people should be obstructed and hindered by the very men who professed
to be their friends.  It was on this occasion that he proclaimed himself
a Radical, the only consistent Radical among them.  ’The dearest object
of my earthly existence,’ he then said, ’is the elevation of the common
people—humanised by Christianity, and raised by the strength of their
moral habits to a higher platform of human nature, and by which they may
attain and enjoy the rank and consideration due to enlightened and
companionable men.  I trust the day is coming when the people will find
out who are their best friends, and when the mock patriotism of the
present day shall be unmasked by an act of robbery and spoliation on the
part of those who would deprive the poor of their best and highest
patrimony.  The imperishable soul of the poor man is of as much value as
the soul of the rich; and I will resist, even to the death, that
alienation which goes but to swell the luxury of the higher ranks at the
expense of the Christianity of the lower.’

Dr. Chalmers was moved in the very depths of his soul—for the proposal
of the Town Council was a blow at the ruling idea of his heart—and he
delivered himself of these sentiments with such overwhelming energy that
his friends at the moment trembled for the consequences.  As he was
walking homeward after the meeting, on hailing a friend and taking his
arm, he suddenly stopped short, and said he felt very strangely.  His
sensations were giddiness, and a numbness on the right side, as if he
were going to fall.  It was but too evident that he had sustained a
slight attack of paralysis.  When medical aid was obtained, it was seen
that the muscles on the right side of his face were slightly paralysed,
and his speech somewhat affected.  Sensation over the right side was
very much impaired, but the mind was wholly untouched.  Rest and the
ordinary treatment soon restored him, and in a short time he was able to
resume all his ordinary studies and avocations.

But the event in his personal history that touched him more than
anything else during this period was the completion of his sixtieth
year, on 17th March 1840.  It was a favourite thought that the seventh
decade of life ought to be turned into a kind of Sabbath, and spent
sabbatically, as if on the shore of the next world, or in the outer
courts of the heavenly tabernacle.  In the case of his mother the last
years of her life had had something of this character, and Dr. Chalmers
longed for a like experience.  Deep in his soul lay the desire for
direct and deliberate communion with God, for he not only believed in
such communion as the greatest privilege of the human spirit, but he
knew that it brought to the worshipper an actual communication of divine
influence, so far as the creature was capable of receiving the divine.
’Oh that my heart were a fountain of gracious things,’ he wrote in his
diary on his sixtieth birthday, ’which might flow out with gracious
influence on the heads of my acquaintances, and more particularly of the
members of my family!’

So far as the seventh decade had been looked forward to as a time of
rest, the hopes of Dr. Chalmers were wholly frustrated.  The seven years
that yet remained to him, if not the very busiest of his life, were
years of peculiar tension, anxiety, and disappointment—things far more
trying to the vital energies than work itself.  The Church Extension
scheme had to be worked out at home under the depressing influence of
disappointment of Government help; and then came the crisis of the
conflict with the civil courts,—the negotiations with Government, the
taunts of Lord Aberdeen, the sickness of hope deferred, and, finally,
the shattering of the national church.  Though the Disruption brought
quieter times, it did not bring the rest and freedom from care for which
Chalmers longed; the entire fabric of the Free Church had to be set up,
and especially the Sustentation Fund; his longing for rest was but the
chase of an _ignis fatuus_ that seemed always to lead him deeper and
deeper into the fray.

Notwithstanding all, however, as time advanced, and his fame became more
and more established, no change ever took place in the simple and humble
demeanour of his spirit.  ’I never saw a man,’ said Joseph Gurney, ’who
appeared to be more destitute of vanity, or less alive to any wish to be
brilliant.’  In one of his home letters he gives his reason for refusing
all requests for his autograph: he could not bear anything that might
imply his desire to be considered a great man.

But, though rest and leisure seemed further away than ever, Dr. Chalmers
was determined that his seventh decade should not altogether want its
sabbatic character.  For this end, he resolved to make a far more
systematic and earnest study of the Scriptures.  In October 1841 he
began two series of readings—a daily and a Sabbath portion.  To impress
the lessons of each passage the more on his mind, he made use of his
pen, and carefully recorded the first, freshest, and readiest thoughts
that the passage read suggested to him; not with any view to
publication, nor with any idea of composing a commentary, but simply for
his own edification.  The Sabbath lessons, being a chapter for each
Sabbath day from the Old Testament and one from the New, were more
elevated and spiritual than the daily; and his remarks were often in the
form of a direct address to God.  This practice was continued with
undeviating regularity, no matter where he might be, or however much
engaged.  If the volumes in which he entered his remarks were not at
hand, he would write them in shorthand, and carefully extend them
afterwards.  In some of his meditations he would express in the frankest
manner the most hidden thoughts and feelings of his soul. It is
remarkable that one who, in his ordinary intercourse with men, seldom
unveiled his feelings, and did not appear in any special degree to be
under the influence of the unseen, should, nevertheless, in his
communings with God, have shown such frankness and such an intense
desire for divine guidance, and grace to enable him to follow it.  Dr.
Hanna well remarks, ’Behind the outer history of his life there lay that
inner spiritual history which made the other what it was.  His
correspondence, his speeches, his published writings, and his published
acts, which furnish such ample materials for unfolding the one history,
are absolutely barren as to the other.  We know of no other individual
of the same force and breadth of character who, in all his converse,
public and private, with his fellow-men, spoke so little of himself, or
afforded such slender means of information as to his own spiritual
condition and progress; and yet it would be difficult to name another of
whose deeper religious experience we have so full and so trustworthy a
record.’

