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 Walker, Norman L. 
 Thomas Chalmers 
 
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 THOMAS CHALMEES. 
 
Thomas Chalmers 
 
 ins LIFE AND ITS LESSONS. 
 
 EEV. NORMAN L. WALKER, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "ROBERT BUCHANAN, D.D., AN ECCLESIASTICAL BIOGRAPHY, 
 " OUR CHURCH HERITAGE," ETC. 
 
 bonbon: 
 
 T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 EDINBURGH; AND NEW YOKK. 
 
 1880. 
 
'}§>xdixcc. 
 
 OR the whole story of the life of Chalmers 
 the reader must be referred to the every- 
 way admirable Biography by Dr. Hanna. 
 The only drawback to that work is its large- 
 ness. It could not have been made less, indeed, 
 without doing injustice to its subject; and it is a 
 great thing that we have so complete a record of 
 such a remarkable history. But there is a demand 
 in these days for compendious information about 
 everything, and there seems a special propriety in 
 supplying such information about Chalmers during 
 the present year. The volume now published is not 
 an abridgment of the standard Biography. It is a 
 strictly independent work. But the writer has 
 throughout followed, as far as possible, in the foot- 
 steps of Dr. Hanna, and has quoted from him 
 frequently. When any sentence occurs in the sue- 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 ceeding pages within marks of quotation, but without 
 special acknowledgment, it is to be understood as 
 taken from his book. Our object has been to give 
 a bird's-eye view of a career which may safely be 
 called that of the greatest Scotchman of the century. 
 The story in itself reads like a romance, it is so full 
 of stirring incident. But it has a public as well as 
 a private and personal value; for the life stretches 
 over a memorable era in our history, and we may all 
 learn lessons from what it tells of the past, for our 
 guidance in the present and the future. 
 
 NORMAN L. WALKER. 
 
 February 1880. 
 
®"0n tents. 
 
 FROM HIS BIBTH TO HIS IXTELLECTUAL AWAKENING, 
 
 FUOJI THE BIRTH OF HIS INTELLECT TO HIS CONVERSION 
 
 FROM HIS CONVERSION TO HIS REMOVAL TO GLASGOW, 
 
 THE TEON, ... 
 
 ST. JOHN'S, ... 
 
 ST. ANDREWS, 
 
 FIR.ST YEARS IN EDINBURGH, ... 
 
 EFFORTS AT CHURCH REFORM AND EFFICIENCY, 
 
 FIGHT FOR A FREE ESTABLISHED CHURCH, 
 
 ORGANIZATION OF A FREE DISEST.\BLISHED CHURCH, 
 
 LAST YEARS, 
 
 A BACKLOOK, 
 
 9 
 15 
 36 
 
 48 
 
 67 
 
 78 
 
 94 
 
 107 
 
 123 
 
 146 
 
 163 
 
 17i 
 
THOMAS CHALMEES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 FROM HIS BIRTH TO HIS INTELLECTUAL AWAKENING. 
 
 IHE German schoolmaster who every morning 
 bowed so respectfully to his pupils, on the 
 principle, as he explained, that he saw among 
 ^ them the burgomasters and town-councillors of 
 the future, was, I daresay, something of a time server. 
 Yet there was some sense and shrewdness in the practice 
 which he followed. For every new generation contributes 
 its own contingent of leaders, and nobody can tell in ad- 
 vance in what quarter these may appear. 
 
 Indeed, genius has an odd habit of turning up where it 
 is not looked for at all. When you want flowers of more 
 than ordinary beauty, you seek them in the garden, of 
 course ; you know that such things are to be found, not on 
 the common, where they are exposed to every wind that 
 blows, but in places where the soil is good, and where 
 they have had the benefit of care and culture. It is 
 natural to suppose that a like law should rule in human life; 
 — that is, that great men should always rise in localities 
 where the outward conditions are favourable ; in cities, for 
 
10 FROM HIS BIRTH TO HIS INTELLECTUAL AWAKENING. 
 
 example, where civilization has been carried to the highest 
 possible pitch ; and in families, where all the appliances of 
 a high-class education have been going on for several gen- 
 erations. But in point of fact such a law is not found to 
 be in operation. Greatness does not run in the grooves 
 we make for it. In quite unexpected places, and at quite 
 unexpected times, the quality appears which raises a man 
 above his fellows ; and the world recognizes it as some- 
 thing which it cannot manufacture. 
 
 And there is one good and ob\ious reason for the un- 
 certainty in which we are kept about this matter. The 
 gift of a truly great man is the very greatest which can be 
 bestowed upon a generation. The discovery of a gold or 
 diamond mine must ever be a notable event in any country's 
 history. It tends to increase its population, and to add 
 in many ways to its material comforts. But wealth of that 
 sort has its drawbacks, and neither California nor Australia 
 has been, on the whole, much the better for its riches. There 
 can be no doubt, however, about the permanent benefits con- 
 ferred by a man who has at once genius and grace. It is 
 not too much to say of him that he contributes to the en- 
 largement of even the temporal resources of the community 
 to which he belongs ; for when people become more intelli- 
 gent, and honest, and industrious, and frugal, they come 
 to have what is really equivalent to gold. In any case, 
 by making his age more virtuous, he makes it happier. 
 Such a man, therefore, is a great gift of God. And it is 
 right that that fact should be rendered conspicuous. For 
 this reason we are always kept in doubt as to where our 
 next luminary is to appear. That we may realize the ex- 
 istence of a divine government, God keeps the reins in 
 his own hand, and sends us leaders as he thinks best. 
 We cannot make them. We cannot command their appear- 
 
FROM HIS BIRTH TO HIS INTELLECTUAL AWAKENING. 11 
 
 ance when we please. And when one comes, we are bound 
 to regard the circumstance as a new and special act of 
 divine interposition in the affairs of men. 
 
 It is no disparagement to the old Fife burgh which gave 
 birth to the greatest Scotchman of the century to say, that if 
 the age had begun to speculate beforehand as to the quar- 
 ter in which its next hero was likeliest to appear, it would 
 not have thought of Anstruther. There were then in exist- 
 ence Scottish cities of the highest reputation for intelli- 
 gence toward which the eye would have turned much more 
 naturally. And so with the family from which Chalmers 
 sprang. He had a most respectable ancestry. Among his 
 " forebears " were ministers (one or two of them doctors of 
 divinity), and even lairds. But if a visitor had had paraded 
 before him the four teen children of Mr. John Chalmers, 
 " Dyer, Shipowner, and General INIerchant," and had been 
 told that the sixth of the number was destined to make his 1 
 mark upon the period,— that his admiring fellow-country- \ 
 men would erect his statue in one of the streets of their 
 capital, — and that the centenary of his birth would be cele- 
 brated as an incident of national interest and importance, 
 — he would have felt probably as much surprise as Samuel 
 did when the ruddy youth, who had been hastily sum- 
 moned from the sheepfolds, was introduced to him as the 
 chosen one who was to be king over God's people Israel. 
 
 Every American citizen, they say, cherishes the hope 
 that his first-born may become President of the United 
 States. Our aspirations in this country are more modest. 
 We allow ourselves to dream in like circumstances only of 
 "a peerage or Westminster Abbey." But in neither case 
 is the imagination absolutely unwarrantable. It is just as 
 true in ordinary life as it is in Scripture history. When- 
 
12 FROM HIS BIRTH TO HIS INTELLECTUAL AWAKENING. 
 
 ever there is a work to do God finds one to do it ; and 
 there is, so far as we can tell, an equal chance of the doer 
 being discovered in town or country, in the family of a 
 rich man, or in that of one who has a struggle to main- 
 tain for bread. 
 
 The facts connected with the earliest chapter in the life 
 of Chalmers can be stated in a sentence or two. He was 
 born on the 17th of March 1780, and went to school at 
 ' the early age of three — chiefly to escape the tyranny of a 
 nurse, who did much to make his home-life miserable. In 
 November 1791, before he was twelve, he was enrolled as 
 a student in the University of St. Andrews ; and he had 
 been at college for two full sessions before he wakened up 
 to the consciousness of possessing those intellectual powers 
 in the employment of which he was to find in his after 
 history so much enjoyment. The date of this memorable 
 experience was the winter of 1793-4 — years which, we 
 cannot forget, made the birth-time of modern Europe. 
 
 It is natural to search through this first stage of his life 
 in order to ascertain if there was anything in it to show 
 that the boy was father of the man. There is not much to 
 tell, however, of special significance. That he was strong, 
 merry, generous, fond of play, and good at it, can be 
 aflBrmed of many who never afterwards became anything 
 in particular. Nor can much stress be laid upon the 
 circumstance that at a very early period he resolved to 
 be a minister. There was much in his surrovmdings to 
 suggest such a thought. His parents were pious people, 
 and were, no doubt, on terms of intimacy with the inhabi- 
 tants of various adjoinuag manses. And, besides, the 
 time was when Scotch boys who had any thought in 
 them were apt to turn to the pulpit almost instinctively. 
 
FROM HIS BIRTH TO HIS INTELLECTUAL AWAKENING. 13 
 
 But a few other things were noted which did seem to 
 contain in them a more certain prophecy as to the future. 
 One was the extraordinarily keen interest which he so soon 
 manifested in the PilgnHL? Progress and in the Pictorial 
 Bible. There was a third book which also took his fancy. 
 This was a sort of romance ascribed to Bishop Berkeley, 
 and describing marvellous adventures among the Algerine 
 pirates. But Scripture scenes laid the strongest hold upon 
 his imagination ; and, in illustration of this, it is told that 
 when one evening he was missed after dark, he was found 
 alone in the nursery, pacing up and down, and repeating 
 to himself in an excited way, " my son Absalom, 
 Absalom, my son, my son ! " He was then only three ' 
 years of age. This love for the Pictorial Bible remained 
 with him through life, and Kitto's edition became his un- 
 failing companion through all his very precious devotional 
 readings. 
 
 One reason why Chalmers was so little stirred during 
 his first two years at college was that his preliminary school 
 education had been so imperfect. He had been under two 
 masters in Anstruther, neither of whom seems to have 
 possessed remarkable gifts ; but it was not their fault 
 altogether that when he went to the university he could 
 not spell his own tongue. This was owing mainly to his 
 own idleness. A boy of twelve ought not, under any cir- 
 cumstances, to have been made a student of, but the step 
 taken in his case was particularly unreasonable. For he \ 
 had given no evidence beforehand of having acquired \ 
 studious habits ; and in the end his friends ought to have 
 felt thankful that no worse thing happened to him than 
 this, that he practically missed the prelections of Dr. 
 Hunter, one of the best classical scholars of the day, and 
 spent the greater part of his time on the links, expending 
 
14 FROM HIS BIRTH TO HIS INTELLECTUAL AWAKENING. 
 
 his superfluous energy on the game of golf, or seeking 
 occasional relief from that in the still more exciting sport 
 of football. 
 
 And yet, one cannot on the whole regret that his life 
 had such a beginning. Infant prodigies have not usually 
 developed into much. Chalmers would never have become 
 the man he was if he had had no genuine boyhood — if our 
 first pictures of him had shown a youth eschewing play, 
 poring ceaselessly over books, and growing prematurely 
 old with the pale and sickly hue of overthought. What 
 distinguished him in after life was this, that he was so 
 ma.nly and whole-souled ; and we do not doubt that what 
 helped to make him so, was the free, outgoing, open-air, 
 unconstrained habits of his earlier years. That robustness 
 of- body which came to be so useful to him when he was 
 called to mount the high " lands " of the Saltmarket, was 
 gotten or strengthened on the sand bents of St. Andrews; 
 and the physical vigour which he then acquired had, we 
 may also allow ourselves to think, something to do with 
 the healthy tone and wholesome robustness of his mind. 
 
 Besides, it is not for a moment to be supj^osed that, 
 because his conscious intellectual awakening did not take 
 place till he was fourteen, there was no real progress being 
 sooner made in his education. He himself spoke at a 
 later period of his special indebtedness to Dr. Hunter ; 
 and such direct influence as he could have exerted upon 
 him must have been put forth during the two years of 
 nominal idleness. Insensibly the preparation of his mind 
 for activity was going on, and he probably learned a great 
 deal more than either he or his friends were at all aware of. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 FROM THE BIRTH OP HIS INTELLECT TO HIS CONVERSION. 
 
 HE first subject which thoroughly awakened 
 the interest of Chalmers was mathe matics. 
 Professor Vilant, whose duty it was to teach 
 that branch of learning in St. Andrews, was 
 an invalid, and was obliged to employ assistants. The 
 assistant who happened to be in charge in 1793-4 was 
 Dr. James Brown, afterwards Professor of Natural Philo- 1 
 sophy in Glasgow ; and it was to him that Chalmers owed,i 
 in a sense, the birth of his intellect. 
 
 " Of all the professors and instructors with whom I 
 have ever had to do," so he wrote after Dr. Brown's 
 death, "he is the one who most powerfully impressed me, 
 and to the ascendency of whose mind over me I owe 
 more, in the formation of my tastes and habits, and in 
 the guidance and government of my literary life, than to 
 that of all the other academic men whose classes I ever 
 attended." 
 
 He afterwards showed, in eloquent and even indignant 
 terms, how utterly absurd are the popular notions about 
 mathematics. " It is not," he argued, " a dry and mechanical 
 study, in which there is nothing to stir the enthusiasm of 
 ingenuous youth. Its fascinations are manifold and over- 
 powering." So, at any rate, he himself found them to be. 
 
16 FROM THE BIRTH OF HIS INTELLECT 
 
 He was deeply moved by the new views which now opened 
 before him ; and it was only after many years, and when 
 other and higher interests came to absorb his mind, that 
 the spell which was now woven around him was in some 
 measure dissolved. 
 
 But there were also other things which contributed to 
 complete the mental awakening which he now began to 
 experience. He became keenly interested in ethics and 
 politics. It was, indeed, hardly possible for any thought- 
 ful person to avoid that in those days. It was the time 
 of the first French Revolution, when many questions 
 which were assumed to be settled were thrown anew into 
 the crucible, and when men were compelled to look at 
 points bearing on the constitution of nations not from the 
 arbitrary and conventional standpoints of this party or 
 the other — of Wliig and Tory, for example — but in the 
 light of what was demanded by the principles of eternal 
 justice. 
 
 The Avell-known work of Godwin fell in Chalmers's way 
 at this time, and the reading of it produced a profound 
 impression upon his mind. That impression was strength- 
 ened by intercourse with certain " brave spirits " who had 
 come under the peculiar influence of the era, and by 
 whom what they called Toryism and Calvinism were 
 alike regarded with contempt. The Moderatism wath 
 which, at this time, St. Andrews was overrun helped to 
 create the very kind of atmosphere most congenial to 
 free thinking. And for a season it actually seemed as if 
 Chalmers were going to let go such moorings as he had 
 had, and to drift entirely and unresistingly down the 
 stream. 
 
 1 "What arrested him and prevented this catastrophe was 
 \ President Edwards's famous " Treatise on the Freedom of 
 
 (636) ' 
 
TO HIS CONVERSION. 17 
 
 the Will." That book affected him in an extraordinary- 
 way. Fitting in, as it did, so far with what he had 
 already received from Godwin, he was prepossessed in 
 its favour from the very outset. Both writers taught 
 distinctly the doctrine of Necessity. Chalmers soon 
 found, however, that Edwards had by far the more sub- 
 lime conceptions of the two. Teaching that the whole 
 series of events in the spiritual as well as in the material 
 universe are linked unalterably together, he showed behind 
 these not a blind law, but a living_Person — God — direct- 
 ing freely the development of the system. With this idea 
 the young student became "nothing short of enamoured." 
 For nearly a twelvemonth he was in a sort of " mental 
 elysium." The world presented itself to him in an 
 entirely new aspect. The greatness and power and all- 
 pervading energy of a Supreme Being filled his mind 
 continually ; and by such an air of what looked like piety 
 did he come to be surrounded, that crowds gathered to 
 the public hall at times to hear him pray ! The prayers 
 which he offered on those occasions revealed the state of 
 his mind. There was in them a wonderful flow of elo- 
 quent words, containing vivid and ardent descriptions of 
 the divine attributes ; but they were intellectual efforts 
 only, and displayed no consciousness whatever of spiritual 
 need. In consequence of these changes, however, he grew 
 to be a marked man in his university, and already some 
 of his fellow-students were taking note of his talents and 
 of the promise he was giving of future eminence. 
 
 In 1795 he was enrolled as a student of divinity. In 
 1796 he paid his first visit to England, keeping in the 
 course of it a journal, which showed that, although he had 
 been carried away in the manner described by the specu- 
 lations of Godwin and Edwards, he still remained sober 
 
 (036) 9 
 
18 FROM THE BIRTH OF HIS INTELLECT. 
 
 and practical enough to take particular notice of whatever 
 came in his way en route. He could tell, for example, 
 when he came back, all about the locks on the Forth and 
 Clyde Canal, and even how many steps there were in the 
 stairs of Dumbarton Castle. In May 1798 he became 
 t utor in a private family ; but his position as such was 
 most uncomfortable, and he left it as soon as the terras 
 of his engagement permitted. 
 
 When not yet nineteen he applied to the Presbytery of 
 St. Andrews to be taken on trial for license. Naturally 
 enough the Presbytery objected on the ground of his age. 
 But the law recognized the possibility of exceptional 
 cases arising. Some relaxation was to be allowed in 
 favour of " lads of pregnant pairts," and Chalmers, as he 
 used laughingly to tell, came up to the description in ques- 
 tion. At any rate, his application was granted, and he was 
 j formally authorized by his Church to preach the gospel on 
 the 31st of July 1799. 
 
 It is very clear, however, that whatever may have been 
 his motives for pressing so soon to the front, he was not 
 animated by any consuming desire to tell people about the 
 way of life. He did not even wait over the succeeding 
 Sabbath to preach his first sermon within the bounds of 
 his own Presbytery, but set out at once on his second 
 \T.sit to England. It was not till a month later, the 25th 
 of August, that he at last appeared in a pulpit. The 
 place was the Scotch Church, Wigan ; and, if we may 
 accept the testimony of his own brother James, his delnd 
 was, on the whole, a successful one. " His mode of de- 
 liver}^" says this possibly partial critic, "is expressive, 
 his language beautiful, and his arguments very forcible 
 and strong." "His sermon," he adds, "contained a due 
 mixture both of the doctrinal and practical parts of reli- 
 
TO HIS CONVERSION. 19 
 
 gion ; but, I think, it inclined rather more to the latter." 
 The same letter which tells all this to the old people at 
 Anstruther ends in rather a significant way. ^' His V 
 mathematical studies seem to occupy more of his time than 'A ' 
 the religious " — a fact which received immediately some- 
 what striking illustration. He was summoned down to 
 Edinburgh with the hope of securing a situation there. That 
 hope was not realized ; but he remained through the winter 
 in the Scottish capital, attending the mathematical class 
 of Professor Playfair, never preaching anywhere, except 
 once at Penicuick, and dreading the call to occupy a pulpit 
 as an " interruption " which he could only barely tolerate. 
 
 The attitude of mind thus indicated was maintained 
 through another session. He returned to Edinburgh in 
 November 1800, and gave himself up to the study of 
 chemistry. 
 
 At last the time seemed to him to have an-ived for 
 entering on the work of his proper profession. Two 
 spheres appeared to open before him. One was the parish 
 of Kilmany, which was about to become vacant in conse- 
 quence of the contemplated removal of Mr. Cook, the 
 minister, to St. Andrews. The other was the assistantship 
 at Cavers. The patronage of Kilmany was vested in the 
 senate of his alma mater. It was an understood thing 
 that the professors were to have each his turn in nominat- 
 ing to the college livings. Dr. Adamson, one of the 
 number, and a relative of the Anstruther Chalmerses, was 
 in this way found to have the key to the position, and he 
 was not so unnatural as to overlook his own kith and kin. 
 His young relative Thomas was promised the presentation, 
 and Chalmers was then able with a light heart to go to 
 Cavers until the expected transference of Mr. Cook had 
 been completed. 
 
20 PROM THE BIRTH OF HIS INTELLECT 
 
 With what views the new assistant entered on his work 
 may be gathered from the fact that he did not think it 
 necessary to reside in the parish, and that the following 
 naive description of his pastoral duties appears quite 
 unaffectedly in a letter to his father: " Parochial examina- 
 tions are quite common in this country. I begin that 
 duty on Monday fortnight, and, as the parish is extensive, 
 it will take me upwards of a fortnight to accomplish it." 
 Residing with his friend Mr. Shaw in the manse of 
 Roberton, seven miles away, he rode over to Cavers every 
 Sabbath morning to preach, and returned again contentedly 
 to his quarters when the service was over. This easy 
 arrangement was interrupted by the necessity which arose 
 for some repairs being executed at Roberton ; but his tent 
 was simply transferred to Hawick, and there he remained 
 until he removed to his more permanent settlement in 
 Fife, 
 
 On the 2nd of November 1802 Chalmers was elected 
 minister of Kilmany. He was then only twenty -two 
 years of age, and if he had been at that time what he 
 afterwards became, it would have seemed to him that the 
 undertaking of the cure of souls was a serious enough 
 responsibility in itself ; and that, in order to the proper 
 discharge of the duties of his new office, there was little 
 need for his mind being distracted by other occupations. 
 But he had no true conception of the nature of the step 
 which he was taking, and at the date of his appointment 
 he was probably thinking less of it than of the class of 
 mathematics which he was just going to begin in the 
 University of St. Andrews. While he was in Cavers, he 
 had applied successfully for the assistantship to Professor 
 Vilant. It was the plan of his life to conduct the two 
 offices — the academic and the ministerial — simultaneously ; 
 
TO HIS CONVERSION. 21 
 
 and as his highest ambition was to fill a mathematical 
 chair, it is not too much to say that he must have accepted 
 the living of Kilmany very much as a matter of conve- 
 nience. 
 
 His ordination did not take place till the 1 2th of May 
 1803, so that he was able to give his whole time during the 
 session of 1802-3 to academic work. When this was over, 
 an interval remained, which he proposed to spend in Edin- 
 burgh with the literati of that city. The amiouncement 
 of this intention took his pious father by surprise. It 
 appeared to him that before entering on the ministry it 
 would be seemly to devote a brief season to meditation and 
 prayer, and he suggested so much to his son. But the 
 well-intentioned remonstrance only provoked an almost 
 indignant reply. "I am astonished," wrote the son, 
 " that the measure proposed in my last should appear in 
 the slightest degree objectionable. I hope that my prin- 
 ciples as to the important subject alluded to are already 
 established, and that they do not require any extraordinary 
 exercises of reflection at present. I have had sufficient 
 time for reflection, and I do not see how the relaxation of 
 a few days should have any effect in overthrowing those 
 calm and decided sentiments which I have already formed. 
 I confess I like not those views of religion which suppose 
 that the business, or even the innocent amusements, of the 
 world have a dangerous tendency to unsettle the mind for 
 
 serious and elevating exercises I feel that the solitude 
 
 of a few days would be to me a painful and unmeaning 
 solemnity." 
 
 Under such circumstances the settlement took place, and 
 from May to November he lived with scarcely a break in 
 the parish whose spiritual oversight he had undertaken. 
 
 A man so loving-hearted and full of energy could not 
 
22 FROM THE BIRTH OF HIS INTELLECT 
 
 pass a whole summer anywhere without making a distinct 
 impression upon his neighbourhood. He did not give his 
 strength to the pulpit in Kilmany ; much less did he now 
 proclaim from thence that gospel which was by-and-by to 
 be so much to himself. But the fact that he had more 
 than ordinary talent could not be hid ; and as he went 
 freely about among his people, they were irresistibly drawn 
 to him by the unaffected simplicity of his nature, and the 
 frankness and geniality of his manners. The summer of 
 1803 was not, therefore, spent altogether in vain. No 
 spiritual fruit was gathered, but roots were struck which 
 had in certain ways something to do with the grand after- 
 growth 
 
 Winter came, however, and with it the hope of a renewal 
 of his academic engagements. Kilmany was so short a 
 distance from St. Andrews, and his ministerial occupations 
 engrossed him so little, that the idea of there being any- 
 thing unreasonable in his continuing to act again as 
 mathematical tutor seems never to have occurred to him. 
 But in assuming that he would, of course, be appointed 
 for the second time to the office, he reckoned without his 
 host. Professor Vilant had no intention of doing so. 
 Chalmers was of opinion that the dislike felt for him was 
 the result of jealousy. The professor himself is suspected 
 of having thrown out insinuations as to there being a want 
 of competency. Anyhow, intimation was given to the 
 minister of Kilmany that his services would not be re- 
 quired ; and with a pang, the bitterness of which it is easy 
 to understand, the young and ambitious scholar saw a door 
 deliberately closed against him through which he had hoped 
 to pass to the distinction of a chair in one of his country's 
 universities. 
 
 But he proved equal to the occasion. A crisis, he con- 
 
TO HIS CONVERSION. 23 
 
 sidered, had occurred in his life. Rightly or wrongly, he 
 saw in what had happened indications of the existence of 
 a conspiracy — of a conspiracy to shelve him. Telling the 
 story afterwards, he said, " I was deserted both by my 
 employer and the university, and my career was at last 
 closed by the ignominy of a dismissal from my employ- 
 ment. I was now disposed of. 1 was consigned to the 
 obscurity of the country. I was compelled to return in 
 disgrace, and leave the field to my exulting enemies. They 
 had gained their object — a name expunged from the list 
 of competition — no further disturbance from interlopers 
 — no literary upstart to emulate their delicious repose, or 
 to outstrip them in public estfeem — no ambitious intruder 
 to dispel our golden dreams of preferment, or to rise along 
 with us in the rich harvest of benefices." 
 
 Once on a time, they say, St. Andrews was a good deal 
 of a family preserve. The Hills and the Cooks had it all 
 their own way ; and if the current traditions on this point 
 are to be received, we can understand how there may have 
 been some foundation for Chalmers's belief, that those who 
 were in snug possession of the field looked with misgiving 
 at the ardent new-comer from Anstruther. Perhaps some 
 of the professors may have given their votes for his 
 appointment to Kilmany all the more readily that they 
 hoped he would be content with his country living, and 
 not bother them any more in the university. 
 
 If such was the plot, it was frustrated in a manner 
 which must have confounded all their traditional notions of 
 propriety. Chalmers actually resolved to beard the lions 
 in their dens. Before the session commenced, it was pro- 
 claimed all over the town that he meant to open extra- 
 mural mathematical classes of. his own. Tlie announce- 
 ment caused quite a flutter in college circles. Some of the 
 
24 FROM THE BIRTH OP HIS INTELLECT 
 
 professors cut the intruder on the street. Certain of his 
 lady acquaintances, who were too polite to go that length, 
 became quite appreciably colder in their manner ; and 
 although there were a good many students who wanted 
 to join him, all of these did not dare to do so, for fear of 
 being stopped in their course, or of losing their bursaries. 
 Nevertheless he held on his way. As he had some spare 
 time on his hands, he opened also classes in chemistry. 
 And throughout the winter he fought his battle, and that 
 with such good nature and courage and gallantry that in 
 the end his very worst enemies were fain to capitulate, the 
 very professor who was most implicated becoming the first 
 to extend to him the right hand of friendship. 
 
 "While thus, however, taking the univer.sity by storm, 
 he was compelled to inquire whether he was not laying 
 himself open to a damaging attack in the rear. Kilmany 
 got very little of his attention that winter. He went 
 out every Saturday to preach, and returned on Monday 
 morning, and that was all that his parishioners saw of him 
 during the week. There were some members of Presby- 
 tery who did not think this quite the thing, and with a 
 great deal of fine moral indignation, Chalmers heard one 
 day that his conduct was about to be made the subject 
 of formal comment and complaint. 
 
 He faced his accusers boldly. He had, he contended, 
 done nothing amiss. All the work required of him he 
 had faithfully and conscientiously attended to, and he 
 challenged any man to go through his parish and bring 
 back a single charge of neglect of duty in any direction. 
 
 " What more," he loftily asked, " will the gentleman 
 require of me? Has he any right to control me in the 
 distribution of my spare time 1 I maintain he has none. 
 I spurn at the attempt, as I would at the petty insolence 
 
TO IIIS CONVERSIOX. 25 
 
 of a tyrant ; I regret it as the interference of an officious 
 intermeddler. To the last sigh of my heart I will struggle 
 for independence, and eye with proud disdain the man 
 who presumes to invade it." 
 
 Next winter he asserted his independence by resuming 
 his classes in chemistry; but they occupied him for only two 
 days in the week, and he justified his devotion of so much 
 time to an occupation which did not lie naturally to the 
 hand of a minister by saying : "It affords a rational and 
 dignified amusement, and it fills up that spare time Avhich 
 I would otherwise fx'et away in indolence and disgust; but 
 it trenches upon no essential duty, and I expend as much 
 effort upon the religious improvement of my people as any 
 minister within the bounds of my Presbytery." 
 
 It is quite likely that Chalmers was correct enough in 
 his estimate. Among the easy-going ministers of the 
 neighbourhood there were no doubt some who spoke 
 against the chemical lectures, but whose own spare time 
 was spent in a very much less profitable way. But there 
 was one drawback in the case of Chalmers, which took much 
 of the pith and grace out of his defences. It was this — 
 that his heart was obviously not in his profession. And 
 what proved that, was his eagerness to leave it. In the 
 winter of 1804 the chair of Natural Philosophy in St. 
 Andrews fell vacant, and he at once became a candidate 
 for it; and when a few months later another opening 
 occurred in Edinburgh, he eagerly sought there the post 
 of Professor of Mathematics. 
 
 He was not successful in either application ; but the 
 latter is memorable, because it was in connection with it 
 that he first appealed to the public through the press. 
 
 Curiously enough, his theme was the one which had 
 already given him so much vexation. It was sufficiently 
 
26 FROM THE BIRTH OF HIS INTELLECT 
 
 hard that his co-presbyters and his own father should 
 doubt about the compatibility of mathematical pursuits 
 with his clerical responsibilities. But here was another 
 sort of person — no less a man than Professor Playfair — 
 actually insinuating the same thing. It is true that the 
 offensive charge was only made incidentally in a single 
 " passage " in a letter, and that, moreover, it was stated 
 quite generally, with no special reference to him. But 
 there could be no question that the cap fitted the minister 
 of Kilmany. For him it had a personal sting; and, 
 smarting perhaps under the pain of it, he sought relief in 
 a pamphlet. How effectively he vindicated the claims of 
 his profession to intermeddle freely with all wisdom is 
 seen in the sentence which has often been quoted since, 
 
 " The author of this pamphlet," says he, " can assert, 
 from what to him is the highest possible 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 prose- 
 cution of any science in which his taste may dispose him 
 to engage." 
 
 What made the life of a minister such a light one in his 
 
 view was, that it was so easy to -write sermons. " There 
 
 . is," he informed Professor Playfair, "almost no consump- 
 
 'i tion of intellectual effort in the peculiar employment of a 
 
 ' minister. The great doctrines of revelation, though sub- 
 
 j lime, are simple. They require no labour of the midrught 
 
 i oil to understand them ; no parade of artificial language 
 
 to impress them upon the hearts of the people." 
 
 His own sermons, at this period, do not seem to have 
 awakened any very great interest. This was owing, no 
 doubt, in great part to their wanting substance in the 
 evangelical sense, and to the absence of unction in their 
 
TO ins CONVERSION. 27 
 
 delivery. But it is more than likely that they failed also 
 because they did not even represent his mind. He did 
 not think any intellectual effort was required to throw oft* 
 a discourse, and the intellectual effort, accordingly, was not 
 given. What he expended his mental activity upon was 
 something entirely different — it was upon those gorgeous 
 lectures in which he sought to stir up the enthusiastic 
 interest of his classes in chemistry and mathematics. 
 
 And yet he had during this period his own earnest 
 thoughts about religion, and his own distinct theories as 
 to how men were to be benefited by it. 
 
 Upon one point he had quite made up his mind. He 
 had a hearty dislike to evangelical religion. He was 
 honestly convin-ced that it made light of the personal 
 virtues, and gave an altogether fictitious value to the 
 theological grace of faith. Hence, one day bending over 
 the pulpit, and speaking so as to express in his manner 
 the keenness of his aversion, he said : " Many books are 
 favourites with you which, I am sorry to say, are no 
 favourites of mine. Wlien you are reading Newton's 
 ' Sermons,' and Baxter's ' Saint's Rest,' and Doddridge's 
 ' Rise and Progress,' where do Matthew, Mark, Luke, 
 and John go to ? " 
 
 Simple as the Kilmany folk might be, they knew very 
 well that this apparently consuming anxiety about Mat- 
 thew, Mark, Luke, and John, was not the real cause of the 
 warning they were receiving. Zeal for the gospel was 
 being used as the cover under which an attack was made 
 upon books with which their minister was out of sym- 
 pathy. 
 
 As to his own system, we have preserved to us a fairly 
 intelligible summary of it. 
 
 " In what particular manner," said he, "the death of 
 
I 
 
 28 FROM THE BIRTH OF HIS INTELLECT 
 
 our Redeemer effected the remission of our sins, or rather, 
 why that death was made a condition of this remission, 
 seems to be an unrevealed point in the Scriptures. Per- 
 haps the God of nature meant to illustrate the purity of 
 his perfection to the children of men ; perhaps it was 
 efficacious in promoting the improvement and confirming 
 the virtue of other orders of being. The tenets of those 
 whose gloomy and unenlarged minds are apt to imagine 
 that the Author of nature required the death of Jesus 
 merely for the reparation of violated justice, are rejected 
 by all free and rational inquirers." 
 
 About the Atonement, in short ; he recognized its 
 value. Through it, is received the forgiveness of sins. 
 But how it operates, he could not tell. One thing only 
 was clear to him — namely, that the orthodox theory was 
 incredible. 
 
 Then, with regard to the method of a sinner's justifica- 
 tion, this is what he taught in the early days of his 
 ministry : — 
 
 " The rewards of heaven are allied to the exercise of our 
 •virtuous affections. The faith of Christianity is praise- 
 worthy and meritorious only because it is derived from 
 the influence of virtuous sentiments upon the mind. Let 
 us tremble, to think that anything but virtue can commend 
 
 us to the Almighty True, our best endeavours faU short 
 
 of perfection ; and, after all, we may be called unprofitable 
 servants. But contemplating the wonders of redeeming 
 love, and finding all the deficiencies of his imperfect virtue 
 supplied by the atonement and propitiation of Jesus, we 
 may go on our course rejoicing, assured that through 
 Christ our sincere but imperfect obedience is looked upon 
 by Heaven with a propitious eye." 
 
 One thinks of Chalmers at this time as resembling an 
 
TO HIS CONVERSION. 29 
 
 almost pent-up stream which is ever growing in volume 
 and momentum, and which eagerly breaks forth at every 
 opening, legitimate or otherwise, that is made for it. The 
 ministry, as he then conceived of it, afforded far too nar- 
 row a channel for the full outflow of his energies. If the 
 university had continued open to him, he might have been 
 satisfied with what Kilmany and St Andrews combined 
 could offer. But when his " enemies," as he called 
 them, capitulated and became his friends, he had no 
 longer a motive for maintaining a fight, and his classes 
 for chemistry and mathematics were given up. After that, 
 indeed, he still sustained in a manner the character of a 
 scientific teacher by giving popular lectures, first in Kil- 
 many, and next in his county town of Cupar. But such 
 outlets were not sufficient ; and it was, in one respect, a 
 fortunate circumstance that a new interest was made for 
 him by the events of the times. 
 
 Napoleon Bonaparte had conquered the continent of 
 Europe, and was now waiting to bring England also to his 
 feet. The very thought of such a possibility filled the soul 
 of Chalmers with a sort of horror, and with more than char- — 
 acteristic ardour he threw himself into the movement set 
 on foot to repel the invader. He himself joined a corps \ 
 which was formed to prevpnt the French from landing in \ 
 St. Andrews Bay — accepting in it two offices which are 1 
 not usually held in conjunction, those of lieutenant and ; 
 chaplain ; and if he was not joined on the occasion by 
 any recruits from among his parishioners in Kilmany, it 
 could not have been from any lack in the strength of the 
 language which he used in the pulpit to describe the im- 
 portance of the cause. 
 
 Who can read without smiling such sentences as the 
 following, spoken, as we may believe them to have been. 
 
30 FROM THE BIRTH OF HIS INTELLECT 
 
 ■vrith kindling eye and a countenance glowing with honest 
 indignation : — 
 I " INIay that day when Bonaparte ascends the throne of 
 Britain be the last of my existence ; may I be the first to 
 ascend the scaffold he erects to extinguish the worth and 
 spirit of the country ; may my blood mingle with the blood 
 of patriots, and may I die at the foot of that altar on which 
 British independence is to be the victim ! " 
 
 If these words had been spoken by a mere stump orator, 
 they might have been set down for tall talk, or for what 
 the Americans call spread eagleism, but there cannot be 
 a doubt that the preacher was as guileless and sincere now 
 as he was in all his after life, and the apostrophe may be 
 taken as evidence at once of the simplicity of his nature 
 and of the extent to which he was moved. 
 
 The French did not attempt to cross the Channel, and so 
 this scare passed away ; but the state of the country led 
 Chalmers to study anew the subject of political economy, 
 and the result was the publication of his first book — " An 
 Inquiry into the Extent and Stability of the National 
 Resources." For the success of this book he showed an 
 extraordinary anxiety. It sold well enough in Scotland, 
 but what he wanted above all things was that it should 
 i. take well in England. He pined for literary distinction. 
 To be known in London became for the moment the height 
 of his ambition ; and in his correspondence with his brother 
 James, who had gone to stay there, and with Wilkie the 
 painter, who was a son of the minister of Cults and an old 
 acquaintance, he indicated that there was nothing he was 
 not willing to do in order to secure the honour of a second 
 edition. The book did receive some notice, and was more 
 than worthy of the notice it got, because it contained some 
 very striking and original suggestions ; but it did not set 
 
TO HIS CONVERSIOX. 31 
 
 the Thames on fire, and still the author had to wait for the 
 something which was to secure for him the eminence to 
 which he was destined. 
 
 It was Religion that was to raise him to the altitude 
 which he finally achieved. But nobody can read even this 
 chapter of his history without seeing that religion only 
 turned to its own account powers which would sooner or 
 later have made their possessor famous, to whatever depart- 
 ment of life he chose to devote himself. 
 
 Wliat strikes us about him (apart from that exuberance 
 of mental energy which we have just been noticing) is that 
 he possessed in an extraordinary measure such character- 
 istics as the following : a freshness, fire, oi'iginality, and 
 inventiveness of mind, which revealed the presence in him 
 of that peculiar quality which we call genius ; a wonder- 
 ful power of acute and exact observation ; and a whole- 
 souled out-goingness of nature which made it certain that 
 wherever he was set down he would not be a contempla- 
 tive dreamer, but a very active force in life. 
 
 The popular idea of Chalmers is that he was essentially 
 a great preacher. His own notion regaixling himself was ; 
 that he was cut out to be a military engineer ! There can i 
 be no doubt, at any rate, about his interest in and his know- 
 ledge of mathematics. It was his earliest ambition to be 
 a mathematical professor. He was far, however, from 
 being a mere homo unias scientice. He would have under- 
 taken gladly the teaching of natural philosophy, of chem- 
 istry, or of political economy. And it is not too much to 
 say that, if some of the positions he aspired after had 
 become his, he would to a certainty have thrown around 
 them the lustre, not only of his matchless eloquence, but of 
 new and striking discovery. 
 
 It was a curious instance of his far-sightedness that he 
 
32 FROM THE BIRTH OF HIS INTELLECT 
 
 had gas tubes introduced into his new manse at Kilmany 
 long before any one had thought of dispensing with lamps 
 or candles. And so early as 1809 he was laying down 
 principles which have been applied only within the last 
 few years, to the raising of the income tax and the enlist- 
 ment of soldiers. 
 
 Such a mind as his could not fail to see new things every- 
 where. He observed so carefully and with such an open and 
 candid eye. It is quite refreshing, for example, to read the 
 journal which he kept during his first visit to London. 
 Nothing escaped him. He spent an hour with a chemist, 
 and described minutely his apparatus. He saw the model of 
 a cotton mill, and down went a sketch of its mode of work- 
 ing. He visited a museum of mechanical curiosities, and a 
 descriptive catalogue was forthwith made of its contents. 
 Nor did he confine himself to art. Nature was quite as 
 attractive to him, and his pictures of it were quite as minute. 
 He was delighted with Windsor. " I went down," he says, 
 " to the terrace, and as I walked along the south of the 
 oastle, I swore in the gladness of my heart that never was 
 scene so sweet or fair. The vivid green seen in patches 
 through the fringe of luxuriant branches, the extensive 
 lawns below, on which the peaceful cattle were grazing, 
 the hum of the village, the grand association of majesty, 
 his pious and amiable character, his selection of this quiet 
 retirement as a refuge from the cares and the splendour 
 of royalty, threw me into a train of emotions, soothing, 
 tranquil, and elevating." 
 
 What a pleasant touch, too, is here ; he was on the 
 top of a coach on his homeward journey : " In passing 
 through the wild succession of corn fields and picturesque 
 cottages, with the evening sun shedding its quiet light over 
 the landscape, I was struck with the figure of a woman 
 
TO HIS CONVERSION. 33 
 
 reading at a window, a sober reflection pictured on her 
 countenance. " 
 
 There is even something peculiarly suggestive in the 
 amusingly vigorous language in which in those days 
 Chalmers occasionally expressed himself. It speaks of an 
 honest soul with no guile or affectation about it. 
 
 Travelling from Carlisle toward London he had as his 
 fellow-passengers in the coach a lady and a gentleman, with 
 whom, in the kindliness of his nature, he tried to get into 
 conversation. The lady was affable enough ; but for the 
 gentleman, " I never witnessed in my life such a want of 
 cordiality, such a cold and repulsive deportment, such a 
 stingy and supercilious air, and so much of that con- 
 founded spirit, too prevalent among the books and fine 
 
 gentlemen of the age I sustained my confidence. I 
 
 upheld the timidity of the company, and had the satis- 
 faction of reducing him at last to civility and complai- 
 sance." 
 
 " By the way," says he again, "I have no patience with 
 
 Mrs. ; not a particle of cordiality about her ; cold, 
 
 formal, and repulsive ; a perfect stranger to the essence of 
 politeness, with a most provoking pretension to its exterior; 
 a being who carries in her very eye a hampering and 
 restraining criticism ; who sets herself forward as a pattern 
 of correct manners, while she spreads pain, restraint, and 
 misery around her ; whose example I abominate, and whose 
 society I must shun, as it would blast all the joy and 
 independence of London." 
 
 The unaffected heartiness with which he thus denounced 
 the want of frankness in. others, was, no doubt, caused by 
 the consciousness which he had of having so much humanity 
 in Ms own nature. A violent commotion must follow when 
 two strong streams meet, coming from opposite directions, 
 
 (630) 3 
 
34 FROM THE BIRTH OF HIS INTELLECT 
 
 My own recollections of Chalmers date from a very 
 much later period. He was then spending that last decade, 
 which, it was his theory, should be given as much as 
 possible to rest and to preparation for eternity. His most 
 active life, therefore, was over. But I can never forget 
 how often, even at that time, there flashed forth signs of 
 that many-sidedness which made him the great man he 
 was, and which appeared so strikingly during the par- 
 ticular era in his history which has been reviewed in this 
 chapter. 
 
 If you had met him on a winter's day, " stumping " 
 along George Street towards his class-room in the (tem- 
 porary) New College, your first thought would probably 
 have found fit expression in the exclamation, " There goes 
 an honest man !" His short, thick-set figure, comfortably 
 wrapped up to resist the cold ; his round, lustreless, wide- 
 open eyes ; and his steady but not very graceful gait, all 
 suggested the idea that he was some clergyman from the 
 country, who had lived all his days among the fields, and 
 knew nothing either of the ways or the wickedness of the 
 world. You might, indeed, have hesitated to come to such 
 a conclusion if you had noticed what became increasingly 
 plain as he advanced in life — his likeness to Luther. But 
 certainly what his outward appearance led men chiefly to 
 think of was his unafiected guilelessness. If, however, you 
 had followed him to his class, you would. have learned that 
 that simplicity which formed one of the most beautiful 
 features in his character was associated with what many 
 look for only in the sophisticated — shrewdness, knowledge 
 of men and things, an observation which nothing escaped, 
 humour which cast his audience sometimes into convulsions, 
 and a practical sagacity in business matters which one 
 would not have been astonished at in a successful merchant, 
 
TO HIS COXVERSIOX. 35 
 
 but which nobody looks for in philosophical or theological 
 professors. 
 
 There have been not a few men who have achieved great- 
 ness, because they adhered to one pursuit and came to 
 excel in it ; but the noticeable thing here is that Chalmers 
 showed unmistakably a capacity to excel in many things, 
 and that this appeared in most conspicuous Avays before 
 he was eight-and-twenty. 
 
CHAPTER in. 
 
 FROM HIS CONVERSION TO HIS REMOVAL TO GLASGOW. 
 
 ilHE first ste}) toward the higher life which Chal- 
 mers was now about to lead may be said to 
 have been taken when he delivered his maiden 
 speech in the General Assembly. This hap- 
 pened on the 25th of May 1809. Tlie topic on which he 
 discoursed was not one which seemed to furnish much 
 scope for eloquence ; it bore on the augmentation of the 
 stipends of the clergy. But there was no subject he touched 
 into which he did not throw some freshness ; and be- 
 sides, an opportunity was offered in the present case for 
 the display of just those qualities of quiet humour, of 
 shrewd common sense, and of practical sagacity which 
 made him so much of a power in ecclesiastical economics 
 in after life. 
 