It was the troubles of the church, and the profound responsibility
therewith connected, that so powerfully stimulated his desire for
fellowship and guidance from on high. Only those who lived at the time
can realise the exceeding bitterness of the tone of many opponents,
shown both by word of mouth and through the press; and their readiness,
if any prominent churchman should make a slip, to pounce upon him and
hold him up to the reprobation of the public. It is a mode of treatment
that has not yet become obsolete. Some sally of Dr. Chalmers’s had in
this way brought a nest of hornets about him—’Yet I am supported in a
way that is marvellous under every visitation.’  Under April 2, 1840, he
writes in his journal:—


’An utter prostration of spirit from the speech of Lord
Aberdeen.’—’April 3.  Recovered my spirits, but not my spirituality.
’June 8.  Sadly engrossed with the Dean of Faculty’s charge against me.
My God, uphold me!’—’June 21.  Have not yet recovered the shock of Lord
Aberdeen’s foul attack on me in the House of Lords.  May I live
henceforth in the perpetual sunshine of God’s reconciled
countenance!’—’July 5.  A letter yesterday from Dr. Gordon, enclosing
one from Lord Aberdeen, which will require a strenuous exercise both of
wisdom and charity.  My God, guide and govern all my movements!’—’July
17.  Hurt by a report in the _Witness_ of Lord Aberdeen’s saying in the
House that after having brought the church into jeopardy, I had left
them to find their way out of it as they could.  Recovered from this.
Desire to roll all over upon God.’


Alongside of these appeals to God for grace and wisdom in public life,
numberless passages occur in which one knows not whether to admire more
his profound humility or the intensity of his aspirations for a more
heavenly condition:—


’1841, May 17.  Cannot but remark how I gravitate to ungodliness.  Why
are my thoughts when alone and not studying so little occupied with God?
And oh that in company I might appear more for His glory!  Assist me to
do this in my family, and let me watch my opportunities for doing
Christian good....  Let me carry about with me a distinct confidence in
forgiveness through the blood of Christ, and with earnest desire of
showing forth His praise and learning His doctrine, let me try how this
confidence will work in me.  The fruits of righteousness so produced
will arise from the sense of my own nothingness, and have Christ alone
as their origin.’—’July 10. Am I not too light-hearted and too
luxurious, and altogether too self-indulgent?  Certain it is that in and
of myself I am altogether vile and worthless, and would need, in
dependence on grace alone, to have more of watchfulness unto prayer,
more of self-denial, and a far more tender sense of the evil of
ungodliness than habitually and practically belong to me.’—’July 4.
Never am I in a better frame than when dwelling in simple faith on
Christ’s offered righteousness, and making it the object of my
acceptation.  O Lord, I pray for more and more of the clearness and
enlargement of this view; and grant me the spirit of adoption.  Oh that
I could attain the experience of him who says, "I have believed,
therefore have I spoken"!’


One is constantly reminded in reading the private journals of Dr.
Chalmers of the 119th Psalm, with its remarkable combination of
profoundest humility and intense and holiest longing for conformity of
heart and life to the will of God.  And it does not surprise us to learn
that the text of Scripture which he felt to describe his own case most
correctly was the verse (20), ’My soul breaketh for the longing that it
hath unto Thy judgments at all times.’




                               CHAPTER VI

                         NEW COLLEGE, EDINBURGH

                               1843-1847


Gifted and mighty men though many of the leaders of the Disruption were,
Chalmers towered high above them all. With the multitude his illustrious
name gave a dazzling _éclat_ to the movement; with the thoughtful the
fact that a man of his sagacity, patriotism, and caution, and strong
proclivity to an established church, should have thrown himself heart
and soul into the non-intrusion cause, created the conviction that it
must be supported by very weighty considerations. What but the strongest
sense of fatal injury to the church could have induced him, after
electrifying London with pleadings for a national establishment of
religion, to forsake his own, and become practically a voluntary?  No
man felt his responsibility for the Disruption more deeply than
Chalmers; and no man laboured more assiduously in behalf of the Free.
Church, in the creation of which he had had such a share.  To the
General Assembly of 1843 he gave in the Reports of the Sustentation and
Building Committees, both of which were very encouraging.  The months of
August and September were spent in a tour to the east and north of
Scotland, on behalf of the Sustentation Fund. In October he attended an
extra meeting of the General Assembly at Glasgow, opening it with a
sermon from Nehemiah xi. 16.  In November he had to enter on his duties
as Principal and Professor of Divinity in the Free Church Theological
Institution, now known as the ’New College.’

It was natural for him to be very much cheered by the numberless letters
and visits of congratulation that came to the Free Church from every
quarter.  When even those who had as voluntaries been his most
inveterate opponents in his church endowment effort, came with their
warm and most brotherly salutations, a new hope of union sprang up that
rekindled hope for the highest welfare of Scotland.

Speaking to the General Assembly held at Glasgow in the autumn of 1843,
he said:—


’I confess to you that I was much interested by the arrival, by one post
after another, of those addresses and resolutions from various churches,
of whose very existence I was not aware till I received their letters.
And I think that every man, whose heart is in the right place, will be
delighted with such movements.  They are movements quite in my own
favourite direction, because one and all of them are movements of
convergency; or, in other words, movements which point in the first
instance to union, and, as soon as possible and prudent, I trust their
landing-place will be incorporation.  There is among them one very
pleasant address, signed by—I have not had time to count the names,—but
I believe some of the youngsters of my family tried a more wholesale
method of arriving at a probable estimate of the amount of support thus
given to the Free Church; instead of numbering, they measured it, and
found it about seventeen yards long....  I have felt exceedingly
delighted with these communications.  I must say that I consider it as
infinitely more characteristic of the religion which we profess—the
religion of peace and charity—that instead of each denomination sitting
aloft and apart upon its own hill, and frowning upon each other from
their respective orbits, they should hold kindly and mutual converse,
and see each other eye to eye, while they will discern, to their mutual
astonishment, if not how thoroughly, at least how substantially, they
are at one.  I just conclude with observing that now is the time to
rally about the common standard all that is pure and vital in
Protestantism; for now it is that we shall have to make head against a
new form and revival of Antichrist, whether in the form of Popery—naked
Popery, or Popery in disguise, even that Antichrist which threatens to
shake a most withering mildew over the whole of Christendom.’