 " It is quite ridiculous," said he in closing, and pleading 
 for an adequate support being given to the Christian 
 ministry — " it is quite ridiculous to say that the worth of 
 the clergy will suffice to keep them up in the estimation 
 of society. Tliis worth must be combined with import- 
 ance. Now it is our part to supply the element of worth, 
 and it is the part of the Court of Session to supply the 
 element of im]:)ortance. Give both woi-tli and importance 
 to the same individual, and what are the terms employed 
 
FROM HIS CONVERSION, ETC. 37 
 
 in describing hini ? ' A distinguished member of society, 
 the ornament of a most respectable profession, the virtuous 
 companion of the great, and a generous consoler of all 
 the sickness and poor around him.' These, Moderator, 
 appear to me to be the terms peculiarly descriptive of the 
 appropriate character of a clergyman, and they serve to 
 mark the place which he ought to occupy. But take 
 away the importance, and leave only the worth, and what 
 do you make of him 1 what is the descriptive term applied 
 to him now 1 Precisely the term which I often find applied 
 to many of my brethren, and which galls me to the very 
 bone every time I hear it — ' A fine body P — a being whom 
 you may like, but whom I defy you to esteem; a mere 
 object of endearment, a being whom the great may at 
 times honour with the condescension of a dinner, but whom 
 they will never admit as a respectable addition to their 
 society. Now all that I demand of the Court of Teinds is 
 to be raised, and that as speedily as possible, above the 
 imputation of being ' a fine body ' — that they would add 
 importance to my worth, and give splendour and efficacy 
 to those exercises which have for their object the most 
 exalted interests of the species." 
 
 When he sat down, inquiries broke out upon all sides, 
 Who is this new man, who speaks so genially, so sensibly, 
 so pawkily, and so well ? Another turning-point, in fact, 
 had been reached in his life. He had been known before 
 to the literati of two universities, and within his own 
 Synod of Fife; but now he had shown himself in the 
 Assembly, and was thenceforth a marked man in the 
 Church at large. 
 
 In particular, the speech which he now delivered brought 
 him into contact with Dr. Andrew Thomson and the 
 Brewsters, and he became in consequence a contributor 
 
38 FROM HIS CONVERSION 
 
 to the Christian Instructor and to the Edinhurgh Encyclo- 
 pcHclia. 
 
 For the latter he undertook to Avrite upon Christianity. 
 He must have had his own special reasons for choosing 
 this subject (it was assigned to him at his OAvn very urgent 
 request), but it does not appear that what attracted hiru 
 to it was any peculiar love for its distinctive doctrines. 
 He thought of it chiefly in an apologetic aspect, and con- 
 ceived the idea of so stating the external evidences as to 
 make the faith impregnable against all the assaults of 
 unbeHef. But although this may have been all that he 
 himself expected to make out of the study, God had ar- 
 ranged differently. In entering upon this pursuit he had 
 unwittingly set his face directly toward the light. 
 
 In returning from the General Assembly he was seized 
 with an illness which kept him at home for two months. 
 At the end of that time — the begimiing of August — he 
 was able to go down to Anstruther for a few weeks; but 
 even then his restoration could not have been complete, 
 for when he was on his way back he suffered a relapse 
 which brought him into a far worse condition than ever. 
 For four months he was confined to his room, for more 
 than six he was unable to preach; and although in little 
 more than a year he was discharging again all his parochial 
 duties, it was a much longer time than that before he was 
 again in all respects the man he had been. His ailment 
 was an affection of the liver, which necessitated the employ- 
 ment of very severe remedies ; and while these were being 
 applied, he was reduced to such a state of Aveakness that 
 he expected nothing else than death. A very solemnizing 
 impression was produced on his mind by his thus being 
 brought face to face mth eternity. 
 
 " My confinement," he wrote in February 1809, " has 
 
TO HIS REMOVAL TO GLASGOW. 39 
 
 fixed on my heart a very strong impression of the msigni- 
 ficance of time — an impression which I trust ^vill not aban- 
 don me though I again reach tlie heyday of health and 
 vigour. Tliis shoukl be the first step to another impres- 
 sion still more salutary — thg, magnitude of eternity. Stri}) 
 human life of its connection with a higher scene of exist- 
 ence, and it is the illusion of an instant, an unmeaning 
 farce, a series of visions and projects and convulsive efforts 
 which terminate in nothing. I have been reading Pascal's 
 'Thoughts on Religion.' You know his history — a man 
 of the richest endowments, and whose youth was signalized 
 by his profound and original speculations in mathematical 
 science, but who could stop short in the brilliant career of 
 discovery, who could resign all the splendours of literary 
 reputation, who could renounce without a sigh all the 
 distinctions which are conferred upon genius, and resolve 
 to devote every talent and eveiy hour to the defence and 
 illustration of the gospel. This, my dear su", is superior 
 to all Greek and all Roman fame." 
 
 Here, then, the second step of the process was taken. 
 Affliction was used as God's minister to bring him to 
 reflection ; and, as the result, religion became no longer a 
 secondaiy, but a primary concern with him. 
 
 But, with all that, he had still much to learn. He had 
 been brought, in some measure, to realize the evil of sin, 
 and e.specially the evil of the sin of ungodliness. He wa.s 
 also prepared now to attach far greater importance than 
 formerly to the death of Christ. But he did not under- 
 stand as yet that salvation from first to last is all of grace ; 
 and he still went about to establish, if he could, a righteous- 
 ness of his own. While relying for pardon on the atone- 
 ment, he did not conceive it to be reasonable to trust to it 
 entirely for acceptance; and in order to put himself right 
 
 \ 
 
40 FROM HIS CONVERSION 
 
 with God, he began a disciplinary process which was to 
 issue, as he hoped, in the production of a pure morality — 
 his own workmanship — by means of which he might make 
 himself, in a degi-ee at least, well-pleasing to God. " More 
 than a year of fruitless toil had to be described ere the 
 true ground of a sinner's acceptance was reached, and the 
 true principle of all acceptable obedience was implanted in 
 his heart." 
 
 The honest effort thus made, however, was not alto- 
 gether vain. As we read the journal iia which the history 
 of it is told, we encounter again and again promises and 
 prophecies of the coming dawn. 
 
 Thus, on a Sabbath evening at Anster, he writes: 
 " Returned to my room for two hours betwixt tea and 
 supper, and tasted the delights of piety." 
 
 Again we read : " Rode to St. Andrews with Lucy. 
 Made a good many calls there, and feel a growing indif- 
 ference to vmiversity preferment. This I regret not." 
 
 A few days later he says : *' I am alarmed at the small 
 and uncertain progress of the religious principle in my 
 mind. O God ! may the power of thy Son's atonement be 
 to me the effectual instrument both of comfort and of 
 righteousness. " 
 
 This is significant too : " Preached as usual; the people, 
 I thought, were attentive and impressed, particularly in 
 the forenoon." 
 
 And one can easily guess the direction in which his face 
 Avas turning when we read the following: " Heard sermon 
 in the forenoon at New Greyfriars', and was much pleased 
 with the manly and vigorous orthodoxy of Mr. Andrew 
 Thomson. " 
 
 The day, however, did not really break until the 24:th 
 of December 1810, when we find this entry in his diary: 
 
TO HIS REMOVAL TO GLASGOW. 41 
 
 " Have begun to read Wilberforc e, and hope to be much 
 the better of it. ' Next day he adds : " I am delighted 
 with Wilberforce." 
 
 The book whose perusal he had thus commenced was 
 the " Practical View of Christianity ; " and the nature of 
 the effect which it had upon his mind is told by himself 
 in a letter written ten years after to his brother Alex- 
 ander. 
 
 In that letter he says : *' The effect of a very long con-i 
 tinement upon myself was to inspire me with a set of very! 
 strenuous resolutions, under which I wrote a journal, and 
 made many a laborious effort to elevate my practice to the 
 standard of the divine requirements. During this course, 
 however, I got little satisfaction, and felt no repose. I 
 remember that, somewhere about the year 1811, I had 
 ' Wilberforce's View ' put into my hands, and as I got on 
 in reading it, felt myself on the eve of a great revolution in 
 all my opinions about Christianity. I am now most thor- 
 oughly of opinion — and it is an opinion founded on expe- 
 rience — that in the system of ' Do this and live,' no peace,! 
 and even no true and worthy obedience, can ever be I 
 attained. It is, '■Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and' 
 thou shalt be saved.' When this belief enters the heart/ 
 joy and confidence come along with it. The righteousness 
 which we try to work out for ourselves eludes our grasp, 
 and never can a soul arrive at true or permanent rest in 
 the pursuit of this object. The righteousness which, by 
 faith, we put on, secures our acceptance with God, and 
 secures our interest in his promises, and gives us a part in 
 those sanctifying influences by which we are enabled to do 
 with aid from on high what we never can do without it. 
 We look to God in a new light : we see him as a reconciled 
 Father ; that love to him which tet-ror scares away re-enters 
 
42 FROM HIS CONVERSIOX 
 
 the heart, and, with a new principle and a new power, we 
 become new creatures in Jesus Christ our Lord." 
 
 The great change was now accomplished. After a long 
 and toilsome journey through cloud and mist, he had 
 reached the summit of the mountain ; and as in the clear 
 light of day he looked behind and around him, he no doubt 
 wondered much that he had allowed himself to be so long 
 entangled among the shadows. Not a mathematical chair, 
 but the pulpit, now became the platform' from which he 
 addressed himself to the country, which it had always been 
 his ambition to benefit ; and even within the limits of his 
 own rural parish of Kilmany it was very soon felt that he 
 had got a fresh baptism for his work. 
 
 It was rumoured that at this juncture Chalmers made a 
 dramatic display of himself before his congregation, telling 
 them abruptly and in so many words that he had hitherto 
 been walking in darkness, and had now been brought out 
 into the light. The story, on the face of it, was an impro- 
 bable one. He never thus gave any public intimation of 
 his conversion. But the anointing which he had received 
 infallibly bewrayed itself to his own j)eople, and it could 
 not long be hid from the outside world that a recruit of no 
 small importance had been gained to the cause of Evan- 
 gelism. 
 
 It is most interesting here again to glance through his 
 journal, and to notice the straws which appear there to 
 tell how the wind had begun to blow. 
 
 '■^February I4, 1811. — Rode on to Dairsie, and preached 
 a Fast sermon there. Was much pleased with Dr. Maccul- 
 loch's edifying and evangelical prayer. The people were 
 most attentive ; and I was gratified \vith the approbation 
 of Dr. and Mrs. Macculloch and Mrs. Coutts — a kind of 
 testimony that two years ago I would have despised." 
 
TO HIS REMOVAL TO GLASGOW. 43 
 
 '■'■ March 15. — Called on sick people in the village. I 
 am a good deal weaned from the ardour for scientific pur- 
 suits; and let me direct my vindivided attention to theology." 
 
 " ^^;?•^7 23. — I am sensible of a growing acquiescence in 
 the peculiar doctrines of the gospel as a scheme of recon- 
 ciliation for sinners." 
 
 " May 1. — Got a present from Mr. Tait of Tealing 
 of a sermon published by him upon the conversion of 
 the Jews, with a complimentary note. This indicates a 
 growing partiality for me on the part of the Evangelical 
 clergy." 
 
 '■'July 15. — A minister, if he gives his whole heart to 
 his business, finds employment for every moment of his 
 existence ; and I am every day getting more in love with 
 my professional duties, and more penetrated with a sense 
 of their importance." 
 
 '■'■August 11. — Let me prepare for my future sacraments 
 a long time before they come round, and when they do 
 come round, give my whole strength to the examination of 
 communicants, to the state of my own heart, and the 
 impressive communication of my feelings at the time of 
 delivery." - 
 
 '■'August IJf. — From a report of the Baptist missionaries, 
 I am much impressed by the worth and utility of these 
 Christians." 
 
 "September 10. — Received Bible reports, and am much 
 impressed with the utility of these institutions. God, 
 may thy work be my delight ! " 
 
 '•'September IS. — I have begun Baxter's 'Call to the 
 Unconverted,' and intend it for circulation." 
 
 "Sej^temher 29. — Preached at Cults to an attentive 
 audience. I tried to impress my peculiar views on Mr. D. 
 Wilkie " [the artist]. 
 
44 FROM HIS CONVERSION 
 
 No complaint was now made by Chalmers that he could 
 
 not find within the sphere of his ministerial work suflBcient 
 
 ) scope for the exercise of all his energies. He read largely, 
 
 but it was chiefly in the literature of theology. He wrote 
 
 extensively, but it was on subjects bearing on the interests 
 
 of religion. And when he had occasion to visit other 
 
 / places, it was not to refresh his spii-it by intercourse with 
 
 i the literati, but to use the many opportunities which 
 
 , offered themselves to aid in the extension of the kingdom 
 
 ' of Christ. 
 
 His church at Kilmany became crowded; but that was 
 not the best proof he got of the success of his ministry. 
 Another, and one far more satisfactory, was this, that there 
 by-and-by occurred a religious awakening. Two young 
 men, meeting after service one day, asked each other if 
 there had not been something peculiar that morning in 
 the preaching. God's Spirit had in fact laid hold upon 
 them. They came to their minister as anxious inquirers, 
 and as such became the first-fruits of a spiritual harvest. 
 
 " The discovery that pardon and full reconciliation with 
 God are oflfered to all men gi-atuitously in Christ had been 
 the tuming-pnint in his own spiritual history; and the 
 most marked characteristic of his pulpit ministrations after 
 his conversion was the frequency and fervour with which 
 he held out to sinners Christ and his salvation as God's 
 free gift, which it was their privilege and their duty at 
 once and most gratefully to accept." 
 
 " He would bend over the pulpit," said one of his 
 hearers, " and press us to take the gift as if he held it that 
 moment in his hand, and would not be satisfied till every 
 one of us had got possession of it. And often when the 
 sermon was over, and the psalm was sung, and he rose to 
 pronounce the blessing, he would break out afresh with 
 
TO HIS REMOVAL TO GLASGOW. 45 
 
 some new entreaty, unwilling to let us go until he had 
 made one more effort to persuade us to accept of it." 
 
 We have seen what he said to Professor Playfair in the 
 days of his ignorance, about preaching. Sermons were 
 then so easily composed that it was the easiest thing in 
 the world to throw them off. After his change, he regarded 
 the pulpit and its claims in quite a new light. " The 
 result was a series of discourses, a goodly number of which, 
 delivered almost verbally as originally written, were 
 listened to in after years by congregated thousands, in 
 Glasgow and Edinburgh and London, with wondering and 
 entranced admiration." "They were to a great extent 
 the spontaneous products of that new love and zeal which 
 divine grace had planted in his soul, the shape and texture 
 of their eloquence springing from the combined operation 
 of all his energies — intellectual, moral, and emotional — 
 whose native movements were now stimulated into a more 
 glowing intensity of action by that controlling motive 
 which concentrated them all upon one single and sublime 
 accomplishment — the salvation of immortal souls." 
 
 It was an infallible sign in those days that a man was 
 an Evangelical, that he took an interest in the Bible 
 Society.* The Church of Scotland had no missions of its 
 own till long afterwards ; but an early and keen interest 
 Avas taken by many in it in the circulation of the Word of 
 God. This mark very speedily showed itself at Kilmany ; 
 but at a A-ery early date also Chalmers manifested a deep 
 
 * The Rev. Alexander Forrester, minister of Linton, writing to a daugliter of 
 Dr. Chalmers of Kilconquhar, on the occasion of her great relative's second 
 speech in the General Assembly, thus indicates what was the current sentiment 
 among Moderate ministers : " I am not sure that your father would have engaged 
 with the ardour with which the minister of Kilmany does in missionary and 
 Bible societies. For my oiim part, I must oirn to you that I have never yet seen 
 any proper call to ns for engaging in the measures of these societies ; and such is 
 the feeling of this part of this county with very few exceptions." 
 
46 FROM HIS CONVERSION 
 
 concern in the direct evangelization of the world, antl not 
 a few can^till remember with what a fresh and beautiful 
 complacency he was in the habit, to his latest years, of 
 I telling how Andrew Fuller, the friend of Carey and 
 the first secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society, once 
 spent a couple of days in his country manse. 
 
 ^Ir. Fuller himself was no less deeply interested in this 
 Scottish country minister. " I never think of my visit to 
 you," he wrote, " but with pleasure. After parting with 
 you, I was struck with the importance which may attach 
 to a single mind receiving an evangelical im]nrssio7i.'' 
 There was, according to the English visitor, just one draw- 
 back to him — he read his discourses instead of delivering 
 them. " If that man," he remarked to a friend — " if 
 that man would but throw away his papers in the pulpit, 
 he might be king of Scotland." Mr. Fuller was wrong for 
 once. Chalmers never read in a formal or mechanical 
 way. As the old woman pithily expressed it, his ^van/ell 
 reading. And, constituted as he was, it would not have 
 added to his power, but the contrary, if he had tried 
 habitually to dispense with his manuscript. 
 
 It was during this last period in his history that 
 Chalmers married (August 4, 1812) Miss Grace Pratt, 
 a daughter of Captain Pratt of the 1st Royal Veteran 
 Battalion. He had reason to know beforehand that 
 she was like-minded with himself, but he was particularly 
 delighted to find, when the housekeeping had fairly begun, 
 tliat she was prepared " to hold up her face for all the 
 proprieties of a clergyman's family," and even to extend 
 them beyond what he had himself proposed. What he 
 referred to was, that at her suggestion the practice was 
 begun of jjaving family worship in Kilmany twiss^a day ! 
 It is curiously significant to notice his own struggles in 
 
TO HIS REMOVAL TO GLASGOW. 47 
 
 regard to this liabit of family worship. For years, apparently, 
 lie had none. Then he began to offer a prayer at night, and i 
 was sometimes tempted to omit even that when anybody 
 was in the house on whose sympathy he could not count. 
 By-and-by he introduced the reading of a chapter of the 
 Bible. Worship on Sabbath morning was the next inno- 
 vation. And at last, under the kindly influence of his 
 wife, the institution was fully established. 
 
 One other thing only may be here noticed. It has been 
 seen that, when he was first settled, the idea of there being 
 anything objectionable in a man teaching in St. Andrews, 
 and holding at the same time a country cure, appeared to 
 him simply preposterous. Now things presented them- 
 selves to him in a different light ; and when it was pro- 
 posed that Mr. Ferrie, who was at the time Professor of 
 Civil History, should also be appointed minister of 
 Kilconquhar, he was not deterred by a regard for what 
 might be called consistency from earnestly and persever- 
 ingly resisting the arrangement. Not that he wished to 
 tie any one down to such a strict discharge of purely 
 ministerial work as to make the doing of anything else an 
 offence. He himself was at this time a laborious con- 
 tributor to the Encydopccdia, to the Instructor, the Eclectic 
 Review, &c. To use the press for religious purposes he 
 lield to be the duty of all Christian men who could use the 
 pen. But he knew by experience how utterly incompat- 
 ible were the two offices of minister and professor, and 
 with characteristic singleness of purpose he steadfastly set 
 his face against the continuance of such a conjunction in 
 the Church of Scotland. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE TRON. 
 
 N the autumn of 1814 the Tron Church, Glas- 
 gow, became vacant by the translation of Dr. 
 Macgill i-o a chair in the university. The 
 appointment to the vacant living was in the 
 hands of the Town Council ; and as that body was so far a 
 popular one, open to be affected by the religious currents 
 which were running through the country, there arose a 
 keen party contest about the succession, those on the one 
 side being Moderates, those on the other Evangelicals. 
 
 The eyes of some among the latter having been directed 
 toward Mr. Chalmers of Kilmany, a deputation was sent 
 to hear him preach. It so happened that on the Sabbath 
 selected by them for this purpose he was not at home, but 
 at Bendochy, preaching a funeral sermon over the grave of 
 an early friend of his, Mr, Honey. If they had found 
 him in his own church, the impression produced would no 
 doubt have been substantially the same ; but the occasion 
 referred to was on various accounts an extraordinary one, 
 and they were literally electrified. 
 
 " I have seen," says one who was present, " many 
 scenes, and I have heard many eloquent men, but this I 
 have never seen equalled, or even imitated. It was not 
 learning, it was not art ; it was the untaught and the un- 
 
THE TROX. 49 
 
 encumbered incantation of genius, the mightiest engine of 
 which the world can boast." 
 
 The four citizens from Glasgow who were in the crowd 
 that day went home resolved if possible to accomplish 
 Chalmers's election. 
 
 But the task they had set to themselves was one of no 
 ordinary difficulty. " We have had a very hard battle to 
 fight," they wrote ; " what with the Duke of Montrose, 
 Sir Islay Campbell, the college interest, and the late and 
 present provost against us, we have had our hands quite 
 full, and had to put forth all our might." 
 
 Dr. Jones of Lady Glenorchy's, Edinburgh, after all was 
 over, writes thus to Chalmers himself : *' The battle, the 
 great battle, has been fought and won. Heaven and earth 
 and all the principalities and powers in high places have 
 been moved, — from the great ofiicers of State at St. James's 
 and the Court of Aldermen in King Street, and the Crown 
 lawyers in Edinburgh, down to the little female piets, 
 who were taught to squall what they did not under- 
 stand — ' No fanatics ! No Balfourites ! Rationalists for 
 ever ! ' No small stir, I'll assure you, has been in 
 that city, and no such stir has been there since the 
 days of John Knox, it is said, about the choice of a 
 minister." 
 
 It was found that the vote stood thus : for Chalmers, 
 15; for Macfarlane, 10; for Maclean, 4. 
 
 "No sooner," says Dr. Jones, "had the news reached 
 the town on the afternoon of Friday the 25th of Novem- 
 ber than all the town was in an uproar of joy, — Kirkmen, 
 Burghers, Antiburghers, Independents, and Baptists, all 
 joining in one shout of exultation ! The news had little 
 less effect, I assure you, in this city. Every one meets 
 or runs to his friend, through a most heavy rain, to say, 
 
 (636) 4 
 
50 THE TRON. 
 
 ' Oil ! have you heard the good news ? Mr. Chalmers is 
 elected to the Tron Kirk of Glasgow.' " 
 
 The cause of all this jubilation is not far to seek. 
 Moderatism had long held undisputed possession of all the 
 high places in the Church of Scotland, and the victory at 
 Glasgow was hailed as a sign that the turn of the tide had 
 come. 
 
 In the meantime Chalmers himself was sorely perplexed. 
 The rumour of his possible removal produced among the 
 people to whom he had been ministering for ten years a 
 feeling of consternation. They sent him a petition ear- 
 nestly entreating him to remain, and he was thrown again 
 and again into successive floods of tenderness by renewed 
 proofs of their affectionate regard. But he could not shut 
 his eyes to the fact that the arguments for his going 
 greatly preponderated, and after much anxious thought 
 and prayer, he sent, on the 14th of December, his accept- 
 ance of the call which, without solicitation on his part, 
 had been addressed to him. 
 
 The attitude of his mind is revealed in a very interest- 
 ing way in the statement which he drew up of the j??'os 
 and cons which he considered before he arrived at his final 
 conclusion. 
 
 In these, it is very noticeable, the bent of his mind is 
 all toward removal. His reasons for going are given 
 without qualification ; his reasons for remaining have in 
 each case appended to them what seems to liim a more or 
 less sufficient answer. 
 
 Among other things which weigh with him in favour of 
 accepting the call, one is that his refusal would he a severe 
 blow "to the Christian party in Glasgow." He is en- 
 couraged also to go by the consideration that he might 
 calculate on finding in a city more stimulus to exertion 
 
THE TRON. 51 
 
 and study, and " a warm Christian society to revive the 
 deadness and barrenness of his own soul." Besides, he 
 cannot help thinking of the advantage of being in the 
 neighbourhood of a university, although he no sooner 
 mentions the attraction than, recollecting the snares which 
 had once met him in that direction, he breathes a prayer — 
 " O my God, keep me from being tempted from the 
 simplicity that is in Christ." 
 
 On the other hand, it could no doubt be said on behalf 
 of Kilmany, that it afforded a pleasant sphere, the hearty 
 support of a loving people, and undivided time for study. 
 But then, as he argues with himself, " moving from place 
 to place was the general practice of the first preachers;" 
 " it was possible that his parish might even benefit by a 
 change;" and with regard to the abundant leisure, " I have 
 languished out many hours here for want of stimulus." 
 
 In short, he saw his way to go ; but the wrench was a 
 serious one, and more than twenty years after he was 
 heard to say that there was more tearing of the heart- 
 strings in leaving the valley of Kilmany than at leaving 
 all his great parish in Glasgow. 
 
 Chalmers's first sermon in the metropolis of the west 
 was preached some months before his own settlement 
 there. It was delivered before the Society of the Sons of 
 the Clergy ; and as the public curiosity had been keenly 
 awakened about him, a vast multitude assembled to hear, 
 although the service was held on a week-day. The author 
 of " Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk " happened to be 
 present on the occasion, and in that shrewd and interesting 
 work the author has described the preacher and the im- 
 pression produced by him. " At first, no doubt," he writes, 
 " his face is a coarse one; but a mysterious kind of meaning 
 
52 THE TRON. 
 
 breathes from every part of it. It is very pale, and the 
 large half -closed eyelids have a certain drooping melan- 
 choly weight about them which interested me very much, 
 I understood not why. The lips, too, are singularly pen- 
 sive in their mode of falling down at the sides, although 
 there is no want of ricliness and vigour in their central 
 fulness of curve. The ujDper lip, from the nose downward, 
 is separated by a very deep line, which gives a sort of 
 becoming firmness of expression to all the lower part of 
 the face. 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 w^onderful manner 
 with the dazzling watery gleam they exhibit when ex- 
 panded in their sockets and illuminated into all their 
 flame and fervour in some moment of entranced en- 
 thusiasm. But the shape of the forehead is, perhaps, the 
 most singular ])art of the whole visage. It is, without 
 exception, the most marked mathematical forehead I ever 
 met with." 
 
 As to the sermon, the same observer writes : " I have 
 heard many men deliver sermons far better arranged in 
 regard to argument, and have heard very many deliver 
 sermons far more uniform in elegance both of conception 
 and of style, but most unquestionably I have never heard, 
 either in England or Scotland or in anj other country, any 
 preacher whose eloquence is capable of producing an effect 
 so strong and irresistible as his." 
 
 His induction to the Tron Church took place on Friday 
 the 21st of July 1815, and on the following Sabbath he 
 was introduced to his new charge by Sir Harry Moncreiff. 
 Among those present on the occasion was Mr. Simeon of 
 Cambridge. 
 
 "This, sir," Chalmers wrote, three months later, to an 
 
THE TRON. 53 
 
 old friend of his in the country — "this, sir, is a wonderful 
 place, and I am half entertained and half provoked by- 
 some of the peculiarities of its people. The peculiarity 
 which bears hardest uj^on me is the incessant demand they 
 have, upon all occasions, for the personal attendance of the 
 ministers. Tliey must have four to every funeral, or they 
 do not think it has been genteelly gone through ; they 
 must have one or more to all the committees of all the 
 
 societies; they must fall in at every procession I gave 
 
 in to all this at first, but I am beginning to keep a sus- 
 picious eye upon those repeated demands ever since I sat 
 nearly an hour in grave deliberation with a number of 
 others upon a subject connected with the property of a 
 corporation, and that subject was a gutter, and the question 
 was whether it should be bought and covered up, or let 
 alone and left to lie open. I am gradually separating 
 myself from all this trash, and long to establish it as a 
 doctrine, that the life of a town minister should be what 
 the life of a country minister might be ; that is, a life of 
 intellectual leisure, with the option of literary pursuits, 
 and his entire time disposable to the purposes to which 
 the apostles gave themselves wholly — that is, the ministry 
 of the Word and j^rayer." 
 
 Deciding this great gutter question was not the most 
 absurd business in which he was called upon to engage. 
 Sitting on the affairs of the town hospital, a warm debate 
 arose one day about the kind of soup which should be 
 administered to the inmates. Some argued for pork broth, 
 others for broth of oxhead. To settle this weighty point, 
 a quantity of both articles was brought bodily into the 
 board-room and subjected to the test of practical ex- 
 amination ; and, after all, the conclusion come to was 
 no more satisfactory than that at which Sir Rodger de 
 
54 THE TRON. 
 
 Coverley arrived — namely, that much might be said on 
 both sides ! 
 
 Chalmers found this sort of thing, as he told his friend, 
 part of a system. The minister was associated with all 
 the charities and most of the educational establishments 
 in the city, and his time was so occupied with these that 
 it was simply impossible for him to attend in anything 
 like an effective way to his parocliial duties. 
 
 One of the first things, then, to which he addressed 
 himself was the getting rid of this incubus ; and although 
 his object was not accomplished at once, nor without 
 taking the matter to the pulpit and fulminating about it, 
 he did in the end succeed in achieving, not his own eman- 
 cipation only, but that also of many of his brethren, who 
 had been acquiescing in the evil as if it were certainly 
 inevitable. 
 
 " Among the earliest visits made through the families " [of 
 his parish], said he, speaking some years afterwards as a 
 witness about pauperism before the House of Commons, 
 " I was very much surprised at the unexpected cordiality 
 of my welcome, the people thronging about me, and re- 
 questing me to enter their houses. I remember I could 
 scarcely make my way to the bottom of a close in the 
 Saltmarket, I was so exceedingly thronged by the people. 
 But I soon perceived that this was in consequence of my 
 imagined influence in the distribution of charities ; and I 
 certainly did feel a great recoil, for it was so different 
 from the principle upon which I had been received with 
 cordiality in my country parish, where the topic of their 
 temporal necessities was scarcely ever mentioned. I there- 
 fore resolved to dissever myself from the administration of 
 these charities altogether. I soon made the people under- 
 stand that I only dealt in one article, that of Christian 
 
THE TRON. 55 
 
 instruction, and that if they chose to receive me upon this 
 footing I should be glad to visit them occasionally. I can 
 vouch for it that the cordiality of the people was not only 
 enhanced but very much refined in principle after this 
 became the general understanding. Of the ten thousand 
 entries which I have made at different times into the 
 houses of the poor in Glasgow, I cannot recollect but 
 half-a-dozen instances in which I was not received with 
 welcome," 
 
 So far good. He was able after this arrangement to 
 move through the Saltmarket without being thought of 
 chiefly as a charity commissioner. But then there was 
 his own house, nominally his castle. How was he to 
 defend himself there against the intrusion of a somewhat 
 higher order of seekers, who believed, and had good reason 
 to believe, that secular influence of an important kind lay 
 in the hands of the clergy? He saw no way of meeting 
 this side of the case but by giving his mind upon it in 
 public. Accordingly he preached upon it, and in doing so 
 spoke of the afiliction under which he groaned in a way 
 which (in spite of the day and place) must have seemed 
 half humorous, half pathetic. 
 
 " How," he asked, "shall a minister be able to extricate 
 himself from the besetting inconveniences of such an 
 arrangement as gives to the whole population of a neigh- 
 bourhood a constant and ever-moving tendency toward his 
 house 1 The patronage with which, I think, it is his heavy 
 misfortune to be encumbered, gives him a share in the 
 disposal of innumerable vacancies, and each vacancy gives 
 rise to innumerable candidates, and each candidate is sure 
 to strengthen his chance of success by stirring up a whole 
 round of acquaintances, who, in the various forms of 
 written and of personal entreaty, discharge their wishes 
 
66 THE TRON. 
 
 on the minister in the shape of innumerable applications. 
 It is fair to observe, however, that the turmoil of all this 
 electioneering has its times and its seasons. It does not 
 keep by one in the form of a steady monsoon. It comes 
 upon him more in the resemblance of a hurricane ; and, 
 like the hurricanes of the atmosphere, it has its months of 
 violence and its intervals of periodical cessation. I shall 
 only say that when it does come, the power of contempla- 
 tion takes to itself wings and flees away." 
 
 But this was not the only kind of interruption to which 
 he was exposed. In the autumn of 1818 his family was 
 in the country, and he was left in Glasgow to keep house 
 alone. During that period he showed no disposition what- 
 ever to shut himself up from his kind. On the contrary, 
 his hospitality was unbounded. Whether Mrs. Chalmers 
 approved of it or not, the number of peoj^le to whom he 
 offered bed and breakfast was portentous. But he liked 
 to keep his time and his menage in his own hands ; and 
 the mixture of vexation and kindliness which appears in 
 the follo\ving extract from a letter to his wife is highly 
 amusing : — 
 
 '' Wednesday. — Wrote for the General Session, I had 
 not sat long when in came Miss , with all the pleni- 
 tude of some mighty doing, which turned out neither more 
 nor less than a plum-jelly operation, which, greatly in op- 
 position to my wishes, she brought upon me whether I 
 would or not. Janet had spoken to me some days before, 
 Avhen I told her that you had given no directions about it, 
 and that I did not want it. Janet now tells me that she 
 
 told Miss that you had given no orders about it, but 
 
 did not like to tell her that I did not want it. I told her 
 so myself, however ; but it seems the materials were all 
 bought and the operations begun ; and Miss , upon 
 
THE TRON. 57 
 
 feeling corrected by my remark, spoke so as to fill me 
 with a kind of remorse at my severity. So I went out on 
 a round of visitation, and took her mother in my tvaij. 
 Called also on Mr. Turpie ; and on coming back at four 
 
 found the table covered for me and Miss . She left 
 
 me about six. The operation is comjjleted /" 
 
 His object, as he had indicated, was to assimilate the 
 life of a town minister to that of a minister in the coun- 
 tiy. That he did not succeed perfectly needs not be said. 
 Complete success was impossible. The conditions of the 
 two states are too radically different. Notwithstanding, 
 this is undoubtedly true, that never before had so near 
 an approach been made to the ideal which he had con- 
 ceived of. And when he had so far made good his point, 
 he taught a lesson which has never since been forgotten. 
 It is now by no means an uncommon thing to find city 
 ministers whose i^astoral superintendence of their flocks is 
 as thorough as was his own in the rural parish of Kilmany. 
 
 " Till Dr. Chalmers came to Glasgow," says Mr. David 
 Stow, " parochial Christian influence was a mere name ; 
 it was not systematic, it was not understood ; there was 
 not the machinery for the moral elevation of a town 
 population. The people were let alone. Some of the 
 elders of the Tron Church were excellent men ; but their 
 chief duty was to stand at the plate, receive the free-will 
 offerings of the congregation as they entered, and dis- 
 tribute them to the poor by a monthly allowance. Their 
 spiritual duties were small, and almost exclusively con- 
 fined to a few of the sick." 
 
 Chalmers set out with the resolution to visit every 
 family in his parish. As there were ten thousand people 
 in it, this implied an immense enterprise, and the visita- 
 tion he contemplated could not but be very slight. 
 
58 THE TRON. 
 
 As he was toiling one day up one of the long stairs of 
 the Saltmarket, he suddenly turned to the elder who 
 was accompanying him and asked what he was thinking 
 about. The elder had been too much occupied with the 
 burden of the ascent to have been thinking of anything in 
 particular, and he said so. But this did not satisfy his 
 minister, who, with a humorous twinkle in his eye, accused 
 him of concealing the nature of his reflections. " I know 
 quite well," he said, " that if you were to speak your 
 mind, you would say that we are putting the butter very 
 thinly on the bread." 
 
 In these visits he did not even pray. If he had done 
 so in one case he must have done so in all, and the work 
 he had undertaken would not have been accomplished for 
 years. And yet, there were occasions when a Avord fitly 
 spoken left, in all probability, impressions which Avere 
 never afterwards effaced. 
 
 " Passing through a house in which he saw an old man 
 reclining, he stepped aside, bent over him, lifted up his 
 right hand, and said simply, but with emphatic solemnity, 
 ' Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be 
 saved.' Entering another house, in which was an old 
 bedridden woman, of whom he had been told beforehand 
 that, of a hard and severe character herself, she cherished 
 the darkest and most severe conceptions of the Deity, he 
 went up hastily to her bedside, and fixing her attention 
 by the very vehemence of his utterance, he said, ' Now, I 
 have just come to tell you that God Almighty has no ill 
 will at you : I want you to understand that he has a 
 perfect good will to you ;' — leaving her more startled, per- 
 haps more convinced, than she would have been by any 
 lengthened argument." 
 
 It must not be supposed, however, that, because these 
 
THE TRON. 59 
 
 visits were so hasty, he left any district without giving to 
 all the people in it an opportunity of hearing the gospel 
 from his lips. 
 
 Tlie method he followed is indicated in his diary : — 
 " Along with Mr. C , had another visitation. Ad- 
 dressed two rooms full of people at a door which opened 
 to each of them. I have a great satisfaction in this part 
 of my duty." — "Went through Norris Land. Drank a 
 hurried tea in the parish with Mr. Ure, and went back to 
 Norris Land at eight, where I held forth to a motley as- 
 semblage of a hundred people at least. I had great free- 
 dom and satisfaction in this work ; and, after it was over, 
 received many polite attentions fi'om the genteeler of the 
 auditory." — " Went through about two hundred and 
 thirty people, and drank tea at Mr. Brown's ; then, at 
 eight, delivered an address, in one of the houses, to an 
 assemblage consisting of eighty-five people. Have great 
 comfort in this work." 
 
 At the time these meetings were held he was in the 
 height of his popularity, and every Sabbath-day his church 
 (holding fourteen hundred people) was thronged by eager 
 and admiring multitudes ; yet, we may safely say, he had 
 more " comfort " in the unpretending services which he 
 held in the Closes than he had in the great congregations 
 which assembled in the Tron. 
 
 One thing, among many, which the visitations revealed, 
 was the lamentable amount of ignorance which prevailed 
 among the young. To meet this evil, he instituted a 
 number of Sabbath schools ; and, in order that these might 
 be as effective as possible, he located them in distinctly de- 
 fined districts, making these districts in no case over large, 
 and confiding the oversight of them to competent agents. 
 His own enthusiasm soon infected others ; and among the 
 
60 THE TRON. 
 
 elders and young people of liis congregation he easily 
 found as raany willing workers as he could employ. Tlien 
 the parochial system, which he had seen in such effective 
 operation in the country, was made to embrace, as far as 
 could be at the time, one gi'eat and necessitous parish in 
 the city. 
 
 While all this was going on, very much out of the sight of 
 the world, the Tron Church was being made, Sabbath after 
 Sabbath, a theatre for the display of an eloquence which 
 many believed to be unprecedented ; and the country had 
 now been thoroughly wakened up to realize that a pulpit 
 orator had appeared of the highest order. 
 
 " I know not what it is," wrote Lord Jeffrey, the great 
 critic of the time, " but there is something remarkable 
 about that man. It reminds me more of what one reads 
 of as the effect of the eloquence of Demosthenes than any- 
 thing I ever saw." 
 
 At the invitation of the London Missionary Society, 
 Chalmers had gone up to the metropolis in May 1817, to 
 preach an anniver.sary sermon, and there the world had 
 literally run after him. What helped to that was the 
 pubKcation previously of " The Astronomical Discourses." 
 These discourses, delivered on week days to crowds in 
 Glasgow, produced an extraordinary impression on those 
 who heard them ; and, when they were printed, they be- 
 came the rage all over the country. " They were," says 
 Hazlitt, who was himself carried away with the general 
 rush — " they Avere the darlings of watering-places, were laid 
 
 :^in the windows of inns, and were to be met with in all 
 places of public resort." Coming out about the same time 
 
 J as one of Scott's novels, they ran a neck and neck race 
 with it in the public estimation — nine editions and twenty 
 thousand copies being exhausted within the year. 
 
THE TROX. Gl 
 
 On this wave of popularity he had gone to London, and 
 met there with something like an ovation. \Yherever he 
 preached — in Surrey Chapel, in London Wall, in Swallow 
 Street — the multitudes who went to hear him were immense, 
 and included many of the most notable men of the day. 
 
 " All the world," wrote Mr. Wilberforce, " is wild 
 about Dr. Chalmers. He seems truly pious, simple, un- 
 assuming. Sunday, 25th. — Ofi" early, with Canning, Hus- 
 kisson, and Lord Binning, to the Scotch Church, London 
 Wall, to hear Dr. Chalmers. Vast Crowds. Bobus 
 Smith, Lords Elgin, Harrowby, (fee. I was surprised to 
 see how gi'eatly Canning was aflfected ; at times he was 
 quite melted to tears. Tlie passage which most aifected him 
 was at the close of the discourse. He is reported to have 
 said, that although at first he felt uneasy, in consequence 
 of Chalmers's manner and accent, yet that he had never 
 been so arrested by any oratory. ' The tartan,' so runs 
 the speech attributed to him, ' beats us all.'" 
 
 " The attention which your sermons have excited," 
 wi'ote Robert Hall to him, " is probably unequalled iii 
 modern literature ; and it must be a delightful reflection 
 that you are advancing the cause of religion in innumer- 
 able multitudes of your fellow-creatures whose faces you 
 will never behold till the last day. My ardent prayer is, 
 that talents so rich in splendour, and piety so fervent, 
 may long be continued to be faithfully and assiduously 
 devoted to the service of God and of your generation." 
 
 Returning to Glasgow after all this, his popularity be- 
 came, of course, greater than ever. All Scotland ex- 
 perienced a sensible exultation that one whose very accent 
 at once proclaimed his nationality, was recognized as a man 
 of matchless eloquence by the greatest preachers and states- 
 men of the time. 
 
62 THE TRON. 
 
 But he himself was not carried away with all the ap- 
 plause. If, indeed, it had not gratified him, he would 
 not have been human. Occasionally there appear, even in 
 his journal, confessions which show that he was not alto- 
 gether unconscious of the stirrings of vanity. But in his 
 sober moods, and these were most habitual, the popu- 
 larity he met with was rather a burden to him than other- 
 wise. 
 
 In one place he speaks with a sigh of "a most oppres- 
 sive multitude." At another time he, in good set terms, 
 almost denounces the kind of fuss and fury of which he 
 was so constantly the object. 
 
 "There is," says he, "a high and far-sounding popu- 
 larity which is a most worthless article, felt by all who 
 have it most to be greatly more oppressive than gratify- 
 ing ; a popularity of stare, and pressure, and animal heat, 
 and a whole tribe of other annoyances which it brings 
 around the person of its unfortunate victim ; a popularity 
 which, with its head among storms, and its feet on the 
 treacherous quicksands, has nothing to lull the agonies of 
 its tottering existence but the hosannas of a drivelling 
 generation," 
 
 One evening Dr. Wardlaw heard Chalmers preach in 
 Glasgow. The sermon had been advertised, and the rush 
 to hear him was tremendous. At the close, Wardlaw 
 joined him in the vestry, and the two friends, who lived 
 near each othei', walked homeward together. 
 
 " On the way home," says Dr. Wardlaw, " he expressed, 
 in his pithy manner, his great annoyance at such crowds. 
 * I preached the same sermon,' said he, ' in the morning ; 
 and for the very purpose of preventing the oppressive 
 annoyance of such a densely-crowded place, I intimated 
 that I should preach it again in the evening.' And with 
 
THE TRON 63 
 
 most ingenuous guilelessness he added, * Have you ever 
 tried that plan?' I did not smile — I laughed outright. 
 ' No, no,' I replied, ' my good friend ; there are but very- 
 few of us that are under the necessity of having recourse 
 to the use of means for getting a thin audience.' He en- 
 joyed the joke, and he felt, though he modestly disowned, 
 the compliment." 
 
 How, amid the manifold distractions which he could 
 not possibly avoid, Chalmers was able to maintain his 
 high level of pulpit preparation, and even to write elabo- 
 rate articles for reviews (it is to this period that his first 
 paper on Pauperism in the Edinburgh belongs), is ex- 
 plained in his journals. He had an extraordinary power 
 of abstraction ; so that while he was moving about from 
 place to place — in wayside inns, or when spending parts 
 of days in the houses of friends — he could withdraw into 
 himself at any moment, and give himself up to " severe com- 
 position." Some of his Astronomical Discourses were 
 written partly in this disjointed way, while the common 
 impression at the time was that he was burning over them 
 the midnight oil. The fact was that he did not burn much 
 midnight oil at any time. Rather, like many of the men 
 who have done most, he was an early riser, and between 
 six and nine, even on winter mornings, he had already 
 accomplished much of the work which in other cases would 
 at the latter hour be only just beginning. 
 
 But what specially draws the heart to him all through 
 this period is his unaffected piety and warm-heartedness. 
 His account of his first visit to Kilmany, after he had left 
 it for Glasgow, is most touching. 
 
 "The first parish hamlet I landed at," he writes, "was 
 at the back of Mountquhannie, where I turned the popula- 
 tion out, and went through a gi'eat deal of speering and 
 
64 THE TRON. 
 
 hand-shaking. I did the same among all the houses imme- 
 diately around Mountquhannie. One of my female scholars 
 wept aloud, and I was much moved myself." 
 
 " My whole sensations in this place," he goes on to tell, 
 " are mixed up with a painful and melancholy tenderness. 
 I have made a great sacrifice of personal comfort by going 
 to Glasgow ; and all that I read about the poor and the 
 riots, and the calling upon ministers to exert themselves, 
 adds to the repulsion I feel toward that city." 
 
 "Robin Dewar (the carrier)," he adds, "came from 
 Cupar with a letter to me. I had a sentimental interview 
 ^vith him at the kitchen portico." 
 
 It was sometimes said that Chalmers had rather a 
 habit of "taking fancies" to people; that his bright and 
 kindly imagination was easily moved to throw around 
 such objects of special interest more light than justly 
 belonged to them. Whether that was so or not, it is cer- 
 tain that he was capable of forming most romantic attach- 
 ments — his love for Mr. James Anderson of Dundee and 
 ^Mr. Tliomas Smith of Glasgow being truly wonderful. 
 In this depth and tenderness of his'affections lay the secret 
 of a great part of his power over men. It was always felt 
 that he was no mere logician, forcing convictions by his 
 reasonings, but a loving-hearted man, influencing others by 
 the very fulness of his humanity. 
 
 Above all, his intercourse with God was most beau- 
 tifully childlike. Here he is in March 1818 lamenting his 
 unspirituality ; — 
 
 " Gtli. 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 sjoeak to my walk with God. Will 
 a quiet confidence in Christ not bring this about ? 
 
THE TKON, ■ 65 
 
 " 8th. Not yet. O my God, help me ! Let me do what 
 is obviously right, and God will bless me with the frame 
 and the manifestation I long after. 
 
 " 9th. Not yet ! Trust that I am finding my way to 
 Christ as the Lord my strength. 
 
 ''18tli. Not yet ! But, I trust, better." 
 
 His father died four months later. Writing on the day 
 of his funeral, he says : " He died in peace, and, I am 
 confident, is now in glory. He was a veteran Christian, 
 who had long walked in the good old way of justification 
 by the righteousness of Christ, and sanctification by the 
 Spirit which is at His giving." 
 