The same views were expressed with equal emphasis at a general meeting,
held about the same time, in commemora tion of the two hundredth
anniversary of the Westminster Assembly.  And when the Evangelical
Alliance was projected, he wrote a pamphlet in its favour, expressing a
strong desire that it should be called the Protestant Alliance, and that
it should have for its double object the protection and promotion of the
cause of Protestantism; and, in his own familiar and favourite line, the
work of a great Home Mission.

Among the eminent strangers who visited Scotland about this time none
excited a livelier interest in Dr. Chalmers’s mind than Dr. Merle
D’Aubigné, who came in 1845, when in the full flush of his fame as the
popular historian of the Reformation.

At the Disruption there was a vast amount of work to be done, for it
would have required more than seven hundred churches to accommodate all
the congregations that adhered to the Free Church.  There were, besides,
many cases of peculiar difficulty, caused chiefly by the refusal of
proprietors to grant sites for churches and manses on their properties,
a refusal which on vast estates like those of the Duke of Sutherland or
the Duke of Buccleuch would have amounted to an absolute extinction of
the church.  Dr. Chalmers, however, under the influence of his strong
desire for a sabbatic decennium, kept clear of the ordinary work of the
church, excepting the Sustentation Fund and his college lectures.  As
for the college itself, it was mainly in the hands of Dr. Welsh, until
his lamented death in 1845, when Dr. Chalmers felt constrained to become
convener of the College Committee.  Among other services, Dr. Welsh took
in hand to provide for a college building, which it was proposed to
erect from the contributions of twenty subscribers of £1000 each.  This
was a serious undertaking at a time when the wealthier friends of the
church had been straining all their energies for the Building,
Sustentation, and Mission Funds.  But the whole sum was speedily
contributed in the way proposed, and though in the end the price of the
site and the cost of the building amounted to more than double the sum
named at the beginning, the whole was ultimately provided.  Such
liberality for college purposes was due in a great degree to the
profound regard in which Dr. Chalmers was held, and in a somewhat less
degree to his colleague Dr. Welsh.

It must be owned that Dr. Chalmers was not satisfied with the success of
the Sustentation Fund.  It had been adopted not only unanimously but
enthusiastically by the whole church, and considering all that had to be
done for other purposes, it was marvellous that in the first year it
amounted to £68,700, enough to furnish fully £100 to six hundred
ministers.  That, however, was but two-thirds of the amount which
Chalmers had named as the minimum payment to each minister from this
fund.  And, besides, there were many additional ministers to be provided
for, needed by the new adhering congregations; and moreover,—and this
was never absent from his thoughts—there was to be considered the vast
home-mission work needed in order to realise his lifelong desire to
overtake the whole spiritual destitution of the country.  It was the
inadequacy of the Sustentation Fund to realise this further object that
was the chief cause of his disappointment.  Moreover, he found in the
machinery of his scheme a serious leak, which bade fair to ruin it.
Every congregation was to receive an equal dividend for its minister
from this fund, whatever might be the amount of its own contributions.
In order that this provision might work satisfactorily, it was necessary
that congregations should make an equal effort for the fund. But it was
soon found that many congregations were steeped in selfishness, and,
while drawing their equal dividend, their contributions were but a
fraction of what they should have been.  Chalmers had calculated on a
brotherly spirit and a brotherly conscience, which he now found were
often wanting. He became alarmed for the future, and proposed a
modification of the original arrangement, to the effect that no
congregation should receive from the fund more than its own contribution
and a half more.  But it was too late.  The fund had been constituted on
the footing of an equal dividend, and there was a strong opposition to
the change.  Chalmers remonstrated by word of mouth and by pamphlets on
the ’Economics of the Free Church.’  All that the Assembly would allow
was that the new plan should be tried with new congregations.  But as
the new congregations were generally comparatively poor, the result was
something like starvation to their ministers; and, after a short trial,
the plan was given up.  But no one could deny the serious nature of the
evil that Chalmers had pointed out, and for many a long year there were
perplexed discussions as to the remedy.  Even now, though the leak has
been abundantly dealt with, it has not been quite overcome.  In his
remonstrances, Chalmers showed more vehemence than was perhaps
reasonable, considering that it was the defect of his own original
scheme that caused the difficulty.  But his vehemence was due to the
conviction that came home so strongly to him, that the Sustentation Fund
could not become the instrument of carrying out his dearly-cherished
project,—of recovering the whole waste-places of Scotland, and making
them parts of the vineyard of the Lord.  The thought saddened him, and
it led him to speak more disparagingly of what the Free Church had
accomplished, and what the Sustentation Fund had accomplished, than was
altogether deserved.

After experiencing three disappointments—from the Whigs, and the Tories,
and the Free Church, it might have been supposed that, all eager as he
was for rest and quiet, he would now let the matter alone.  But no.
There remained one other step.  By an _experimentum crucis_, by a
demonstration of what, under the divine blessing, could be done by his
scheme in as unfavourable a district as could be found, he might yet
vindicate it in the eyes of all men; he might leave behind him a
monument which would be a perpetual rebuke of the languor and
listlessness of the church; a perpetual encouragement to similar
undertakings, and a perpetual testimony to the maxim of John Eliot, the
apostle of the North American Indians, which he used often to quote,
that ’prayer and pains can do everything.’

This was the origin of the West Port experiment. Writing on 26th July
1844, just fourteen months after the Disruption, to his friend Mr.
Lennox of New York, the munificent founder of the Lennox Library and the
Lennox Hospital, New York, between whom and Dr. Chalmers there had
sprung up a very cordial friendship, he said: ’I have determined to
assume a poor district of two thousand people, and superintend it
myself, though it be a work greatly too much for my declining strength
and means.  Yet such do I hold to be the efficiency of the method with
the divine blessing, that perhaps, as the concluding act of my public
life, I shall make the effort to exemplify what as yet I have only
expounded.’

To prepare the way and interest the public in his scheme, he delivered
four lectures, in which the methods and advantages of territorial
schools and churches were set forth with his usual force.  Free Church
feeling was running very hieh at the time, and Dr. Chalmers was at great
pains to show that his undertaking was dictated solely by a regard to
the good of the people.  ’Who cares,’ he asked, ’about the Free Church,
compared with the Christian good of Scotland?  Who cares about any
church but as an instrument of Christian good?  For be assured that the
moral and religious well-being of the population is of infinitely higher
importance than the advancement of any sect.’