 And this testimony to his father's piety, and the basis 
 of it, leads him on to reiterate with increased clearness 
 and emphasis his view of the way of salvation : — 
 
 " I feel that the righteousness of Christ, unmixed with 
 baser materials, untempered with strange mortar, unvi- 
 tiated by human pretensions of any sort, is the solid rest- 
 ing-place on Avhich a man is to lay his acceptance before 
 God, and that there is no other ; that to attempt a com- 
 position between grace and works is to spoil both, and 
 is to deal a blow both at the character of God and to the 
 cause of practical holiness. This is my firm conviction ; 
 but I trust you understand that it may be a firm convic- 
 tion without being a bright and rapture-giving perception. 
 I know that it should enrapture me — that it should throw 
 me into the transports of gratitude — that it should make 
 me feel as a man in all the triumphs of confident anticipa- 
 tion. But I have occasional visitations of darkness and 
 dulness and spiritual lethargy, and then, like Rutherford, 
 I would like to believe in the dark — to keep my hold in 
 the midst of all my darkness and all my misgivings — to 
 humble myself because of my cold insensibility, but still 
 
 (636) " 5 
 
66 THE TRON-. 
 
 to trust determmedly— to trust in the name and right- 
 eousness of my Lord." 
 
 "I think," he adds, "that holiness is looked upon by 
 some evangelical writers in rather a lame and inadequate 
 point of view. They value it chiefly as an e\ddence of 
 justifying faith. They are right in saying that it gives no 
 title to God's favour ; but they are wrong in saying that 
 its chief use is to ascertain that title, or to make that title 
 clear to him who possesses it. It is, in fact, chiefly valu- 
 able on its oion account. It forms part, and an efiective 
 part of salvation. It may be considered our entrance upon 
 heaven. Christ came to give us a justifying righteousness, 
 and he also came to make us holy ; not chiefly for the 
 purpose of evidencing here our possession of a justifying 
 righteousness — not for so temporary an object as this — but 
 for the purpose of forming and fitting us for a blessed 
 eternity. " 
 
 Tliis was the doctrine which he preached in the Tron ; 
 and how much lasting fruit there came of it, the Day will 
 declare. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 ST. John's. 
 
 HE magistrates of Glasgow did not at all agree 
 with Chalmers as to the spiritually necessi- 
 tous state of the city. He — painting with the 
 big brush which he was in the habit of usin^ 
 — said that twenty more churches were needed, and they 
 thought such a statement simply ridiculous. But they 
 went with him so far. They admitted that some more 
 church accommodation was required ; and to show that 
 they held to this conviction honestly, they built St. John's. 
 More than that — on the 5th of June 1818 they offered the 
 incumbency of it to the minister of the Tron. 
 
 What inducement was there for Chalmers to move from 
 one church to another in the same place ? St. John's was 
 larger than the Tron ; it was situated in a locality mainly 
 inhabited by the working-classes ; and there was, to begin 
 with, no congregation. The principal inducement was 
 this : that in the older parishes the Establishment was so 
 hampered by old laws and regulations, that he had no 
 freedom to do a great many things which he thought to 
 be necessary in the interest of religion, while in the new 
 parish which he was invited to occupy he was expressly 
 promised liberty to do very much as he liked. 
 
 Tempted by this promise, he accepted the appointment ; 
 
68 ST. John's. 
 
 and when the building was finished, and everything else 
 satisfactorily arranged, he was introduced to his new charge 
 on the 26th of August 1819, by Dr. Andrew Thomson. 
 
 The sittings were let first to such residents within the 
 parish as wished for them ; next, to any who desired to 
 follow him from the Tron ; and, finally, to all and sundry 
 who made application. At the close of this process it was 
 not found that any vacant space remained. The congre- 
 gation was found without difficulty. 
 
 But the district had to be operated on, and to this work 
 he addressed himself with all the enthusiasm of one who 
 believed that he was now about to exhibit the practicability 
 of plans which it would be for the advantage of the nation 
 to apply everywhere. 
 
 He had long been thoroughly convinced that pauperism 
 -could never be effectually met by means of a poor law, or 
 a system of legal assessment. He held that under such a 
 system the independence of the people was injuriously 
 affected, and charity often and grossly abused. He was 
 satisfied that in large towns, as well as in small rural 
 parishes, all that needed to be done could be done better, 
 more cheaply and more efficiently, by the exercise of a 
 wise Christian benevolence ; and one of the things he had 
 most at heart in undertaking the oversight of St. John's 
 was to prove the truth of his theories by showing them in 
 practical operation. 
 
 The experiment which he proposed to make was on a 
 large scale. There wei^e ten thousand people in the parish, 
 and the cost of its pauperism had hitherto been £1400 a year. 
 Nevertheless, he offered to relinquish all claim on the fund 
 raised by assessments, and to undertake to support the 
 poor out of the voluntary contributions received at the 
 church door. These contributions were considerable, but 
 
ST. John's. 69 
 
 they did not amount to anything like the sum which has 
 been named ; and that the scheme succeeded (as it did 
 conspicuously) was due entirely to the excellent manage- 
 ment which husbanded the resources of the parish, and 
 prevented any of them from running to worse than waste. 
 
 How this was done can be explained in a sentence. 
 The parish was divided into districts. Each of these was 
 placed under the charge of an elder and a deacon. The 
 really poor in it were ascertained by means of personal 
 visitation. And while the vicious were utterly discoun- 
 tenanced, and work was provided as far as possible for 
 those who were willing to live by their own industry, no 
 one was suffered to remain in a state of want who was a 
 genuine object of charity. 
 
 At first it was supposed by the ne^er-do-ioells that better 
 days had dawned upon them ; that the doles made to such 
 as themselves would be more generous and indiscriminating 
 than ever. But they soon found out their mistake. " The 
 scrutiny to which each case was subjected was patiently, 
 minutely, and even searchingly conducted. It was soon 
 j)erceived that the very last thing which a deacon would 
 allow was that any family in the pai-ish should sink into 
 the degraded condition of being chargeable on the parish 
 funds. The drunken were told to give up their 
 drunkenness, and that until they did so their case would 
 not even be considered ; the idle were told to set in- 
 stantly to work, and if they complained that work could 
 not be gotten, by kindly application to employers they 
 were helped to obtain it ; the improvident were warned 
 that if with such resources of income as they had or might 
 have they chose to squander and bring themselves to want, 
 they must just bear the misery of their own procuring." 
 
 The machinery set agoing wa.s thus not used simply to 
 
70 ST. John's. 
 
 relieve destitution. It was made a powerful moral force 
 for its prevention and cure. And the results which 
 followed, although they were quite what Chalmers him- 
 self anticipated, took everybody else by surprise. What 
 could formerly be accomplished — and that imperfectly — 
 at an outlay of £1400 a year was now done very much 
 more satisfactorily for £280 a year. The church-door col- 
 lections in this way yielded a superabundant supply of 
 means, and Vjy universal consent <£500 of the overplus was, 
 after a time, devoted to endowing a school. 
 
 Nor could it be said that the success of the scheme was 
 due to the extraordinary personal popularity of Chalmers. 
 The same system was continued in the locality after he 
 had left it, and here is what could be said about it by his 
 successor, Dr. Macfarlan, — 
 
 "The experiment of sixteen months, during which I was 
 minister of St. John's, confirmed the favourable opinion 
 which I previously entertained of the system : it worked 
 Avell in all respects. With an income from collections not 
 much exceeding £300 we kept down the pauperism of a 
 parish containing a population of ten thousand ; and I 
 know from actual observation that the poor were in better 
 condition, and, excepting the worthless and profligate who 
 applied for and were refused assistance, were more con- 
 tented and happy than the poor in the other parishes of 
 Scotland." 
 
 It is a pity that so Christian a scheme could not have 
 been permanently sustained, even in one city parish. But 
 i it had always been viewed with hostility by various parties, 
 and after eighteen years it was given up ; and now, in the 
 divided state of Scotland, it would be difficult, if not im- 
 possible, to revive it. What greatly grieved Chalmers, 
 however, was that its abandonment was generally spoken 
 
ST. JOHX'S. 71 
 
 of as the result of failure. To this inference he objected 
 strongly. His faith in the system continued unshaken to 
 the last, and although, like the rest of us, he had to 
 acquiesce in the inevitable, he was never reconciled to a 
 legal poor law. 
 
 The sustenance of the poor, however, was but one of 
 the objects which specially interested him in St. John's. 
 When he began to visit in the Tron he had found gross 
 ignorance prevailing among the young, and he had tried 
 to meet the evil by the institution of Sabbath schools. 
 But this expedient did not go deep enough to meet the 
 case, and he addressed himself to the establishment of 
 schools in which the poor children of the parish might get 
 a good Christian education during the week. 
 
 He took the first step in this direction within a month 
 of his settlement ; when, calling together a few members 
 of his new congregation, he submitted to them this resolu- 
 tion : " That there should, in the first instance, and as soon 
 as possible, be raised by subscription a sum of money 
 deemed adequate to the erection of one fabric, to include 
 two school-houses and two teachers' houses ; which, when 
 completed, shall in all time thereafter be exclusively occu- 
 2)ied for the use and benefit of the parish of St. John's." 
 
 The proposal was cordially agreed to. Chalmers set an 
 example of liberality by subscribing £100. Within a 
 week or two a sum of £1200 was raised. In July 1820 
 the building was ready for occupation. And thus an 
 enterprise was launched from which incalculable good has 
 followed. For not merely was this first school succeeded 
 by others in St. John's, but the idea was taken up else- 
 where, and a great impulse was given to the cause of 
 education all over the country. His interest in the schools 
 was immense. He was almost a daily visitor to one or 
 
72 ST. John's. 
 
 other of tbem. Ajxd when strangers of importance came 
 to see him — as was frequently the case — one of the lions 
 which he invariably took them to view was the system of 
 educational establishments which he had been enabled to 
 set agoing. Before he left Glasgow, he could point to over 
 seven hundred children who were recei^'ing first-rate in- 
 struction through his instrumentality. 
 
 During two of the years of his St. John's incumbency 
 he was assisted in all his labours by Edwakd Irving. 
 Irving had not, to begin with, found any suitable niche 
 for himself. He was not, in the ordinary sen.se, a popular 
 preacher, and there was no patron Avith whom he had any 
 influence. Discouraged by the aspect of things, he had 
 almost come to the conclusion of expatriating himself, 
 when his gifts happily came to be recognized by the two 
 most famous Scottish churchmen of the time. Dr. Andrew 
 Thomson one day asked him to preach in St. George's, 
 and told him that he would have among his hearers Dr. 
 Chalmers of Glasgow. The consequence was that he was 
 invited to St. John's ; and a very highly favoured people 
 indeed were they who were permitted to sit at the feet of 
 two such men, and hear from the one lectures on the 
 Epistle to the Romans, and from the other lectures on St. 
 Luke. 
 
 The two " sorted" together admirably. Here, for exam- 
 ple, is a fine sketch : — 
 
 " Entering the school-room in Macfarlane Street one 
 Monday forenoon, he said to Mr. Aitken [the teacher]: 
 * ^ly family are at Kirkcaldy ; as I wish to have an hour's 
 easy chat with you and !Mr. Macgi'egor [another teacher], 
 will you just come up at three o'clock and have a steak 
 wdth !Mr. Irving and myself in the vestry V In company 
 •with Mr. Irving, he called as the schools were dismissing, 
 
ST. John's. 73 
 
 and the two ministers and the two teachers proceeded to 
 the vestry. The table was set; and John Graham, the 
 beadle, officiated as waiter. Tales of the school and out 
 of the school followed close upon each other. ' I am 
 afraid,' said Dr. Chalmers to one of the teachers, ' that 
 your labour is not of the right sort — too exhausting.' Mr. 
 Aitken mentioned that Dr. Bell from India had called the 
 previous day between sermons desiring to see the class- 
 rooms. ' I had a call from him,' said Dr. Chalmers, ' this 
 morning. I was lying awake in my old woman's room 
 [while his family was away he was living in very humble 
 lodgings in the heart of his parish], cogitating whether I 
 should get up or not, when I heard a heavy step in the 
 kitchen ; and the door opening, and the syjeaker entering, a 
 rough voice exclaimed, " Can this be the chamber of the 
 great Dr. Chalmers 1" ' — ' And what did you say V inquired 
 Mr. Irving, who enjoyed exceedingly the ridiculousness of 
 the question. With a quiet smile and inimitable archness, 
 accompanied by frequent shutting of his eyelids — ' I even 
 told him,' said Dr. Chalmers, ' that it was, and invited 
 him to stay to breakfast with me. I knew that Mr. 
 Collins was to be out with a proof, and was glad to think 
 that the discussion between the merits of his school system 
 and the Scottish, which I knew was soon to follow, would 
 be supported by one who I suspected was more than a 
 match for him.' — ' Well,' said Mr. Irving, ' and how did 
 it txirn up?' — ' Mr. Collins arrived as I expected, and to it 
 they set tooth and nail.'— 'And the result?' — 'Collins 
 was too many for him.' The hour filled up with such 
 pleasant talk, the two teachers returned to their school- 
 rooms, and the two ministers to their round among their 
 parishioners." 
 
 Again: — "At an agency tea-party, Mr. Irving, who 
 
74 ST. John's. 
 
 had just returned from a tour in Ireland, related some 
 amusing jjarticulars of his perambulations through the 
 liberties of Dublin. I entered, said he, a miserable 
 cabui, in which an old woman was smoking a pipe by the 
 fire. Seeing three coarse portraits on the wall, I asked 
 her who they were. ' Sure, that's St. Paul on the right.' 
 —'And this]'— * An' sure isn't that St. Peter.'— 'And 
 he in the centre?' — 'And don't you know Pat Donolly, 
 the bruiser? — sure everybody knows him !' " 
 
 During this period of his life his pastoral labours were 
 not merely abundant, but overwhelming. 
 
 " I spend," he wrote to his wife, " four days a week 
 visiting the people, in company with the agents of the 
 various districts over which I expatiate. I last week 
 overtook between seven hundred and eight hundred people, 
 and have gi'eat pleasure in the movement. This I am 
 generally done with in the forenoon, and then dine either 
 at the vestry or in a friend's house. In addition to this I 
 have had an agency tea every night except yesternight; 
 and in a few evenings more I exj^ect to overtake the 
 whole agency of my parish. At nine I go out to family 
 worship in some house belonging to the district of my 
 present residence, where I assemble the people of the land 
 or close vicinity ; and expect, ere I quit my present quar- 
 ters, to overtake in this way the whole of that district. I 
 furthermore have an address every Friday night to the 
 people of my vicinity, in the Calton Lancasterian School- 
 room; and a weekly address will be necessary for each of 
 the four weeks, in St. John's Church, to the people whom I 
 have gone over in regular visitation. Add to all this the 
 missionary monthly meeting held yesternight, and you will 
 find that, without one particle of study, I am in full occu- 
 pation. I study only on Fridays and Saturdays." 
 
ST. John's; 75 
 
 All this could not possibly last. He had experiments 
 to make and theories to prove in St. John's; and that, no 
 doubt, reconciled him for the time to a manner of life 
 which he could not have continued to pursue without the 
 sacrifice of all other interests. But even while thus throw- 
 ing himself into' parochial work with an abandonment 
 which must have astonished all who witnessed it, he was 
 cherishing the hope that he might yet be free to follow 
 another line of things. " My desire," he was writing, "is 
 to give the remainder of my days to intellectual rather 
 than to bodily labour. An excess of the latter I find to be 
 very hurtful, and should God uphold me in strength and 
 in the exercise of my faculties, I contemplate a far more 
 deliberate process of authorship than I have ever yet had 
 leisure for." 
 
 Various opportunities oftered for his removal to other 
 and less laborious spheres, but they were either unsuitable 
 in themselves, or they came at times which were unsea- 
 sonable. At last, however, an opening occurred which 
 had too many attractions to be refused. On the 18th of 
 January 1823 he was elected Professor of Moral Philoso- 
 phy in the University of St. Andrews, and without any 
 hesitation he accepted the appointment. 
 
 Of course his proposed departure from Glasgow caused 
 a furor of disappointment, and even of irritation ; but his 
 reasons for agreeing to the change were really unanswer- 
 able. 
 
 "My first," said he, "is a reason of necessity, and is 
 founded on the imperative condition of my health. I 
 should like to unite the labour of preparation for the 
 pulpit with the labour of household ministrations in the 
 parish ; this is a union which I have made many attempts 
 to realize, and I now find myself to be altogether unequal 
 
76 ST. John's. 
 
 ^ to it : this mortifying experience has grown upon me for a 
 good many months, but never did it become so distinct 
 and decisive until the present winter. My very last at- 
 tempt at exertion out of doors has been followed up by 
 several weeks of utter incapacity for fixed thought, I 
 find it impossible any longer to acquit nfyself both of the 
 personal and mental fatigue of my present office; and 
 when under an o^ipressive sense of this, a vacant professor- 
 ship came to my door, I entertained it as an opening in 
 providence, and have resolved to follow it." 
 
 In a word, he had o*verworked himself, and with the 
 longing of one perishing of thirst for water, he thought 
 almost with rapture of " the unbounded leisure and liberty 
 of a summer vacation." 
 
 On the 9th of November 1823, when he was just forty- 
 three years of age, he preached his farewell sermon. 
 " Applications for admission had for several weeks been 
 pouring in with distressing profusion upon those who had 
 seats in the church. To many individuals of rank and 
 consideration tickets were issued entitling them to a place 
 on the pulpit stair or in the vacant area around the pre- 
 centor's desk Before the doors were opened, Macfar- 
 
 lane Street, Queen Street, and Campbell Street were filled 
 with excited groups waiting eagerly for admission. At 
 last the main entrance was thrown open, the gathered 
 crowd converged upon it, and the conflict commenced. 
 For a brief season the efforts of the door-keepers and their 
 allies were successful; the assailants, however, multiplied 
 so rapidly, and the mass accumulated behind drove on 
 those before them with such impetuosity, that the well- 
 guarded entrance was forced Into a church seated for 
 
 nbout seventeen hundred nearly double that number was 
 packed." And it was to this enormous crowd that his 
 
ST. John's. 77 
 
 la.st words were spoken from the pulpit he had for four 
 busy years been filling. 
 
 A dinner followed on the Tuesday succeeding the dis- 
 course on the Sabbath. Three hundred and forty gentle- 
 men sat down to it, the largest party of the sort which 
 had ever assembled for a like purpose in the city. Nor 
 was the number of friends who thus collected to do him 
 honour the most notable feature in the gathering. AVhat 
 made it more remarkable was the varied complexion of the 
 guests. " "Whig and Tory, clergyman and layman, church- 
 men and dissenters, all joined in friendly concert to bestow 
 vipon him this parting memorial of their regard." 
 
 And so he left Glasgow amid the acclamations and 
 regrets of multitudes who had seen the noble work he had 
 performed, and who knew that their city would be perma- 
 nently the better of his having lived so long among them. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ST. ANDREWS. 
 
 T was very natural that Chalmers should regard 
 his translation to St. Andrews with peculiar 
 pleasure and satisfaction. To fill a chair in 
 its ancient university had been at one time the 
 ambition of his life ; and although for a season he had 
 been weaned, as he believed, from all desire of academic 
 distinction, the old love revived when he came to feel that 
 the burden of such a ministry as he had undertaken in 
 Glasgow was too much for him, and realized that he might 
 serve the cause of Christ quite as effectively through a 
 professorship as through the pulpit. 
 
 He was not indeed to be engaged directly in the teaching 
 of religion ; but, as he said, when explaining to the workers 
 in St. John's his reasons for accepting the offer made to 
 liim, the subject he was to have in hand had so close a 
 connection with divinity that it might Avell be called its 
 handmaid. 
 
 "Moral philosophy," he remarked, "is not theology, 
 but it stands at the entrance of it, and so of all human 
 sciences is the most capable of being turned into an 
 instrument either for guiding right or for most grievously 
 perverting the minds of those who are to be the religious 
 teachers of the age." 
 
ST. ANDREWS. 79 
 
 He did not feel, therefore, that he was diverging from 
 the i^ath in which he had of late been travelling, or was for- 
 gettmg what was now the great and absorbing purpose of 
 his life, when from his work of evangelization in the wynds 
 of Glasgow he betook himself to a college class-room and 
 joined with others in preparmg young men for the ministry. 
 
 And being satisfied on this point, he was able to 
 " expatiate," to use a favourite expression of his, with 
 almost boyish rapture, over the bright and peaceful 
 prospect which seemed now opening up before him. 
 
 " I never thought," he said in his inaugural address — 
 " I never thought that on this side of time I should have 
 been permitted to wander in arbours so desirable, and that 
 thus embowered among my most delicious recollections, I 
 should have realized in living and actual history the 
 imagery of other days; that the play-fellows of my youth 
 should thus become the associates of my manhood ; and 
 that the light-hearted companions of a season that has 
 long passed away should, by the movements of a mysterious 
 but, I trust, kind Providence, stand side by side as 
 colleagues in the work of presiding over the studies of 
 another genei'ation. " 
 
 He entered on the duties of his professorship with very 
 little formal preparation. Coming right out of the heart 
 of his parochial work in Glasgow, he had found no time to 
 carry almost any completed material in his hand, and all 
 the session through he was living literally from hand to 
 mouth. But his subject was, in many of its aspects, quite 
 familiar to him ; and the manner in which he treated it 
 was so different from what the university had been accus- 
 tomed to that his class-room became oftentimes the 
 scene of just such excitement as had been so frequently 
 exhibited in churches or elsewhere by popular assemblies. 
 
80 ST. ANDREWS. 
 
 All the difference which appeared was this, that the en- 
 thusiasm awakened was expressed more demonstratively. 
 In places of w^orship the stir he caused by his bursts of 
 eloquence was restrained. In St. Andrews, the students 
 would not be suppressed, and loud and often obstreperous 
 applause followed the delivery of many portions of his 
 lectures. 
 
 The appointment, in short, was admitted by all to be a 
 great success; and even those w^ho (sympathizing strongly in 
 his missionary work) had most doubted about the propriety 
 of such a man leaving the pulpit for a chair, began to see 
 how, by directing as he Avas doing one of the tributary 
 streams which helped to form the main current of the 
 ministry, he was performing services which were likely to 
 tell, not on one locality only, but on all the Church. 
 
 What did much to satisfy interested onlookers on that 
 point was his method of teaching. He had no sooner 
 undertaken his new office than he became persuaded that 
 the subject hitherto had not been receiAdng justice. Less 
 and more had been made of it than seemed to him to be 
 either legitimate or wise. On the one hand, it had been 
 the custom to treat it as if it were "mental" and not 
 '• moral" philosophy at all ; or, at least, so much time was 
 given to the discussion of the purely metaphysical diffi- 
 culties of the science that little remained o^er for the ex- 
 position of what properly belonged to it. How this came 
 about had a natural enough explanation. " The wnritings 
 of Hume, in which the very foundation of morals was 
 threatened by a purely metaphysical scepticism, had 
 drawn after him, into a region which was not properly 
 their own, the professors of moral science in Scotland. 
 Metaphysics and moral science had become so allied 
 and interwoven that it was imagined the one could not be 
 
ST. ANDREWS. 81 
 
 rightly discussed without a preceding and enlarged treat- 
 ment of the other." 
 
 But there was a worse evil even than that. Chalmers 
 found that there had existed before him a most unreason- 
 ably fastidious dread of trenching on the domain of natural 
 theology, and still more of so much as remotely hinting 
 that there was such a thing as Christianity. He himself 
 was very careful to tell his students that the science of 
 which he was the teacher was incapable of explaining 
 everything. It suggested doubts which it could not solve. 
 And nothing seemed to him more rational than to say that 
 there was such a thing as a supernatural revelation, through 
 which, possibly, some further information might be de- L. 
 rived. He did not, of course, consider it his business to 
 expound that revelation, — that duty had been committed 
 to others, — but he held that it would have been most 
 unphilosophical on his part not to mention a source of 
 illumination from which a higher light might conceivably 
 be received. And to show the propriety of this position, 
 he was accustomed to use the following illustration : — 
 
 " If," said he, " natural philosophy were divided into 
 two professorships, one of which related to the W'hole of 
 terrestrial physics, and to that portion of celestial physics 
 which is accessible to the unassisted observation of man, 
 and the other of which related to that department of 
 celestial physics the informations of which are brought home 
 by the telescope ; then if the professor of the former were 
 to make no allusion either to the power of that instrument 
 by which these further informations were brought home, 
 or at least to make no general allusion to the magnitude 
 and importance of the informations themselves, although 
 he did not enter into a detail of them, he would be doing 
 a most grievous injustice to the noble science of astronomy. 
 
 (6.36) " 6 
 
82 ST. ANDREWS. 
 
 And in like manner I feel that I should be doing the 
 utmost injustice to what may be considered as the 
 science of celestial ethics, if I were to make no reference 
 to that department of it which is beyond the ken of the 
 natural powers, but ^^dthin the ken of the Christian revela- 
 tion." 
 
 He thus held that there had been at once an undue 
 excess and an undue limitation in the teaching of his sub- 
 ject; and, striking out for himself, as usual, an independent 
 path, he made his chair what, no doubt, it was intended 
 originally to be, — a direct stepping-stone to the study of 
 theology. Viewing it, indeed, so distinctly in this light, he 
 was strongly convinced that its place behoved to be changed 
 in the curriculum. In all our Scotch universities natural 
 philosophy comes last in the undergraduate course. He 
 would have had that subject brought on earlier, and moral 
 philosophy made the subject last dealt -wdth by the students 
 before entering the Divinity Hall. 
 
 In regard to his method, he treated moral philosophy 
 as strictly " the philosophy of duty ; " and, in discussing 
 that, he viewed his subject in two coimections. The first 
 part of his course was devoted to showing what are the 
 ethical relations of man and man. In the second he took 
 a higher flight and dealt with the moralities which connect 
 heaven and earth. It was, of course, under this last head 
 that he felt himself impelled to touch upon revelation. 
 The moralities with which we have to do have not been 
 fully enumerated if no account is taken of an invisible 
 Being to whom we owe obedience. Who he is, is a question 
 wliich Chalmers regarded as so far within his sphere, and 
 he gave some lectures upon it ; but it was impossible, in 
 discussing it, not to see that the light is insufficient which 
 Nature supplies, and hence he ended by making direct, 
 
ST. ANDREWS. 83 
 
 though not detailed, allusion to that spiritual telescope by 
 whose means alone any certain information could be de- 
 I'ived of things unseen. 
 
 When his second session came round, Chalmers was, of 
 course, still better prepared to meet and satisfy the expec- 
 tations which had been formed regarding him ; and his 
 course this year has often been spoken of since as a pecu- 
 liarly brilliant one. Students gathered to St. Andrews 
 from all the other Scottish universities, and even from Eng- 
 land and Ireland. The attendance on the moral philosophy 
 class became more than doubled. Never had so large or 
 intelli2;ent an audience been collected within the college 
 walls ; and teacher and scholars alike felt the stimulus 
 of the scene. Many were the impassioned utterances to 
 which the professor was moved to give expression, and all 
 his efforts were vain to keej) his hearers from showing how 
 thoroughly they appreciated these. The practice of "ruff- 
 ing," it would seem, had only been recently introduced. 
 It had appeared, more or less, in all the universities. 
 Chalmers, as we can well believe, was afflicted with it 
 more than most. And as he had of old consulted Dr. 
 Wardlaw about the best means of keeping down a crowd, 
 so now he took counsel with a professor of mathematics 
 on the subject of how best to put an end to what he called 
 the system of " pedestrian approbation. " " It is," he told 
 his students almost ruefully, "a new and somewhat per- 
 plexing phenomenon in the seats of learning ; but whatever 
 diversity of taste or of opinion may obtain as to the right 
 treatment of it, my friend and I agreed in one thing, — that 
 if any response is to come back upon the professor for the 
 effusions poured forth by him, it is far better that it should 
 come from the heads than from the heels of the rising 
 generation ! " It may fairly be doubted whether such a 
 
84 ST. ANDREWS. 
 
 remonstrance could have had any otlier effect than that of 
 increasing the evil. 
 
 Laboriously and conscientiously as Chalmers performed 
 all the duties of his office, he did not find in it full scope 
 for all his energies ; and partly, no doubt, on that account, 
 and partly because he had always felt a keen interest in 
 the subject, he opened a supplementary class for political 
 economy. In this class Adam Smith's " Wealth of 
 Nations " was used as a text-book. Upon that and his 
 lectures careful catechetical instruction was given. And 
 not the least of the benefits which he conferred upon the 
 young men who came under his influence at St. Andrews 
 was the training which they received from him as members 
 of the body politic. 
 
 In settling down, however, in the city A^dth which he 
 had so many pleasant associations, there was one thing which 
 he seems to have rather forgotten. He was not the same 
 as he had been when, as the minister of Kilmany, he had 
 asserted his right to teach in defiance of the university. 
 But although he had changed, St. Andrews had not. It 
 was, in religious matters, as JModerate as ever ; and, if all 
 stories are true, it was by no means a lightsome thing for 
 any one to be compelled to attend the College Kirk, and 
 to hear Dr. Haldane preach in the morning and Dr. Buist in 
 the afternoorL A legend is current in that quarter to this 
 effect, that a person who wanted sleep tried other opiates 
 in vain, and cried out at last, in utter despair, " for an 
 
 hour of Dr. ! " In such circumstances Chalmers was 
 
 made to feel that he had come into a spiritual wilderness ; 
 and realizing the evil effects of this upon his own soul, he 
 was mo'S'ed to take a side in a controversy which seriously 
 disturbed his relations with his colleagues. 
 
 The college law required that all students belonging to 
 
ST. ANDREWS. 85 
 
 the Established Church should attend every Sabbath a 
 particular place of worship. Liberty to go where they 
 liked was conceded to Dissenters ; but there was no free- 
 dom for any who did not claim it under that designation. 
 Such a rule might not have pressed very heavily, if in the 
 church to which the students were driven the preaching- 
 had been edifying or attractive. But it was hard, at a 
 time when Scotland was awakening to a new life and its 
 ingenuous youth had begun to feel the stir of a better era, 
 to compel men, whether they would or not, to " sit under" a 
 style of teaching which had almost driven religion from 
 the land. Under any circumstances Chalmers would have 
 revolted under such tyranny ; but, as has been indicated, 
 he had himself groaned under the arrangement, and he was 
 thus more than well disposed to aid in any effort made to 
 secure relief. 
 
 His first attempt to alter the state of things was made 
 in connection with a vacancy which occurred in the 
 incumbency of the College Church. The old minister, a 
 Moderate, retired ; and if an earnest Evangelical had been 
 appointed, the grievance would, for a time at any rate, 
 have ceased to press. But the chancellor of the university, 
 with whom the patronage lay, refused to listen to the 
 remonstrance that was addi'essed to him, and the mischief 
 was once more repeated. One of the professors, and he a 
 man of the well-known dry type, was nominated to the 
 vacant ofiice, and the discontent broke out as loudly and 
 importunately as ever. 
 
 The sympathy which he showed on this occasion for the 
 students exposed Chalmers to charges which were most 
 unjust, but in connection with which he gave expression 
 to sentiments in which may be seen the key-note of much 
 of his after-life. Some members of his family had felt so 
 
86 ST. ANDREWS. 
 
 strongly the burden of the Mocleratism of St. Andrews, 
 that they were in the habit of seeking spiritual refreshment 
 now and then in the warmer atmosphere of a Dissenting 
 chapel. With this practice Chalmers had not interfered, 
 and he was accused in consequence of being disloyal to the 
 Establishment. 
 
 His answer was in substance this, that the value of the 
 Church of Scotland lay, not in its being an Establishment, 
 but in its being an efl&cient Church ; that life is more than 
 State connection; and that by insisting in all circumstances 
 on the supreme importance of the gospel, you tend to 
 secure the usefulness of any Church to which you may 
 belong. 
 
 *' I have," said he, " no veneration for the Church of 
 Scotland merely quasi an Establishment, but I have the 
 utmost veneration for it quasi an instrument of Christian 
 
 good I think it a high object to uphold the Church of 
 
 Scotland, but only because of its subserviency to the still 
 
 higher object of upholding the Christianity of our land 
 
 Consistently Avith this principle, if I knew of any Dissent- 
 ing chapel where, in point of fact, the members of my 
 family received a deeper, a more powerful, and a more 
 practical impression upon their consciences than in the 
 parish church, I should not feel myself guilty of schism 
 though I recommended and encouraged the members of my 
 family to go to that place where they found the ministra- 
 tion that was most calculated to do them good. And so 
 far from this operatiiag with prejudicial effect upon the 
 Establishment, it just applies to that Establishment the 
 force of a self-correcting principle, by acting with a whole- 
 some reflex influence on the exercise of patronage." 
 
 ^Miat utter radicalism all this must have sounded when 
 it was first spoken ! And yet it is very easy to see how he 
 
ST. ANDREWS. 87 
 
 came to be drifted into the position which he now defined. 
 The maintenance of the life of God in his soul had come 
 to be regarded by him as an object of prime im])ortance. 
 His diary shows that he felt keenly the depressing influ- 
 ences of St. Andrews Moderatism. Nothing, for example, 
 could well be more significant than this entry : "A better 
 Sabbath than I have had for a long time, eren though I did 
 attend the College Church all day ! " What he got in his 
 ordinary place of worship was not quickening, but the 
 reverse. He was forced to think of others as well as of 
 himself. Yeiy many had not his resources to fall back 
 upon. The mischief being done by the system within the 
 Church must have seemed to him unspeakable. And so he 
 was naturally led to ask whether a Moderate Establish- 
 ment, merely because it was an Establishment, was worthy 
 of being supported at all hazards. It is more thaii likely 
 tliat he Avas now being taught, as he had never been before, 
 to see that nothing can compensate for the absence of the 
 gosjoel, and that no sacrifice is too great to secure to a 
 country the universal diffusion in it of evangelical truth. 
 
 But there was also another thing which helped to render 
 the stay of Chalmers in St. Andrews less happy than it 
 might have been. This was a dispute with his fellow- 
 professors about the appropriation of certain college funds. 
 The income of the university was spent under the super- 
 intendence of the senate, and the members of that body 
 had somehow fallen into the habit of dividing among 
 themselves any surplus that remained after the current 
 expenses of the year had been met. The professor of 
 moral philosophy did not see that he and liis colleagues 
 had any right to this money, and he not only said so, but 
 positively refused to accept his share. His fastidiousness 
 on this point Avas worse than annoying. It set agoing the 
 
88 ST. ANDREWS. 
 
 rumour that his colleagues were guilty of virtual dishonesty, 
 and bitter words were sometimes bandied about among 
 them. The unpleasantness thus caused had nearly issued 
 in the loss of Chalmei's to Scotland. There came to him, 
 while things were yet in an unsettled state, an invitation 
 to occupy the chair of moral science in the London Univer- 
 sity, and he did not at once put away the offer from him 
 as altogether out of the question. Happily a royal com- 
 mission had been appointed to inquire into the condition of 
 the Scottish colleges, and he felt disposed to wait for the 
 result. Other things also made a movement across the 
 Border seem not entirely expedient at that time. And so 
 he was preserved to the country to which he properly 
 belonged. But the two things which have been referred 
 to made it clear enough that St. Andrews was not to be 
 his final resting-place, and no one who knew all the facts 
 was much surprised wdien, after a five years' residence in 
 it, he show^ed no indisposition to move to Edinburgh. 
 
 We turn, however, very gladly from all that to look at 
 his St. Andrews life from two other sides. 
 
 It was at this time that he began to take a systematic 
 lead in the afiairs of the Church. His native burgh of 
 Anstruther returned him as its representati^-e to the 
 General Assembly, and year after year in succession he sat 
 as a member of that court. The conflict was now not very 
 far off in wliich he was to play so conspicuous a part, and 
 already the skirmishing which precedes great battles had 
 commenced. He had no difliculty in singling out the side 
 on which he was to fight. He belonged by constitution 
 and conviction to the reforming party, and he ranged him- 
 self at once under the flag of Dr. Andrew Thomson and Sir 
 Harry Moncreiff", who were setting their faces against 
 everything, however respectable and time-honoured it 
 
ST. ANDREWS. 89 
 
 might be, which seemed to them to hinder the efficiency of 
 the Church as an organization for practical work. 
 
 In the Assembly of 1824, for example, he took a leading 
 part in two debates. The question discussed in the first 
 was whether Dr. Macfarlan, who was already Principal 
 of the University of Glasgow, could with propriety be 
 appointed also to the incumbency of the High Church in 
 that city. The Moderates said Yes, the Evangelicals No ; 
 but the former were still masters of the ship, and they 
 carried their point by a decisive majority. In the other 
 case Chalmers conquered, but the entire number who voted 
 was very much smaller, so that no certain inference could 
 be drawn as to the mind of the whole Assembly. The 
 point settled was, that there was no reason why another 
 Gaelic chapel should not be built in Glasgow Ijecause the 
 other Gaelic chapel had still a good many of its seats 
 unlet. 
 
 The following year Chalmers brought up the subject of 
 pluralities again in the shape of a general motion of dis- 
 approval. He was beaten, of course, but by a majority 
 so small that he was encouraged, not disheartened. The 
 debate which took place, however, m this connection is 
 memorable not so much on its own account, as on account 
 of an incident of singular interest which occurred in the 
 course of it. A speaker on the opposition side supported 
 his arguments by quotations from a pamphlet which, he 
 said, had appeared a few years before. The quotations 
 went to prove, on the authority of a man who could speak 
 from experience, that a minister's work is so little 
 burdensome that he can easily perform it all, and have, 
 when it is done, five free days in the week to spend in any 
 way he likes. The pamphlet was the one which the 
 minister of Kilmany had written in the days of his 
 
90 ST. ANDREWS. 
 
 spiritual ignorance in reply to the letter, already noticed, 
 of Professor Playfair ; and, as usually happens when a 
 personal hit of this kind is made, there was a good deal of 
 satirical laughter awakened in the Assembly. 
 
 Chalmers, as the pro^joser of the motion, had the right 
 of reply ; and at the close of the debate he referred, amid 
 breathless silence, to the attack which had been made 
 upon his consistency. 
 
 " Sir," he said, " that pamphlet I now declare to have 
 
 vjbeen a production of my own, published twenty years 
 
 ago At the time when I -wTote it I did not conceive 
 
 that my pamphlet would do much evil ; but, sir, consider- 
 ing the conclusions that have been deduced fi'om it by the 
 reverend gentleman, I do feel obliged to him for reviving 
 it, and for bringing me forward to make my public renun- 
 ciation of what is there written. I now confess myself 
 to have been guilty of a heinous crime, and I now stand 
 a repentant culprit before the bar of this venerable 
 
 Assembly I was at that time, sir, more devoted to 
 
 mathematics than to the literature of my profession ; and 
 feeling grieved and indignant at what I conceived an 
 undue reflection on the abilities and education of the 
 clergy, I came forward with that j^amphlet to rescue them 
 from what I deemed an unmerited reproach, by maintain- 
 ing that a devoted and exclusive attention to the study of 
 mathematics was not dissonant to the proper habits of a 
 clergyman. Alas, sir ! so I thought in my ignorance and 
 pride. 1 have now no reserve in saying that the senti- 
 ment was wrong, and that, in the utterance of it, I penned 
 what was most outrageously wrong. Strangely blinded 
 that I was ! What, sir, is the object of mathematical 
 science? Magnitude and the proportions of magnitude. 
 
 -^ But then, sir, I had forgotten two magnitudes : I thought 
 
ST. ANDREWS. 91 
 
 not of the littleness of time ; I recklessly thought not of 
 the greatness of eternity." 
 
 The sensation produced by this "recantation" maybe 
 imagined. The "resurrection" of the pamphlet did not in 
 the end serve much the cause of the upholders of plurali- 
 ties. 
 
 Another notable debate took place in this Assembly 
 (that of 1825) upon the question of whether a minister who 
 did not know Gaelic could be ju.stifiably intruded into a 
 parish where Gaelic was the language of a considerable 
 number of the people. "We refer to it in passing for two 
 reasons : first, because it shows Chalmers in the front rank 
 of the Evangelical party, seconding a motion made by Di*. 
 Andrew Thomson; and, second, because here again appeared 
 the characteristic feature of his churchmanship. He was, 
 as used to be said more frequently afterwards, not so much 
 Sl jurist — looking at things in the light of abstract right 
 or justice — as a practical reformer, asking always how. 
 arrangements would serve their ends. It does not noAv 
 seem a great achievement that Andrew Thomson carried 
 his motion in the Little Dunkeld Case by a majority of 
 one hundred and eight to eighty-nine ; but the victory 
 was hailed with immense satisfaction at the time as another 
 sign of the turning of the tide. The Church was beginning 
 to waken up to the necessity of seeing her work honestly 
 done, even at the cost of personal feelings and venerable 
 traditions. 
 
 Another side of Chalmers's St. Andrews life presents 
 itself when we look at his private and individual efforts 
 in the interest of spiritual religion. He no sooner settled 
 down in the old city than he began a Sabbath school, of 
 which he took the personal superintendence. He gave 
 this work up in 1827 into the hands of .John Urquhart, 
 
92 ST. ANDREWS. 
 
 but only that he might be more free to conduct a Sabbath 
 class for students in his own dining-room. This class had 
 been commenced in 1824, and had for two or three sessions 
 been restricted so as to bear an essentially family character. 
 But the pressure for admission into it became too impor- 
 tunate to be resisted, and Sabbath after Sabbath saw him 
 discoursing on the leading topics of Christian doctrine and 
 personal religion to as many young men as could be 
 crowded into the largest apartment in his house. This 
 meeting became literally a well of life. It told directly 
 upon those who attended it, and there issued from it 
 streams which watered the dry places around ; for one 
 student after another was stirred up to become himself a 
 teacher, and Sabbath schools and evangelistic services 
 sprang up in consequence in all parts of the town and 
 district. 
 
 Nor was this all. Dr. Chalmers consented to become the 
 president of a missionary society in St. Andrews. It had 
 existed before his coming, but in a very listless way. His 
 accession, however, produced an instantaneous change in its 
 condition. The monthly meetings grew to be so crowded 
 that they required to be transferred to a larger place. 
 Deeply interested himself in the great business of evangel- 
 izing the world, he took the trouble to gather together all 
 the intelligence that he could acquire regarding the work. 
 This intelligence he put into shape for the benefit of others. 
 At the monthly "concert for prayer" he gave this forth; 
 and as a result, it might almost be said that the whole city 
 was moved. Certainly the university was moved, " Our 
 college," wrote one of the students of the time, " seems at 
 present to present an aspect something similar to that of 
 the University of Oxford in the days of Hervey and 
 Wesley." Five or six of the students formally devoted 
 
ST. ANDREWS. 93 
 
 themselves to the missionary service. John Urquhart, 
 one of the noblest of the set, was prevented by an early 
 death from carrying out his purpose. But all the world 
 has heard of DufF; and if the names of Adam, and Nesbit, 
 and Mackay are less illustrious, these all did such work for 
 God in India as makes one think with grateful admiration 
 of the life of Chalmers in St. Andrews. 
 
 There were not a few who complained, in a rueful way, 
 of Chalmers's withdrawal from the pulpit. It w^as indeed a 
 great blow which Glasgow sustained when he was taken 
 away from the peculiar work which he had been perform- 
 ing there. But in his case no fair comparison could be 
 made between chair and pulpit. Wherever he went he 
 carried the fire with him ; and although in Fife his 
 audiences were smaller, this was also to be said, that they 
 were more select. In St. Andrews he dealt with the men 
 who were to be the Tuture aiiinisters of Scotland ; and 
 in acting as he did he told, through his students, upon a 
 whole generation of his countrymen. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 FIRST YEARS IX EDINBURGH. 
 
 Y the resignation of Dr. Ritchie, the chair of 
 theology in the University of Edinburgh be- 
 came vacant in 1827, and Dr. Chahners was 
 at once proposed as his successor. His 
 appointment coukl not have been acceptable to all ; for 
 Moderatism still commanded a majority in the Assembly, 
 and it must have been somewhat falling to its leaders to 
 see so decided an Evangelical intrusted with the training 
 of the youth who were to form the future ministry of the 
 Church. The claims of Chalmers, however, were so con- 
 spicuous that he could not, with any fair show of reason, 
 be passed by ; and it is to the credit of the Town Council 
 of Edinburgh that they agreed with entire unanimity to 
 offer him the position. The election took place in October 
 1827, but the date was too close upon the beginning of the 
 session to allow of his undertaking the work immediately, 
 and he did not deliver his inaugural lecture till the 6th of 
 November 1828 — the intervening eleven months having 
 been spent by him in assiduous preparation for his new 
 duties. 
 
 Tlie day on which he commenced teaching in Edinburgh 
 was outwardly by no means a genial one — showers of sleet 
 and snow sweeping through the college court — but such a 
 
FIRST YEARS IN EDINBURGH. 95 
 
 crowd gathered to hear that a strong body of police was 
 needed to keep things in order. One who has now passed 
 away, himself a most accomplislied man, Mr. Cunningham 
 of Prestonpans, describes in glowing terms the impression 
 which was produced by the lecture on those who listened 
 to it. " All felt," he says, " more deeply than they could 
 worthily declare, that it was a most glorious prelude, and 
 that at once and for ever his right to reign as a king in 
 the broad realms of theological science, and to rule over 
 their own individual minds as a teacher, was as unequivocal 
 as his mastery over a popular assembly." 
 
 His class-room continued to be crowded all through the 
 session — many attending it who were not regular students, 
 nor even members of the Presbyterian Church — and when 
 notes were compared at the close, it was generally admitted 
 that a distinctly new era had begun in connection with the 
 academic education of the ministry. Formerly the prelec- 
 tions had been often clear, sometimes learned, and students 
 had come forth from the Hall with a more or less com- 
 petent knowledge of theological systems. But there had 
 never been any approach to " an explosion," and youthful 
 enthusiasms had been rather dulled than fanned into a 
 flame. Now there was a professor in possession to whom 
 Christianity was not a mere framework of diy bones, but a 
 living force. His own soul was on fire ; and whatever he 
 felt himself he made his audiences feel. And as a conse- 
 quence, there immediately began a process which in time 
 told visibly upon the face of Scotland — the inspiring of a 
 race of men who carried the life with them into the pulpits 
 which they filled, and became the means of bringing about 
 a great revival of religion. 
 