The district selected was of the worst description—a fourth part of the
whole population being paupers, and another fourth street beggars,
thieves, and prostitutes.  The population amounted to upwards of 400
families, of whom 300 had no connection with any church.  Of 411
children of school age, 290 were growing up without any education.  The
plan of Dr. Chalmers was to divide the whole territory into twenty
districts, containing each about twenty families.  To each district a
visitor was appointed, whose duty was to visit each family once a week,
under directions printed by Dr. Chalmers to show the specific object of
the visitation.  A school was provided, and the visitors were
instructed, in the first instance, to show an active interest in the
young, and exhort the parents to send their children to the school.  A
small fee was exacted, on the principle that what was paid for would be
more valued, and that a more regular attendance would be secured.⁵ The
visitors were instructed to meet with Dr. Chalmers every Saturday
evening, the first meeting taking place on 27th July 1844.  On the 6th
November, Dr. Chalmers held his first meeting with the people, telling
them all he would do for them, and all that they were expected to do for
themselves.  On 11th November, when the school was opened, there were 64
scholars; in the course of the year there were 250.  On the 22nd
December, public worship was commenced by Dr. Chalmers in a tan-loft.
The attendance was not encouraging after all the visiting that had been
going on—only about a dozen adults, and these mostly old women.  In
April 1845, the services of the Rev. W. Tasker were secured as
missionary-minister, and before the end of the year the nucleus of a
fair congregation had been formed.  A library, a savings-bank, a
washing-house, and a female industrial school were added to the
parochial equipments.  Dr. Chalmers preached and worshipped often in the
loft, met with the visitors, and addressed the people as new features
were added to the scheme.  ’When he was a hearer merely,’ says Mr.
Dodds, ’one would see him near the pulpit, in a crowd of deaf old women,
who were meanly clothed, but were following the services with unflagging
attention and interest. His eye was upon every one of them, to
anticipate their wishes and difficulties.  He would help one old woman
to find out the text; he would take hold of the psalm-book of another,
hand to hand, and join her in the song of praise. Any one looking at him
could see that he was in a state of supreme enjoyment.’  And most
earnestly did he pray for a blessing on the work, and that it might be
the forerunner of many such undertakings.

    ⁵ He used to speak with great delight of a poor woman, who told him
      that by going out at seven in the morning she earned enough, by
      raking among the ashes, to pay for the schooling of her eldest
      daughter, but wished the second also to attend.  His first impulse
      was to offer to pay for her, but that, he feared, would hurt her
      independence; so he said: ’What would you say to rise at six in
      the morning and earn enough to pay for her too?’ On the following
      Saturday she came to tell him she had done it.  ’I could have
      stood before her,’ he said, ’with cap in hand, for in truth she
      was above myself.’


’We would give Thee no rest, O God, until Thou hast opened the window of
heaven and caused righteousness to flow down that street like a mighty
river.’  ’Let such a memorial of Christian philanthropy be set up in
that place as to be a praise and an example both in the city of our
habitation and in other cities of the land.’  ’Reveal to me, O God, the
right tactics, the right way and method of proceeding in the management
of the affairs of the West Port.  Oh that I were enabled to pull down
the strongholds of sin and of Satan which are there!’  ’O my God, give
me the power of ordering matters aright in the West Port....  And more
especially, O God, let me understand Thy will in regard to the right
place and performances of a female agency.’  ’Draw close the affections
and affinity between Mr. Tasker and the families of the West Port....
Do Thou guide and encourage him, O Lord....  Oh may he not only be
himself saved, but may he be the instrument of salvation to many; and
may both he and I be carried in safety, and at length with triumph, to
that prosperous termination for which we are jointly labouring!’


We have no space to dwell further on the history of the West Port.  The
sweep of the experiment was complete. On 19th February 1847 a new church
was opened; and on the 25th April, one month before his death, Dr.
Chalmers administered the Lord’s Supper to the congregation.  On that
occasion he said to Mr. Tasker, ’I have got now the desire of my heart;
God has indeed answered my prayer, and I could now lay down my head in
peace and die.’ And he wrote to Mr. Lennox, ’I wish to communicate what
to me is the most joyful event of my life.  I have been intent for
thirty years on the completion of a territorial experiment, and I have
now to bless God for the consummation of it.’

It may be well to add that under Mr. Tasker and his successors the cause
has prospered greatly.  After being enlarged twice, the original church
still proved too small, and a new and spacious building was erected a
little way off.  The congregation now numbers upwards of 1300
communicants. Of course it is not wholly territorial; people that have
become attached to a church cannot be driven out of it when they leave
the neighbourhood; but the old building is still retained as a mission
church, and the territorial work continues.  In the Free Church in
Edinburgh the experiment was repeated many times, new territorial
churches in poor and needy districts having been erected at Holyrood,
Pleasance, Back of Canongate (Moray), Cowgate, Cowgate Head, and
Fountainbridge.  In Glasgow there have been many more, and several in
the other large towns of Scotland.  The Established Church has striven
with great success to have its extension churches endowed, thereby
carrying into effect the original idea of Chalmers.  And yet, in spite
of all this, the aim of Chalmers is as far from being realised as ever.
With the increasing population, the number of persons, in our large
towns especially, who have no connection with any church is larger than
in Chalmers’s time.  And, alas!  the wave of scepticism and of
secularism that is passing over us intensifies the evil and magnifies
the difficulty.

In connection with his public labours, it only remains for us to advert
to his work as professor of theology during the last few years of his
life.  It had long been his desire to reduce his lectures to a form that
would convey the fruits of his maturest reflections, both on the
credentials and contents of the Christian revelation.  When he began his
_Horæ Biblicæ Quotidianæ_ and _Sabbaticæ_, he began at the same time to
condense and reconstruct his lectures; the two works advanced _pari
passu_; the devout study of the Scriptures went hand in hand with the
endeavour, in the spirit of the Baconian philosophy, to present the
substance of their contents.  Hence arose his _Institutes of Theology_—a
work which has received far too little attention since German theology
began to supersede our own, but which may one day, in some future age,
be valued as it should.

But the great merit of Chalmers as a professor lay in the enthusiasm
with which he inspired his students.  It would have been hard indeed for
any conscientious youth to be under him and not feel his soul quickened,
at least occasionally, to a sublime ardour, and fired with a new
ambition. So wonderful was his influence, that at the Disruption
nine-tenths of those who passed through his classes stood by his side.
The present writer, though he spent but one session under him before the
Disruption, can bear testimony, not only to the intellectual and
spiritual impulse he gave, but to the subtle sympathy which drew his
students to share his church views, though he never alluded to them in
the class, and to the enthusiasm with which they listened to him in the
General Assembly.  He well knew that in the Free Church the mass of the
ministers would be but poorly paid, and that there was all the greater
reason why they should be well equipped by superior scholarship, and
especially by superior piety, for their office.  And in this he was
highly successful.  After three sessions in the Free Church College, he
could testify that the students of his last session stood the highest of
any he had known, not only in general proficiency and scholarship, but
also in their sense of divine things, and devotedness in heart and
spirit to the great objects of the Christian ministry.  In his later
years, it was his practice to invite his students to private interviews
for spiritual conversation and prayer.

On 4th June 1846, he laid the foundation-stone of the Free Church
College.  It had been considered a great stroke of policy that the most
commanding site in the city had been secured for the building.  The
writer of this sketch, who was present on the occasion, remembers his
grand appearance after the ceremony, when his noble head appeared above
a confused pile of stones and timbers; and, producing a scrap of paper
covered with shorthand hieroglyphics, he apologised, with a broad smile,
for taking to ’the paper,’ seeing it was but a scrap, whereas if he were
to speak extempore, his remarks might become an ’interminable
rigmarole.’  Not a little of the short speech was addressed to the
workmen engaged in the building.  That dear object of his life, to raise
the working population to a higher level of life in the best sense of
the word, came back on him in all its strength.  Within the walls to be
erected, there would be, he said, no false theories of equality taught
or countenanced; but there was one equality between man and man that
would be strenuously enforced,—the essential equality of human souls; it
would be taught that, in the high count and reckoning of eternity, the
soul of the poorest of nature’s children, the raggedest boy that ran
along the pavement, was of like estimation in the eye of Heaven with the
greatest and noblest of the land.  The young men in that college would
ever be taught that, though their education might fit them for the
company of princes and peers, it would be their peculiar glory to be
visitants of the poor man’s humble cottage, and to pray by the poor
man’s dying bed.  ’Heaven grant that the platform of humble life may be
raised immeasurably higher than at present, and through the whole extent
of it—that the mighty host who swarm upon its surface, brought under the
elevating power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and so rescued from
grovelling ignorance and loathsome dissipation, may rise to a full
equality with ourselves in all that is characteristic of humanity, and
take their place, along with us, side by side, on the footing of kindred
and companionable men.’  He then made a graceful allusion to the young
queen, who had mercifully escaped one of those horrible attempts on her
life that occurred in the earlier part of her reign; prayed that she
might long continue to adorn her exalted position, and concluded by
calling for three cheers on her behalf.  Thus the college of the Free
Church was founded on a cordial recognition of both ends of the social
scale: with benevolent wishes for the working multitude on the one hand,
and a cordial and loyal tribute to the Sovereign on the other.

The last of the public services rendered by Dr. Chalmers to the Free
Church consisted of a paper on the education question, and of his
evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons on the refusal of
sites.  It was about the time when the question of national education
was coming full into the arena of discussion; and, at the request of Mr.
Fox Maule, afterwards Earl of Dalhousie, Chalmers, who had given much
attention to the subject, recorded his views in a short paper.  The
difficulty was about the introduction of religion.  Dr. Chalmers’s view
was substantially that which was subsequently acted upon: he advised
that there should be no legislative enactment on the subject of
religion, but that the regulation of this should be left to the
governing bodies of the several schools.  Not that religion was
unimportant, but the very reverse; but because the Christian church was
so divided that it could be far better seen to by the local managers.
To this he added a conscience clause; the result being substantially the
system which prevails in Scotland at the present day.  He took occasion
to add, ’We despair of any good being done in the way of Christianising
our population but through the medium of a government themselves
Christian, and endowing the true religion, which I hold to be their
imperative duty, not because it is the religion of the many, but because
it is true.’

It was in the last month of his life that he set out for London, to meet
the Site Committee.  On the 9th May 1847 he preached in Marylebone
Presbyterian Church, ’with more comfort than I ever did in London.’
After replying to the questions put by the committee through Mr. Maule,
he encountered an onslaught from Sir James Graham, who came armed with a
bundle of papers containing speeches, etc., of Chalmers, by means of
which he thought to entangle him.  After his long examination before Sir
James appeared, Chalmers was somewhat exhausted, but he roused himself,
and met him in the spirit of a practised warrior.  The only point of
importance raised by Sir James arose out of the London lectures, in
which he had spoken very favourably of the Church of England.  ’I told
him that I did not advocate the Church of England; that I felt more
hopeful of it then than now, when like to be overrun by Puseyism; that
even then I denounced its figment of an Apostolical succession, and,
without directly attacking its Erastianism, spoke of our own
independence, and in terms which provoked the jealousy of English
churchmen,’ etc.  etc.  But a great part of the examination concerned
the voting of women at the election of office-bearers and the like; a
paltry question, as Dr. Chalmers called it, having no sort of reasonable
connection with the refusal of sites.  ’We concluded,’ Dr. Chalmers
wrote to his wife, ’in a state of great exhaustion, yet with an erect
demeanour and visage unabashed.’