 A year or two later, Chalmers was surprised by receiv- 
 ing a letter from Sir Michael Shaw Stewart, oflfering to 
 
96 FIRST YEARS IN EDINBURGH. 
 
 present liim to the West Church, Greenock. There 
 was thus placed within his reach the most lucrative 
 li\T.ng in the Church of Scotland — the emoluments be- 
 longing to it amounting to about double those which 
 were attached to the chair he was then filling. He 
 was greatly gratified by the compliment which was thus 
 paid to him ; but he had no hesitation in at once send- 
 ing back a refusal, giving the following as his reason for 
 doing so : — 
 
 "You may well believe that nothing could induce me to 
 decline the honour and the advantage of such a proposal 
 but a firm conviction of the sujyerior importance of a theo- 
 logical chair to any church lohatever, along with the rooted 
 preference which I have ever felt for the professorial over 
 the ministerial life." 
 
 Tills was ^vl'itten in 1831, after an experience of three 
 sessions in Edinburgh, and by that time he must have been 
 fully alive to the greatness of the influence which his 
 position enabled him to exercise. He was at the fountain- 
 head. It was largely in his power to make or mar the 
 ministry of the immediate future. And when he saw, as 
 he could not but do, the signs of a quickening life among 
 his students, it would have been nothing less than a flying 
 in the face of Providence if on any account he had aban- 
 doned the post which he had undertaken to fill. 
 
 Chalmers was great in very many respects, but in nothing 
 was his greatness made more apparent than in his power 
 over the minds of men. He possessed in a remarkable degree 
 those kingly qualities which cause men to be reverenced and 
 followed. He was a bom leader, and to this hour there 
 are old disciples of his whose eyes kindle when they speak 
 of him. Among the various causes which led directly to 
 the triumph of the Evangelical interest in Scotland, one of 
 
FIRST YEARS IX EDINBURGH. 97 
 
 the most potential was the appointment of one so earnest 
 and eloquent to a theological professorship. 
 
 Tliese first years in Edinburgh were stirring times in 
 more ways than one. The Church " Conflict," technically so 
 called, had not yet begun, but, as has been already said, the 
 forces which were to take part in it were being mustered 
 for the battle, and preliminary skirmishes were constantly 
 going on. A great restlessness also appeared in political 
 connections. When the battle of Waterloo had been fought, 
 and Europe had settled down after the French revolutionary 
 spirit had been, as was imagined, finally laid, there came a 
 period of calm and apparent content. But this did not last. 
 There were too many anomalies in the British constitution 
 to make it possible for a nation which was growing in 
 intelligence to live on without making efforts at reform. 
 The dangerous temper which appeared toward the close of 
 the previous century began again to manifest itself. There 
 arose from various quarters a cry against the unreasonable 
 possession of exclusive privileges. And there, is no telling 
 what might have happened, if Parliament had not given 
 way before the agitation, and made timely concessions to 
 the demands of the people. 
 
 One of the measures passed about this time was the 
 repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, which, among 
 other things, required the taking of the sacrament in 
 the Established Church as a condition of civil office. 
 Chalmers took a keen interest in the struggle which was 
 made for the abolition of these laws ; and when at last the 
 bill passed and received the royal assent, he introduced 
 into the General Assembly a motion proposing that the 
 Church of Scotland should express its satisfaction with the 
 result. So reasonable a proposal, however, was keenly 
 resisted by the Moderates, who mustered their whole 
 
 (636) 7 
 
98 FIRST YEARS IN EDINBURGH. 
 
 strength to defeat the motion, and it was defeated by a 
 majority of one hundred and twenty -three to seventy-seven. 
 The reason why so many men voted to sustain what is now 
 universally recognized as a most objectionable regulation 
 was this, that they looked on the movement for the repeal 
 of the Acts as one inspired by the hostility of Dissent to 
 the Establishment. And what strikes one in reading Dr. 
 Chalmers's speech on the other side, is the largeness of view 
 which enabled him to rise above mere local and personal 
 considerations, and look at great questions in their own 
 proper light. 
 
 " Our Scottish Establishment," he said, " stands in need 
 of none of those securities wherewith her fearful sister in 
 the south thought it necessary at one time to prop up 
 what she must then have felt to be her frail and precarious 
 existence. Instead of such securities for us, we ourselves 
 were the objects of jealousy to the hierarchy of England, 
 and thrust, along with its general body of sectarians, to 
 an outfield place beyond the limits of her guarded enclosure. 
 But what has been the result 1 A striking lesson, if blind 
 intolerance would but learn it. In virtue of an inherent 
 strength, we, in the midst of disabilities, have stood and 
 prospered ; and the motto of our northern Church — JVec 
 tamen consumehatur — blazes in characters as fresh and 
 undefaced as ever upon her forehead." 
 
 This was spoken in 1828, some months after his appoint- 
 ment to the divinity professorship. He was thus again 
 striking his key-note — proclaiming the principle that no 
 trust is to be put in artificial props which do not rest on a 
 foundation of indisputable justice, and that there was no 
 guarantee for the permanence and prosperity of his own 
 Church but such as was to be found in her honestly and 
 efficiently discharging her proper functions. 
 
FIRST YEARS IN EDINBURGH. 99 
 
 Next year, in 1829, another question came to the front, 
 that of Catholic Emancipation, — the removal, that is, 
 from members of the Romish Church of those civil dis- 
 abilities which prevented them, for example, from sitting 
 in the British Parliament. And here again Chalmers 
 appeared on the liberal side. He was now living in Edin- 
 burgh, and as a citizen he took part in a great public 
 meeting which was held to promote the agitation. Con- 
 cerning the speech delivered by him on that occasion. Lord 
 Jeffrey gave it as his deliberate opinion ** that never had 
 eloquence produced a greater effect upon a popular as- 
 sembly, and that he could not believe more had ever been 
 done by the oratory of Demosthenes, Cicero, Burke, or 
 Sheridan." 
 
 The passage in the speech which awakened the greatest 
 enthusiasm was the following : — 
 
 " It is not by our fears and our false alarms that 
 we do honour to Protestantism, A far more befitting 
 honour to the great cause is the homage of our confidence ; 
 for what Sheridan said of the liberty of the press admits of 
 most emphatic application to the religion of truth and 
 liberty Give the Catholics of Ireland their emancipa- 
 tion ; give them a seat in the Parliament of their country ; 
 give them a free and equal participation in the politics of 
 the realm ; give them a place at the right ear of majesty, 
 and a voice in his counsels ; and give me the circulation of 
 the Bible, and with this mighty engine I will overthrow 
 the tyranny of Antichrist, and establish the fair and 
 original form of Christianity on its ruins." 
 
 " The delivery of this splendid passage," say the local 
 papers of the day, " which was given with prodigious force, 
 elicited a burst of applause so deafening and enthusiastio, 
 that tlie effect was altogether sublime. The shouts and 
 
100 FIBST YEARS IN EDINBURGH. 
 
 hurrahs were thrice renewed, and it was with difficulty the 
 speaker could proceed." 
 
 Still, it will be observed, the same thought rules in his 
 mind. He has unbounded faith in the power of the truth, 
 and he has no belief that its victories will be made surer 
 by its being clad in doubtful armour. 
 
 "With all that, however, he was not in favour of the 
 Reform Bill. It passed in 1831, amid immense rejoicing, 
 and in Edinburgh, as elsewhere, there was an illumination 
 to celebrate the event. Chalmers did not illuminate, and 
 he had the windows of his house broken in consequence by 
 the mob. 
 
 What led him to stand aloof from this popular move- 
 ment was evidently the fact that he had just been immersed 
 ill the study of political economy, and had arrived at 
 certain conclusions which were far from being in harmony 
 with the common beliefs. He had persuaded himself, for 
 example, that the real amelioration of any nation's condi- 
 tion depends not on the possession of political privileges, 
 but on the intelligence and moral excellence of its people. 
 He did not see the force of the proposition which was then 
 so constantly paraded, that every citizen has an original 
 right to a vote. He was satisfied that most exaggerated 
 expectations were being entertained as to the eflfects which 
 were likely to follow from so wide an extension of the 
 suffrage as was proposed. He knew that many who were 
 to be enfranchised would not make a wise use of their new 
 powers. And, in short, being profoundly convinced that 
 the reforms needed were being begun at the wrong end, he 
 refused to give any countenance to what seemed to him to 
 be very much a great popular delusion. That he some- 
 what modified his views afterwards cannot be doubted. 
 But everybody's views came to be modified in a certain 
 
FIRST YEARS IX EDINBURGH. 101 
 
 degree by the events. The Reform Bill did not bring to 
 the people all that they looked for. They thought it was 
 bread, and they were certainly mistaken. But neither was 
 it a stone. Abuses were removed which formerly stood in 
 the way of all improvement, and the healthful breeze of 
 ]3ublic opinion was allowed to blow more freely upon the 
 machinery of government. 
 
 His "Treatise on Political Economy," which came out 
 about this time, and on which he had been engaged for 
 years, was published at an unfortunate period. Tlie 
 thoughts of the nation were taken up with expedients 
 which lay very much more ready to its hand than the far- 
 reaching principles whose adoption he advocated. The 
 book was therefore either disregarded or assailed. But 
 not the less may it be expected to survive when other and 
 more ephemeral productions have perished. So high an 
 authority as John Stuart Mill speaks of the author in 
 connection with this work as "a writer many of whose 
 opinions I think erroneous, but who has always the merit 
 of studying phenomena at first hand, and expressing them 
 in a language of his own which often uncovers aspects of 
 the truth that the received phraseologies only tend to 
 hide." 
 
 But there is another and peculiarly interesting movement 
 which belongs to these years. It is that with which are 
 associated the names of Campbell of Row, Edward Irving, 
 and Principal Scott, afterwards of Manchester. 
 
 We may call it a pseudo-Evangelical movement, because 
 it began with high pretensions to spirituality, it stirred the 
 hearts for a time of all the best people in the country, and 
 if it had continued to be as successful as it was at first, 
 the mischief done would have been incalculable. 
 
102 FIRST YEARS IN EDINBURGH. 
 
 Mrs. Oliphant, the novelist, undertook to write the life 
 of Edward Irving, and in prosecuting this task she viewed 
 things in a characteristically imaginative light. Her 
 notion of the period is that a virtually new revelation 
 was made in it to the world. Mr. Campbell preached that 
 all men are already forgiven, and that the faith of the 
 gospel means accepting that as a fact. Mr. Irving taught 
 that Christ assumed the fallen nature of Adam, and 
 was, though not a sinner, peccable. While both agreed 
 that it was a mistake to assume that the age of miracu- 
 lous manifestations is past, and held that such gifts of the 
 Spirit had been bestowed upon some of their followers as 
 that they were in very deed enabled to speak with tongues. 
 To Mrs. Oliphant it seemed as if there were a great deal 
 more in all this than the Church of Scotland was dis- 
 posed to allow, and she was displeased with Chalmers 
 for not interposing in the interest of the new light. 
 She would have had a council of the whole Christian 
 Church convened to consider whether Irving was a prophet 
 or no ! 
 
 The order that was followed was this. First, a thorough 
 discussion of the principles involved took place in the Chris- 
 tian Instructor and elsewhere ; and, secondly, a succession 
 of trials ensued before the Church Courts, in the course 
 of which it was clearly brought out that, whatever could 
 be said for the movement, it was not in harmony with the 
 articles of belief which bound the Establishment together. 
 
 The issue has proved the wisdom of the course pursued. 
 M'Leod Campbell became a disciple of Mr. Maurice, with 
 whose Broad- Churchism all are acquainted; and Irvingism 
 has developed into one of the strangest religious com- 
 pounds of any age, the Catholic Apostolic Church, in 
 which there is a by no means successful attempt to com- 
 
FIRST YEARS IN EDINBURGH. 103 
 
 bine the symbolism of the Old Testament with the 
 doctrine of the New. 
 
 Looking back upon this singular episode in our Scottish 
 Church history, one is inclined to think of it as indeed more 
 significant than many have supposed. Mrs. Oliphant says 
 that the movement was divine, and that the Church of Scot- 
 land never knew what peace was after it had resolved to re- 
 sist it. To us its providential aspect seems very different. 
 The Church was awakening out of its sleep ; it was be- 
 ginning in earnest to reform; and the prospects looked 
 every day brighter in favour of the triumph of Evan- 
 gelicalism. But while the good seed was thus being sown, 
 an enemy did his best to sow tares. The currents were 
 becoming too strong to be successfully opposed in front, 
 and it was a cunning stroke of policy to encourage the 
 opening of a side channel to draw off some of the pressure. 
 
 Chalmers did not take at all a prominent part in the 
 doctrinal controversy to which we have been referring. 
 In regard to Campbell he strongly sympathized with him 
 in what seemed to be one of his objects — the setting forth 
 of the freeness of the gospel offer ; and as for his doctrine 
 of universal pardon, he evidently thought at first that it 
 was a mere eccentricity which might- be shaken off. But 
 although he was not one of the active prosecutors in the 
 case, he concurred ultimately in the conclusion come to, 
 that there could be no consistency in allowing him to 
 remain as an authorized teacher in the ministry of the 
 Church. 
 
 As for Irving, there were personal reasons why he 
 should not appear conspicuously in conflict with him. 
 He had been his assistant in St. John's ; and they were 
 warm friends. But he early formed a decided opinion 
 about his aberrations, and had no hesitation in assenting 
 
104 FIRST YEARS IN EDINBURGH. 
 
 to the propriety of his license being withdrawn when he 
 had been compelled to leave Regent Square Church and 
 begin a new " cause '' in Newman Street. 
 
 Various things had before that occurred to reconcile 
 him to such an issue. He had seen Irving's tendency 
 to eccentricity in Glasgow. " He did not," he tells, 
 "attract a large congregation there, but he completely 
 attached to himself and to his ministry a limited number 
 of persons with whose minds his own was in affinity. I 
 have often observed this effect produced by men whose 
 habits of thinking and feeling are peculiar or eccentric. 
 They possess a niagnetic attraction for minds assimilated 
 to their own." 
 
 Again, referring to the lectures delivered by Mr. Irving 
 in Edinburgh on the subject of prophecy in 1828, he 
 writes : *' For the first time heard Mr. Irving in the 
 evening. I have no hesitation in saying that it is quite 
 woful. There is power, and richness, and gleams of ex- 
 quisite beauty, but withal a mysticism and an extreme 
 allegorization which I am sure must be pernicious to the 
 general cause." 
 
 When the Presbyterian Church in Regent Square, 
 London, was finished, Chalmers agreed to open it, and 
 what happened there is reported by himself in the follow- 
 ing way : — 
 
 " The congregation, in their eagerness to obtain seats, 
 had already been assembled about three hours ! Irving 
 said he would assist me by reading a chapter for me in 
 the first instance. He chose the very longest chapter in 
 the Bible, and went on with his exposition for an hour 
 and a half. "When my turn came, of what use could I be 
 in an exhausted receiver." 
 
 In short, Irving was one of those men who could not be 
 
FIRST YEARS IX EDINBURGH. 105 
 
 trusted to move in ordinary grooves. He required a 
 place for himself. And although it would have been 
 better for his own fame and his own usefulness if he 
 could have agreed to be more amenable to rule and order, 
 it was best for himself, and best for the Church, that the 
 tie was cut between them, and he was left free to pursue 
 his course alone. 
 
 There is just one other glimpse which we may take of 
 Chalmers in this chapter. In 1830 William IV. ascended 
 the throne, and a deputation from the Church of Scotland 
 was sent to London to tender to him its congratulations. 
 Chalmers was one of the deputation ; and in one of those 
 letters to his children, of which there are so many, and 
 which are so delightful on account of their playfulness 
 and affection, he gives a bright picture of the levee which 
 he attended. "Our deputation," he says, "made a most 
 respectable appearance among them, with our cocked 
 three-cornered hats under our arms, our hands upon our 
 breasts, and our gowns of Geneva upon our backs. Mine 
 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 
 greatest man there, and that though I took all care to 
 keep my coat unbuttoned and my gown quite open ; how- 
 ever, let not mamma be alarmed, for I made a most re- 
 spectable appearance, and was treated with the utmost 
 
 attention We all made a low bow on our first entry, 
 
 and the king, seated on the throne at the opposite end, 
 took off his hat, putting it on again. We marched up to 
 the middle of the room and made another low bow, when 
 the king again took off his hat. We then proceeded to 
 the foot of the throne and all made a third low bow, on 
 
106 FIRST YEARS IX EDINBURGH. 
 
 which the king again took off his hat. After this the 
 Moderator read his address, which was a little long, and 
 the king bowed repeatedly while it was reading." 
 
 The fun of all this Chalmers thoroughly appreciated, 
 although there was no man in his Majesty's dominions 
 who was then a more loyal upholder of all the institutions 
 of the kingdom. 
 
CHAPTER YIII. 
 
 EFFORTS AT CHURCH REFORM AND EFFICIENCY. 
 
 PROOF of the estimation in which Chalmers 
 was now held by the whole Church was given 
 in his election to the Moderatorship of the 
 Assembly in 1832. He was then only fifty- 
 two years of age, younger than most of the men have 
 been who have filled that oflice, and his appointment 
 was seconded in a very graceful way by Princijial Mac- 
 farlan. The principal was an outstanding member of 
 the Moderate pairty ; but that was not all. He was 
 a pluralist, to whose settlement in the High Church 
 of Glasgow Chalmers had offered a conscientious oppo- 
 sition. 
 
 The Assembly was an interesting one. Heresy was 
 still in the air, and no fewer than four cases of divergence 
 from the beaten tracks were brought under the notice of 
 the Court. One was that of an elder, who appealed 
 against the decisions of a Presbytery requiring him, as a 
 condition of office, to sign the Confession of Faith. A 
 second was that of a minister, who insisted on his being 
 left at liberty to preach whatever doctrine he pleased from 
 his pulpit. And a thii'd was that of Mr. Irving. But 
 the swell of the Row movement was evidently ^ksiding, 
 and the attention of the Church was now to be turned to 
 
108 EFFORTS AT CHURCH REFORM AXD EFFICIENCY. 
 
 a new subject, and that one which was destined to have 
 far more serious consequences. 
 
 No fewer than four Synods and seven Presbyteries 
 overtured the General Assembly to take into consideration 
 the question of how best to give eifect to the " call " of 
 the peoj)le in the settlement of ministers. At the Refor- 
 mation the doctrine was at once laid down that it is the 
 right and duty of congregations to choose their own 
 pastors. King James, however, believed in a better way, 
 and he instituted the system of patronage, which, with 
 brief intervals of suspension, continued in the Scottish 
 Church till the Revolution of 1688. It was then 
 abolished, but twelve years later it was again restored 
 under Queen Anne. 
 
 For a time the lay patrons did not exercise their rights, 
 or, at least, they did not enforce them. The plan of one 
 man, and he, perhaps, not a member of any church 
 himself, judging what sort of minister a congregation 
 ought to be satisfied with, was opposed to the genius of 
 the Scottish people. And they offered to its execution 
 such a determined resistance, that for years after the 
 Revolution no Presbytery ventured to proceed to the ordi- 
 nation of a man who was not acceptable to the parish in 
 which it was proposed to settle him. But things gradually 
 changed. The power of religion in the land became less. 
 Congregations grew indifferent ; patrons showed a disposi- 
 tion to assert their legal rights more firmly, and sub- 
 servient Presbyteries were found ready to use the sword 
 when necessary to suppress inconvenient manifestations of 
 the popular will. By-and-by, peace was restored, — the 
 peace which comes from despair. Vacant parishes saw 
 that tl|^e was nothing to be gained by opposing whatever 
 nominee of the patron was sent to them ; and if he was 
 
EFFORTS AT CHURCH REFORM AND EFFICIENCY. 109 
 
 fairly acceptable they submitted to his ministrations, 
 while, if he was not, those who wanted something better 
 joined the Dissenters. 
 
 With the return of life to the Church came a growing 
 dissatisfaction with this state of things ; all the more that, 
 in the political world, events had taken place which made 
 the leaving of Church members in a condition of pupilage 
 look positively ridiculous. By the passing of the Reform 
 Bill, it had been declared that all possessed of a certain 
 money qualification were capable of taking a part in the 
 election of the country's legislators ; and it did seem a 
 little absurd to say that nobody but a lay patron, whom 
 the accident of birth had made the owner of land, was fit to 
 pronounce upon the suitability of this man or the other to 
 preach to a particular congregation. 
 
 Happily, amid all the changes in the law which had 
 taken place, the form of consulting the people had never 
 been expressly abandoned. Even in the earliest times it 
 had been the custom for the presentee to preach in the 
 vacant pulpit for which he was destined, and for the Pres- 
 bytery to meet with the people, to learn whether they 
 were willing to give him a " call " or invitation to 
 the place. This form had become a farce. Presby- 
 teries had proceeded to settlements when there was 
 no more than one name attached to the call. Still the 
 ancient framework remained, and what now began to be 
 agitated was the question of whether, by vitalizing the old 
 form, such a voice might not be given to the people in the 
 choice of their ministers as might meet and satisfy the 
 demand that had sprung up for popular election in the 
 Church as well as in the Commonwealth. 
 
 Tlie Moderates, however, were deaf to the knocking that 
 had come to the door. There was an Evangelical Modera- 
 
110 EFFORTS AT CHURCH REFORM AND EFFICIENCY. 
 
 tor in the chair of the Assembly, but Dr. Cook still com- 
 manded the majority on the floor. And while Professor 
 Brown of Aberdeen proposed that the overtures be 
 remitted to a committee for consideration, Principal Mac- 
 farlan moved (and carried by 129 to 44) that "the 
 Assembly judge it unnecessary and inexpedient to adopt 
 the measures recommended in the overtures now be- 
 fore it." 
 
 One can picture to oneself the smile of satisfaction 
 which mantled the face of Dr. Cook when he learned the 
 state of the vote. There, he would no doubt say, that 
 matter has received its quietus ! But the INIoderates have 
 never been famous for discerning the signs of the times. 
 They have usually resisted all improvements until further 
 resistance was seen to be hopeless, and they have given in 
 only after irretrievable mischief has been done. The jDro- 
 posal to see whether something could not be made of the 
 call had not received its quietus. 
 
 Next year the matter was brought up afresh, and 
 Chalmers himself, no longer tied to the chair, was able to 
 assume the practical leadership of the Evangelical party. 
 He moved that the dissent of a majority of male heads of 
 families, being communicants, should have the effect of 
 setting aside the presentation of a patron, unless that dis- 
 sent could be proved to be based on a corrupt and malicious 
 combination. His following was greater than that of 
 Professor Brown in 1832. He was beaten only by a 
 majority of twelve. But still he was beaten. The tide 
 had not yet quite turned. And it was reserved for Lord 
 Moncreiff", in 1834, to achieve the fir,st decisive victory in 
 the great conflict which had now fairly begun. In that 
 year there passed the Veto Lav), which was constructed in 
 terms of the motion which Chalmers made in 1833. 
 