We conclude with a glimpse of his more private life in the few years
preceding his death.  Unwearied as he ever was in his endeavour to
cultivate the affections of his children, and impress them with the most
serious responsibilities of life, his interest in them seems only to
have deepened as they grew up.  He began a series of monthly letters to
be addressed to each in succession, and carried it on for a considerable
time.  Two of his six daughters were married, but they were not excluded
from the privilege of his fatherly correspondence.  And by and by, a
grandson, Thomas Chalmers Hanna, was old enough to receive letters
fitted to interest him, and draw his affections to so loving a
grandfather. It is strange, indeed, that any biographer of Chalmers
should have represented him (as Mrs. Oliphant has done) as not showing
social affection.  ’My ever dear Anne,’ ’My dearest Eliza,’ ’My dearest
Grace,’ were his ordinary salutations, and the spirit of the letters
corresponded to the address.  Very touching is his letter to his eldest
daughter on the death of a beloved infant.  As for his grandson, he just
revels in affection.  ’Tell Tommy how much I love him, and pray for his
being good.’  On occasion of his last visit to London, he visited the
widow of his brother James, and prayed with her; a likeness of his
brother was shown him, and impressed him so much that it haunted him for
days.  This was the brother that had held himself so much aloof both
from him and all the family.

In his last visit to his native Anstruther and its neighbourhood, in
1845, his unchanged and unchangeable affection for the scenes and
friends of his youth showed a marvellous freshness and tenacity.  Many
are the stories of his pleasure in recalling memorials of the past.  He
hunted up an old schoolfellow, a tailor, and told him that he had been
the first to acquaint him with the form of the earth.  He congratulated
another schoolfellow, who, like himself, had suffered from smallpox,
that while other people’s faces were ’aye getting the waur, theirs were
always getting the better o’ the wear!’  He sought out the place where
Lizzie Green’s water-bucket used to stand, where he and his heated
playfellows had often been allowed very kindly to slake their thirst.
But most pathetic was his visit to the house of Barnsmuir.  When he was
some twelve or fourteen years old, the eldest daughter of that house had
been in the habit of riding into Anstruther on a little pony, and
Chalmers had conceived a deep and tender attachment to her, like that of
Lord Byron for his Mary Duff.  The young lady was married while he was
at college, and she had died many years before this visit.  At his
special request her youngest sister met him at Barnsmuir.  In the house,
the remembrance of that early love came upon him with singular power; he
asked respectfully about her life and death, and learned with deep
emotion that she had died in the full Christian hope, and that some of
his letters to her sister had soothed and comforted her.  He then asked
if there were any portrait of her, and being shown a profile, gazed on
it with great earnestness, fixed his own card on the back of it, and,
gazing on it again, gave expression to his strong affection, and burst
into a flood of tears.  It was a touching proof, as his biographer has
said, that he was as much distinguished for the tenderness and tenacity
of his attachments as for the brilliance of his gifts.

Dr. Chalmers was ever very simple, and yet in some respects singular, in
his habits of life.  Abstemious he was to a degree; ever watchful lest
he should at any time be in a condition of body that would interfere
with the activity of his intellectual and spiritual nature; at times, at
least, practising total abstinence, and always great moderation in both
food and drink.  It was his usual practice to spend the early part of
the day in composition and study; he so carefully excogitated his
subjects that he was ever ready to use his pen, never obliged to loiter
in order to form his plan or shape his thought, but able to write
rapidly as soon as the pen was in his hand, and seldom or never
correcting.  His handwriting was anything but elegant, yet very
characteristic; the upright letters, the firmness of each stroke, and
the continuity of the whole indicating decision, force, and flow. So
exact was his view, that he could calculate for weeks and months
beforehand the rate of his progress and the day when each piece of
writing would be finished.  His remarkable calculating or counting
faculty was brought into operation in what we should call fantastic
ways.  In stropping his razor, he would begin with two strokes, next day
three, and so on till he reached a maximum number; then he would reverse
the process and gradually diminish till he came back to two.  In walking
he put his staff to the ground regularly at each fourth step; counting,
if he chose, the number of his steps, and able to keep count even if he
should meet a friend and walk with him in animated conversation.  When
he lived in Inverleith Row he delighted to find new routes to the
university, and ascertain and record their several lengths.  One day, as
he told a favourite student, he had been trying to find a near road
between Comely Bank and Inverleith Row, but got entangled, as he put it
in his original way, ’in the accessories of a farmhouse, where I was set
upon by a mastiff, and so obliged to turn back.’  We have noted his
delight in ascending cathedral towers, and his invariable habit of
counting the steps.  At any famous stream he would lap the water, thus
making the connection more intimate between the stream and himself.  His
love of order was remarkable, though one might not have supposed it from
his general manner. It was through the power of orderliness that he was
able to achieve all he did within the compass of his life.  By varying
his employments,—now writing, now visiting or attending meetings, now
travelling, now preaching or lecturing, now entertaining friends, now
reading and pondering, he kept himself comparatively fresh, and seemed
at all times ready for new work.  ’_Nulla dies sine lineâ_’ might have
been his motto, had it not been that every day had half a dozen linea in
place of one.

His reading, after he became a professor, was considerable, partly in
theological books, partly in books of practical religion, and to a small
extent in general literature.  So little direct sign of anything
Shakespearean is there in his writings that it rather surprises us to
find him recording towards the end of his life that he had completed an
entire perusal of the great dramatist, as well as of Milton and Gibbon.
He considered Shakespeare ’an intellectual miracle, the greatest man
that ever lived.’  His favourite piece was _Midsummer Night’s Dream_,
showing, as Dr. Peter Bayne has remarked, ’that after all the struggles
and worries of his life, he still walked in the aerial gaiety, the
many-tinted, summerlike beauty, the genial though keen sagacity of that
poem.  It is a very remarkable circumstance, telling of a gentleness of
nature, a kind, gleesome humour, an exuberant, unstrained force and
freshness of intellect, rarely seen among theologians.’

In the prosecution of his incessant labours, he was no doubt
considerably helped by his sense of humour.  He knew well the relaxation
and the refreshment derived from a good laugh.  Many a humorous story he
used to tell. One of his favourite stories referred to a boor who was
getting married, but was such a dolt that he could not give an answer to
the questions of the minister.  One of the man’s neighbours who was
present, chagrined at such want of manners, and desiring to give the
fellow a needed lesson in etiquette, gave him a slap on the back, and
said, ’Ye brute, can you no’ boo to the minister?’  And it mattered not
if the story told against himself.  When the astronomical discourses
were delivered, Dr. Chalmers came on an honest woman who had been
hearing one of them, and was curious to know what she could make of it.
’Weel, sir,’ said the woman, ’I canna say that I understood ye
a’thegether, but, O sir, there was something unco suitable and
satisfyin’ in your psalms!’

During his visit to London in connection with the Site Committee in May
1847, he had greatly enjoyed his intercourse with many friends—among
them Isaac Taylor, James Hamilton, Baptist Noel, Mr. Morell, and Thomas
Carlyle. He described Carlyle as ’a strong-featured man, and of strong
sense.  We were most cordial and coalescing, and he very complimentary
and pleasant; but his talk was not at all Carlylish; much rather the
plain and ordinary conversation of good, ordinary common-sense, with a
deal of hearty laughing on both sides.’  Chalmers greatly lamented the
alienation which he saw between the churches and the body of literary
and scientific men.  He enlarged on ’localism’ and the West Port;
nothing was too hard for ’localism.’  Carlyle remarked afterwards to a
friend, ’What a wonderful old man Chalmers is!  or, rather, he has all
the buoyancy of youth.  When so many of us are wringing our hands in
hopeless despair over the vileness and wretchedness of the large towns,
there goes the old man, shovel in hand, down into the dirtiest puddles
of the West Port of Edinburgh, cleans them out, and fills the sewers
with living waters.  It is a beautiful sight.’

After a flying visit to Brighton, where he preached for one of his
former students, he proceeded to Gloucestershire, and spent a happy time
with his ever dear sister Jane.  On Sunday he preached his last sermon
in the Independent chapel of the Rev. Mr. Dove, from the text Isaiah
xxvii. 4, 5.  A brief visit was paid at Darlington at the house of Mr.
and Mrs. Backhouse, ’a most delicious abode.’ He was profoundly
interested in Mrs. Backhouse’s account of the heavenly state of mind of
her father for some time before his death; while Mrs. Backhouse was
herself deeply struck with the very same spirit in him.  During this
visit the whole of his journal letters had been addressed to his wife;
on Thursday (the 27th) he wrote to her, ’This is my last sheet.
To-morrow evening I expect to see you by the favour of Him whose right
hand preserves us continually, and for whose grace on us all I ever
pray.—I ever am, my dearest Grace, yours most affectionately, Thomas
Chalmers.’

He arrived at his house in Morningside on the Friday evening (2 8th
May), apparently in his usual health and strength.  On the following
morning, at breakfast, his conversation was as lively and vigorous as
ever.  The forenoon of the Saturday was occupied in preparing the
College Report, which he was to give in on Monday to the General
Assembly.  On the Sabbath morning he conversed freely with the Rev. Mr.
Gemmel, who was staying at his house; afterwards with Dr. Cunningham;
then attended afternoon service in Morningside Free Church, and on his
way home called on Mrs. Coutts, an old Fifeshire friend, of high
Christian character.  Part of the evening was spent in writing to his
sister, Mrs. Morton, and in conversation with Mr. Gemmel.  His family
never saw him more genial and happy.  After worship, he bade his family
remember that they must be early to-morrow; then he waved his hand and
said, ’A general good-night.’

On the following morning he was found dead in bed.  It seemed likely,
from the state of the body, that his spirit had departed soon after he
lay down.  There was not the slightest trace of struggle, either on the
face or in the attitude of the body.  Never did death give a lighter
touch.

In a funeral sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Lindsay Alexander, the mode
of his departure was beautifully idealised.  He recalled a passage in
one of Dr. Chalmers’s sermons, in which he fancies a man ’standing on
the margin of this green world,’ and feeling himself very closely bound
to ’the region of sense, and of life, and of society’; but suddenly
arrested by seeing some happy island of the blest floating past, ’in the
light of its surpassing glories, and its sounds of sweeter melody, and a
purer beauty resting on every field’: discerning also in its inhabitants
’a peace, and a piety, and a benevolence that put a moral gladness into
every bosom, and united the whole society in rejoicing sympathy with
each other, and with the beneficent Father of them all’; observing,
moreover, signals of welcome for himself, and an open pathway of
communication to the island; insomuch that he is captivated by the
sight; earth becomes a wilderness, and ’the land of invitation’ attracts
him with irresistible power.


’With this grand passage in my mind,’ said Dr. Lindsay Alexander,’ I
could not but fancy him who uttered it, as realising at the moment of
his departure some of the features of the case here supposed.  I
pictured to myself how, when the premonitory touch of the Destroyer
broke his slumbers, he might imagine for a moment that he had been
summoned to his appointed work, and how, casting his eye upon the
materials he had prepared, he might begin to turn, with no reluctant
emotion, his thoughts upon the duties with which he was charged; but in
an instant another scene burst upon his view; a brighter radiance than
that of the morning sun fell upon his brow; sweeter voices than those of
wife or child broke upon his ear; a grander career of service than any
earth could furnish stretched before him; the hand of One more glorious
far than any child of man hung out to him the signals of welcome; and,
as he gazed, he acknowledged the superior claims of that brighter world,
and laid himself meekly down, and so his spirit passed rejoicingly away,
leaving his earthly tabernacle with a smile upon the lips, and not one
shade of suffering on the brow.’


On that Monday morning, the General Assembly met to receive his College
Report.  When the sad news came, the shock was so overwhelming that it
would have been impossible to look at business, even if respect for his
memory had not demanded an adjournment.  As men recovered somewhat from
the first shock, the sense of bereavement, of impoverishment, of
widowhood, grew the greater.  There were many men of extraordinary gifts
in that Assembly, but who was there to be named with him?

An unprecedented concourse of mourners, much greater than had ever been
seen at an Edinburgh funeral, followed his body to the grave.  And from
every pulpit, and from other quarters innumerable, the most respectful
and cordial tributes were paid to his memory.  It was felt that since
the days of Knox no such man had been known in the Scottish church.  His
greatness was shown alike by what he was and what he had done.  He
seemed to combine the orator and the statesman, the ecclesiastic and the
patriot, the philosopher and the poet, the scientist and the saint. No
man had ever been so run after as a pulpit orator.  No man of his day
had ever conceived so great undertakings or done so much to realise
them.  His two hundred churches astonished every one; his Sustentation
Fund astonished still more.  With theology in the forefront, his horizon
included philosophy, physical science, social science, political
economy, and literature; and for each and all of these he found a place
and a use in the Kingdom of God.  And with all his greatness he was
simple as a child.  Like his Master, ’he made himself of no
reputation’—never sought great things for himself.  The world, and even
the church, hardly knew how near he lived to God—how much he had of the
saint.  He was known to be very affable and affectionate, but the depth
and tenderness of his affection, especially for his own family, were
hardly suspected.  When it was announced that, with all his gifts and
graces, he had passed from among his brethren, it seemed as if the
brightest star in the firmament had ceased to shine.

It is an interesting question—if Chalmers had been alive at the present
day, what would he have thought of the position of the different
branches of the Scottish church, and what counsel would he have given to
them on the subject of union?

To answer these questions we must bear two things in mind: first, that
he held the recent treatment of the church by the civil courts, and
virtually by the state itself, to be destructive of her liberty and her
life, insomuch that it had become an absolute necessity to abandon
connection with the state; but, second, that he held the state bound to
contribute to the support of the church, and the Free Church bound to
return to her old connection, provided the liberty should be restored
and practically secured of which she had been unrighteously deprived.

Would he, then, have held that liberty to be now restored, and the way
to an honourable, safe, and beneficial alliance reopened?  We doubt it.
He would certainly have seen that, in point of fact, the Established
Church now enjoys a degree of liberty that enables her to discharge the
ordinary functions of a Christian church without obstruction, and in
particular to continue with great success that very enterprise of church
extension for which he thought that she would be able to do nothing.
But he could not have failed to see that this liberty was an indirect
fruit of the Disruption, and that it was quietly conceded to the
Established Church in order that she might stand practically on the same
platform of liberty with the nonconformist churches, and especially her
great rival the Free Church.  He would have found no concession of
principle, no acknowledgment by the state or by the civil courts of an
essential difference between a Christian church and a civil corporation,
and no acknowledgment that the church, as the creation of Christ,
enjoyed privileges from Him independent of any state.  He would have
found no repudiation of the dictum of the then Lord President that the
Established Church had no jurisdiction whatever in the country except
what had been conferred by the state; and he would have found no
security that if a new collision should occur between church and state,
between the worldly and the spiritual power, the state would repudiate
her old principles and policy.

Further, the contention of Chalmers in his London lectures and in his
latest deliverance (see p. 148) always was, that the state ought to
support religion, not merely because people wished it, but because the
religion was true.  Would he, then, have found in the members of the
present Parliament any such value for revealed truth, as such, as would
have given him confidence in them as its guardians?  A Parliament that
numbered Agnostics, Jews, Roman Catholics, Unitarians, and what not
among its members—how could such a body be a nursing-father or a
nursing-mother to the Christian church?  Such a Parliament could not
safely be intrusted with its guardianship. It was a very different
condition of things when the Scottish church allied itself to the
Scottish Parliament, all or nearly all being members of the church.  Nor
could he have found any cause for believing that at any future time,
within reasonable distance, the nursing of the church could be safely
committed to parliamentary hands.

But what then?  There were three great Presbyterian churches in
Scotland, with much of their resources wasted through division, but
capable, by reasonable arrangements, of so combining their forces that
his grand object—the bringing of all Scotland under the influence of
Christian teaching—might at the least be greatly advanced.  We can
hardly conceive of any other advice that Chalmers would have given than
that the vinculum of state-connection should be severed, and all the
three churches should unite, and rouse themselves for one great,
sustained, imperial effort to turn the country into the garden of the
Lord. But what of the endowments?  It is just as difficult for us to
conceive that he would have been in favour of alienating them to secular
purposes.  No, he would have said, that is not necessary, and should not
be; keep them for their original purpose, and place them under some
public management, so that every congregation of the united body may
have a share of them, if it please.  This was certainly his feeling in a
somewhat parallel case.  In 1833, when the Irish Church Reform Bill was
under discussion, Chalmers wrote to his sister, Mrs. Morton, ’I am
relieved by the bill, the only flaw in it (although that may be one of
deadly mischief) being the secularisation of the sum which they expect
from the sale of church lands.’⁶  We can readily conceive how the great
soul of Chalmers would have expanded once more, and his face beamed as
the hope arose anew, that even yet his beloved country might realise his
magnificent ideal, and, by God’s blessing on the labours of a united
church, its waste and desolate places might yet blossom as the rose.

    ⁶ _Correspondence of Dr. Chalmers_, p. 216.

No doubt, Chalmers died a disappointed man, so far as his great scheme
for the good of his country was concerned. He failed, and yet he did not
fail.

      ’If he strained too wide,
    It was not to take honour, but give help;
    The gesture was heroic.  If his hand
    Accomplished nothing—(well, it is not proved)
    That empty hand thrown impotently out
    Were sooner caught, I think, by One in heaven
    Than many a hand that reaped a harvest in,
    And keeps the scythe glow on it.’


We love the man for his noble aims and heroic efforts; and our love and
admiration are only touched with a tenderer feeling, in that, when he
failed, he did not abate one jot of heart or hope for his church and
country, but left behind him his West Port experiment as a monument of
what was possible, and an encouragement to all future generations to
continue to cherish what had proved for him—a hope unfulfilled.








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