EFFORTS AT CHURCH REFORM AND EFFICIENCY. Ill 
 
 It is not necessary at this time of day to vindicate the •/ 
 rights of the Christian people. All the Presbyterian 
 Churches of Scotland have now adopted the practice of 
 popular election, and may be assumed to approve of the •• 
 principle. But at the time of which we are now speaking 
 public opinion was not so advanced, and those who then 
 agitated for the moderate reform described were exposed 
 to as much abuse as if they were radicals and revolution- 
 aries. 
 
 The real truth was, however, that the Veto Act was in 
 spirit a conservative measure. Lord Moncreiff and others 
 saw that a new era had begun, that the tide of change was 
 coming in upon all the institutions of the country like a 
 flood ; and it was actually to preserve patronage, which 
 he thought had its own value, that he proposed a conces- 
 sion to meet the reasonable demands of the people. They^ 
 he believed, had their own legal place to fill in connection 
 with the settlement of ministers, and, in freely allowing 
 them to occupy that place, he considered that he was 
 doing what was most prudent in the interest of the 
 Establishment as it was. 
 
 Tlie time came when the Moderates tried to upset the 
 decision. They said that it was not legal, that the 
 Assembly had no right to pass it, and so on ; but, besides 
 that the contrary could lae affirmed with an imposing 
 show of reason, nothing could be more short-sighted for 
 their own interest than the policy of opposition which 
 they elected to pursue. They would keep everything and 
 concede nothing; and the result is, that after breaking up 
 the Church they have lost completely the very institution 
 for whose sake they fought. Patronage, in its then form, 
 which Lord Moncreiff would have conserved, has been 
 abolished ; and whatever may be thought about that result 
 
112 EFFORTS AT CHURCH REFORM AND EFFICIEXCY, 
 
 now, Dr. Cook and Principal Macfarlan would certainly 
 have hesitated about their course of procedure if they 
 could have foreseen how it would end. It has become 
 again the fashion in some quarters to speak well of the 
 Moderates, as if they were the wise, temperate, deep- 
 thinking men of their generation. Nothing could be further 
 from the truth. It can be conclusively demonstrated 
 that, even as Church politicians, they were as blind as the 
 Bourbons. 
 
 It was not till some years later that the other conflict 
 began — that about the essential nature of a Christian 
 Church and its rights as a kingdom within a kingdom. 
 Meanwhile, a new life was seen stirring throughout the 
 whole country. Duflf, who had been ordained under the 
 presidency of Chalmers in 1829 as the first missionary of 
 the Church of Scotland, returned in 1835 to tell of his 
 *' unparalleled success " in Calcutta ; and in the course of a 
 tour which he made over Scotland, he awakened by his 
 eloquence an altogether unprecedented enthusiasm in the 
 cause of the evangelization of the world. Good people 
 then began to ask if Israel was to be forgotten ; and the 
 result was M'Cheyne and Bonar's mission of inquiry into 
 the condition of the Jews in their own land. The state of 
 our own countrymen in the colonies also became a matter 
 of concern, and a scheme was instituted for their benefit. 
 And, in short, one after another, the revived Church took 
 up its responsibilities, and addressed itself to the discharge 
 of them with a whole-heartedness which implied that no 
 thought of the coming troubles had yet entered into its 
 mind. 
 
 In these efibrts to increase the usefulness of the Church 
 Chalmers took a great part. What he especially set his 
 heart upon was, as he was accustomed to express it, " a 
 
EFFORTS AT CHURCH REFORM AND EFFICIENCY. 113 
 
 snrfficiently thick-set Estahlishmeyit." He saw enough in 
 Glasgow and elsewhere to convince him that multitudes of 
 people were living without religion, because there were no 
 places of worship to which they could go, and no Christian 
 agencies looking after them. And when, in 1834, he was 
 appointed by the General Assembly the Convener of a 
 new " Church Accommodation Committee," he said — " I 
 can truly affirm that, had I been left to make a choice 
 among the countless diversities of well-doing, this is the 
 one office that I should have selected as the most congenial 
 to my taste." 
 
 For several years the country rang with the subject of 
 Church extension. The theory of Chalmers was, that 
 the buildings needed should be erected by voluntary con- 
 tributions, but that the Government should supply a part 
 at least of the endowments required for the maintenance 
 of an additional staff of ministers. By this time, however, 
 the Dissenters had attained to considerable political influ- 
 ence in the State, and first the Whigs and then the Tories 
 refused to respond to the appeals which were made to 
 them for help. But the disappointment did not prove in 
 anyway disastrous to the scheme. "As the ear of the 
 Govex'nment seemed to close, the ear of the country seemed 
 to open." 
 
 For Church extension, as he himself was wont to put it, 
 he knocked at the door of a Whig ministry ; and they 
 refused to endow. He then knocked at the door of a Tory 
 ministry ; they, perhaps, would ha^'e endowed, but they 
 offered to enslave. He then turned aside from both to 
 knock at the door of the general population. 
 
 The appeal thus made to the people brought back a 
 magnificent response. In a few months a sum of £300,000 
 was subscribed, and in all the great cities and other centres 
 
 (636) 8 
 
114 EFFORTS AT CHURCH REFORM AXD EFFICIENCY. 
 
 of population additional ecclesiastical edifices began to be 
 reared. AVitliin seven years no fewer than two hundred 
 and twenty new churches were added to the strength of 
 the Establishment. No wonder that Chalmers came to 
 speak of this era — the era of the Church's extension — as 
 one which was "as broadly marked and as emphatically 
 presented to the notice of the ecclesiastical historian as 
 any which it was customary to consider as instances of 
 signal revival and divine interposition." 
 
 In these years honours came thick upon him. He was 
 elected in 1834 first a Fellow and then a Vice-President of 
 the Royal Society of Edinburgh. About the same time 
 came a most unexpected intimation from Paris that he had 
 been chosen a corresponding member of the Royal Insti- 
 tute of France. And in the summer of 1835, a still more 
 gratifying compliment was paid in his ha\TJig the degree 
 of LL.D. confen'ed upon him by the University of 
 Oxford. 
 
 Chalmers had long felt in many ways the fascinations 
 of England. He admired its scenery, he liked its people, 
 he venerated its national Church, he experienced unbounded 
 delight in visiting its cathedrals, and for its ancient univer- 
 sity seats he had the reverence of a devotee. 
 
 His reception at Oxford, therefore, made a very bright 
 spot in his history ; and all the more that he was at the 
 time harassed by his vain efforts to procure Government 
 aid for his scheme of Church extension. 
 
 "We are living," he wrote, "with the Professor of 
 Divinity at Christ Church, Dr. Burton, where we are 
 entertained with 'all the elegance of lettered hospitality.' 
 I walk about in a doctor's black gown, with the com- 
 mon university cap The most interesting introduction 
 
EFFOUTS AT CHURCH REFORM AND EFFICIENCY. 115 
 
 which I have had in Oxford is to Keble the poet, author 
 of 'The Christian Year.'" 
 
 " Rarely have I witnessed as much enthusiasm in tlie 
 Oxford Theatre," wrote Lord Elgin, who was present as a 
 student, " as was manifested when he presented himself to 
 
 go through the ceremony of admission Dr. Chalmers was 
 
 himself deeply affected by the warmth with which he was 
 greeted, and I think I might almost venture to say that he 
 looked upon this visit to Oxford as one of the most pleas- 
 ing incidents in his cai'eer." 
 
 These gleams of sunshine were succeeded, in 1836, by 
 a very bitter trial. There are not many now living who 
 have any distinct remembrance of what was involved in 
 "the Moderatorship controversy." But those few who 
 are able to go back upon it tell how it wrought a wide- 
 spread devastation — separating for the time chief friends, 
 and making a breach in the Church which was not 
 healed for years. It arose out of the proposal to elevate 
 Principal Lee to the chair of the Assembly. This proposal 
 was vehemently resisted by Chalmers, who did not con- 
 sider Lee to be sound upon the burning question of the 
 moment — the need of Government interference to secure a 
 sufficiently "thick-set Establishment." Some of those who 
 took a lead in the Evangelical movement did not agree 
 with liim in liis opposition, and appeared openly as Lee's 
 supporters. The controversy rapidly extended, and became 
 keen and personal ; and men who before were united in 
 one band for the Church's good, came to pass each other as 
 strangers in the street. 
 
 One of those who suffered in this storm was the late 
 Lord Cowan, from whom, only a month or two before his 
 death, we received a most painfully interesting account of 
 
116 EFFORTS AT CHURCH REFORM AND EFFICIENCY. 
 
 the Moderatorsliip episode. He had taken an active and 
 laborious part in the Church extension agitation ; but he 
 befriended Lee, and for some years Chalmers and he passed 
 "^ without a sign of mutual recognition. The time came, 
 however, when the liberty, and therefore the very Hfe, of 
 the Church was threatened; and a sense of common danger 
 began to draw together again those who had been 
 estranged. The face of the good old judge softened as he 
 proceeded to tell how his reconciliation took place. He 
 was passing along one of the principal streets of Edinburgh 
 when he saw Chalmers at a little distance coming up a 
 cross street. He continued his walk, however, as if he 
 had seen a stranger. But he was suddenly brought to a 
 stand by a hearty voice calling out his own name. He 
 stopped; Chalmers came up with a face full of earnestness 
 and kindness, shook him cordially by the hand, and putting 
 his arm within his, proceeded to pour into his ear his 
 thoughts and hopes about the Church's conflict. The 
 Moderatorsliip controversy was forgotten in view of far 
 higher interests. 
 
 As an illustration of Chalmers's character the controversy 
 is suggestive, as showing how absorbing was his interest in 
 Church extension, and with what passionate energy he 
 devoted himself to the work. 
 
 Engaged as he was in strengthening his own Church in 
 Scotland, it was natural that he should take a keen interest 
 also in the other Established Churches of the country. 
 These were being attacked from various quarters. To 
 satisfy the demands of the Dissenters and others, various 
 commissions of inquiry had been appointed, and some of 
 the reports given in as the result had produced a feeling 
 of wide-spread anxiety. Among other recommendations 
 
EFFORTS AT CHURCH REFORM AND EFFICIENCY. 117 
 
 offered this was one, that the Irish Establishment should he 
 reduced and the funds so saved devoted to other than eccle 
 siastical purposes. Such politicians as the Duke of Wel- 
 lington became greatly alarmed at the course of events as 
 thus indicated. " People talk," said his Grace, " of the war 
 in Spain and the Canada question, but all that is of little 
 moment. The real question is, Church, or no Church ? " 
 And so too thought many earnest individual Christians. 
 To stem a tide which threatened to work such mischief, it ( 
 was proposed to take systematic measures for the enlight- 
 enment of the public mind. A course of lectures in London 
 on Church Establishments was projected. Chalmers was 
 invited to deliver them, and he consented. 
 
 The first of these lectures was given on the 25th of 
 April 1838, the audience being remarkably select, royalty 
 itself being represented in the person of the Duke of Cam- 
 bridge. " From the first word that escaped the lips of 
 the lecturer till the concluding sentence, which died away 
 amid the acclamations of the audience," — so say the news- 
 papers of the day, — " the vivid interest was sustained with 
 a deep and unflagging intensity." — 
 
 A still larger gathering assembled to hear the second 
 lecture, — peers, prelates, and M.P.'s all displaying an extra- 
 ordinary eagerness to hear the eloquent Scotchman. And 
 still from day to day the tide rose and swelled, until at the 
 close the enthusiasm broke through all bounds. " Carried 
 away by the impassioned utterance of the speaker, long 
 ere the close of some of his finest passages was reached l- 
 the voice of the lecturer was dro"\vned in the applause, the 
 audience rising from their seats and breaking out into 
 tumultuous approbation." "The doctor," writes an eye- 
 witness, " sat, when delivering his lectures, behind a small 
 table, the hall in front being densely crowded with one of 
 
118 EFFORTS AT CHURCH REFORM AXD EFFICIEKCY. 
 
 the most brilliant audiences that ever assembled in Britain. 
 It was supposed that at least five hundred of those present 
 "were peers and members of the House of Commons. The 
 sitting attitude of Dr. Chalmers seemed at first irrecon- 
 cilable with much energy or effect. But such an anticipa- 
 tion was at once dispelled by the enthusiasm of the speaker, 
 responded to, if possible, by the still more intense enthu- 
 siasm of the audience ; and occasionally the effect was even 
 greatly increased by the eloquent man springing uncon- 
 sciously to his feet and delivering with overwhelming effect 
 the more magnificent passages, — a movement which, on 
 one occasion at least, was imitated by the entire audience, 
 when the words, ' The king cannot ! the king dare not ! ' 
 were uttered in accents of prophetic vehemence that must 
 still ring in the ears of all who heard them, and were 
 responded to by a whirlwind of enthusiasm which was 
 probably never exceeded in the history of eloquence." 
 
 Nine bishops of the Church of England were present 
 during the delivery of the closing lecture of the series. So 
 profound an impression was made by the course on the 
 moneyed people of London that they forthwith sub- 
 scribed £5000 in aid of the Church extension move- 
 ment in Scotland. And when the lectures were published, 
 — proving, as their title claimed that they had done, that 
 " the establishment and extension of National Churches 
 afford the only adequate machinery for the moral and 
 Christian instruction of a people," — they were scattered 
 broadcast over the land, as supplying the most powerful 
 possible counteractives to the levelling doctrines which 
 were then being disseminated. 
 
 Tliere is something almost pathetic in the thought that 
 the time was then not far distant when the lecturer 
 himself was to take the lead in the setting up of a Dis- 
 
EFFORTS AT CHURCH REFORM AND EFFICIENCY. 119 
 
 established Church. But a very cursory glance at the 
 lectures themselves will show how utterly consistent he 
 was throughout. He valued an Establishment because 
 of its practical utility. If it was rightly constituted, and 
 left free to do its own full work, he had unbounded confi- 
 dence in its capabilities. But he never for a moment for- 
 got that a State alliance might be purchased at too dear a 
 rate ; and when, a few years later, he withdrew from his 
 chair in the University of Edinburgh rather than submit 
 to the new conditions imposed on his Church by the Court 
 of Session, his testimony to the supreme importance of 
 spiritual freedom was all the weightier that, so short a 
 while before, he had spoken so strongly and so publicly in 
 vindication of Establishments. 
 
 How entirely unsuspicious he was of the existence of a 
 door through which the State might enter into the Church 
 and ravage it, is seen by the explanation which he oflered 
 to his brilliant audience of the then relations of Church 
 and State in Scotland : — 
 
 " We have no other communication with the State," said 
 he, " than that of being maintained by it, after which we 
 are left to regulate the proceedings of our great home 
 mission with all the purity, and the piety, and the inde- 
 pendence of any missionary board. We are exposed to 
 nothing from without which can violate the sanctity of the 
 apostolical character, if we ourselves make no surrender of 
 it. In things ecclesiastical we decide all. Some of these 
 thmgs may be done wrong, but still they are our majorities 
 which do it. They are not, they cannot be forced upon us 
 from without. We own no head of the Church but the 
 Lord Jesus Christ." 
 
 At the very time these words were spoken there were 
 signs of a coming storm. A month or two before, the 
 
120 EFFORTS AT CHURCH REFORM AND EFFICIENCY. 
 
 Court of Session had pronounced a judgment in the famous 
 Auchterarder case, which seemed to indicate that a claim 
 would be put forward by the State to interfere in ecclesi- 
 astical matters if it thought fit. But the gravity of the 
 crisis was not then realized, and Chalmers no doubt thought, 
 as the Assembly of 1838 believed, that a firm resistance on 
 the part of the Church would prevent any serious attempt 
 being made on its inherent independence. 
 
 Belonging to this era in Chalmers's life are some inter- 
 esting episodes in which other aspects of his character 
 appear. We have referred to one or two of these already, 
 — such as his tour among the cathedral cities of England, 
 and his short residence in the University of Oxford. An- 
 other pleasant event was his first excursion to France. He 
 spent nearly three weeks in Paris, and then made a short 
 tour in Normandy. This was in June 1838. 
 
 Among others on whom he called was Guizot. " Found 
 liim," he writes, " at home. He speaks English tolerably. 
 Struck with the smalhiess of his establishment ; certainly 
 not superior to the average of the "Writers to the Signet 
 in Edinburgh. Mentioned my 'Christian and Civic 
 Economy. ' Told him how much his opinions on education 
 Avere valued in England. He said that the connection be- 
 tween the moral and the economical was a subject altogether 
 oieio and unknown in France. Took cordial leave of him." 
 
 " Walked over to the Institute at twelve, and attended 
 a sitting of the Academy of Moral and Political Science. 
 j\I. Mignet introduced me. Taken into the centre of the 
 oval green table, around which the members are placed. 
 Mignet spoke a good deal on business matters, and seemed 
 to do it sensibly and impressively. The room is a large 
 oblong ; the table annular, and is an ellipse of great 
 
EFFORTS AT CHURCH REFORM AND EFFICIENCY. 121 
 
 eccentricity. Tlie president's platform is at the extremity 
 of the conjugate axis. The members sit round the exterior 
 circumference of the table, and the strangers on two rows 
 of forms along the walls. 
 
 "M. Wilks told us frightful things of what he termed 
 the insolence of the French against God in the matter of 
 the cholera. They introduced it into their theatres ; 
 ridiculed and defied it ; boasted that French science 
 would prevail against it ; remained stout while it only 
 visited other countries, or even the poor in their own ; 
 till at length it came upon all at the rate of one thou- 
 sand five hundred a day, when there was a universal 
 terror." 
 
 In company with Mr. Erskine, Chalmers paid a visit to 
 the Due de Broglie, and stayed over a Sunday in his 
 chateau. His account of the day is interesting, one of the 
 guests being Madame de Stael : — 
 
 " Found the morning worship party in the library 
 at eleven. The duke read a chapter of the French Bible, 
 the tenth of John, at a table ; the duchess, opposite to 
 him, read a sermon, one of Audeber's. We then all knelt, 
 and she uttered a French prayer. Could not follow it, but 
 her frequent ' O Seigneur,' in a most devotional tone, went 
 to my heart. Whether the prayer was extemporized or 
 learned by heart 1 know not. At three a small party con- 
 versed in the duchess's own apartment, when I read a 
 chapter and expounded. My topic was appropriation, 
 from the tentli of Romans. It gave rise to a brief con- 
 versation. Madame de Stael said I had given her comfort. 
 All here are Catholics, but the duchess and Madame de 
 Stael. Was shown Diodati's translation of my ' St. John's 
 Sermons.' Family worship in the evening, consisting of a 
 chapter and the Lord's Pi-ayer, at which we knelt, the 
 
122 EFFORTS AT CHURCH REFORM AND EFFICIENCV. 
 
 duchess officiating. About seven domestics in the morning, 
 and fifteen in the evening." 
 
 Chalmers was naturally greatly interested in the good 
 lady who thus officiated as chaplain in her family ; and 
 when, a few months after, he heard of her death, he wrote 
 a warm letter of sympathy to her husband, saying in it, 
 among other things, " In the Duchesse de Broglie 1 have 
 lost the most exalted and impressive of all the acquaint- 
 ances I had made for many years. Her kindness during 
 the few days I lived under your hospitable roof will never, 
 never be effaced from my grateful recollection. Her con- 
 versation, and, above all, her prayers, poured forth in the 
 domestic circle, and which at the time of their utterance 
 fell upon my ears like the music of paradise, have left a 
 fragrance behind them, and the memory of them is sweet." 
 
 Perhaps there was no period in Chalmers's life during 
 which his influence for good was so great as that which 
 we have been reviewing in this chapter. The service he 
 rendered to his own Church in connection with its exten- 
 sion was immense ; but that was only one of many direc- 
 tions in which the expulsive power of his new affections 
 was manifested. His fame brought him into intimate 
 contact with the higher as well as with the lower classes of 
 society, and there are testimonies innumerable to the fact 
 that no one ever met him without being wholesomely im- 
 pressed by the Christian fervour and noble simplicity of 
 his character. It was a great achievement to carry Evan- 
 gelicalism of the most decided type into the slums of 
 Glasgow; it was a still greater to secure a respectful hear- 
 ing for it in the proudest circles of the land. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 FIGHT FOR A FREE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. 
 
 S a churchman, Chalmers was intensely practical. 
 He had no love for controversy for its own 
 sake, nor was he ever a mere doctrinaire, '- 
 concerned above all things about the carrying- 
 through of abstract theories. What chiefly occupied his 
 thoughts after his conversion was how best and soonest 
 to bring his country under the power of that gospel which 
 he had himself come to accept, and to that end all his 
 individual efforts were directed. He aimed at it in 
 Glasgow when he set agoing his territorial system ; he 
 had it still in his eye when he accepted first a philosophical 
 and then a theological professorship ; it was to promote 
 the same object that he roused the country in the interest 
 of Church extension, and submitted to the humiliation of 
 beating like a dun at the doors of successive ministries in 
 Downing Street ; and he was still under the influence of 
 what might well be called his ruling passion when he 
 appeared in London before peers and prelates and pled for 
 the maintenance of National Establishments of religion. 
 
 But there was a principle which had been burned into 
 his mind in connection with the study of political economy 
 — namely this, that no mechanical adjustment of things 
 will ever produce satisfactory results if in that adjustment 
 
124 FIGHT FOR A FREE EvSTABLISHED CHURCH. 
 
 there is anything opposed to higher moral and spiritual 
 laws ; and he felt that he had no option but to throw him- 
 self in 1839 into the conflict which then began in earnest 
 between the Church and the State. 
 
 He was a strong supporter of National Churches, and 
 was prepared to do a great deal to secure the continuance 
 and extension of the State's support to his own com- 
 munion. But an Establishment based on the assumption 
 that the Church might be exposed to secular control in 
 the discharge of its own proper functions, he held to be, 
 on Scripture grounds, indefensible, and, on practical 
 grounds, unworkable; and for the sake, in the most direct 
 sense, of the great cause he had at heart, he turned aside 
 to resist the attempt which was made to impose such an 
 Establishment upon Scotland. 
 
 A few words will suffice to explain the essential nature 
 of the issue which arose at this time. 
 
 It will be remembered that to meet, in a conservative 
 spirit, the demand which had arisen to secure for congre- 
 gations an influential voice in the election of their 
 ministers, the Veto Act had been passed. Under that law 
 it was arranged that if a majority of male heads of 
 families, being communicants, formally dissented from the 
 settlement of a presentee to a parish, this dissent was to 
 be made effective by the Presbytery. No more moderate 
 measure could have been thought of ; for if, as some in- 
 sisted afterwards, the rule should rather have been 
 followed of rejecting a man who had not a sufficient 
 number of names adhibited to his call, things would have 
 been worse for him if he did not prove acceptable.. People 
 will more readily refuse or neglect to sign a call than take 
 the positive step of entering a dissent. It is also necessary 
 to remember that the Church was excessively anxious to 
 
FIGHT FOR A FREE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. 125 
 
 avoid even the chance of a collision with the State ; and 
 guarantees did seem to be given that the line was ab- 
 solutely clear, when a Lord of Session undertook to 
 propose the Veto, when the Lord Advocate for the time 
 being expressed his belief that it would be agreeable to 
 the Government, and when the Lord Chancellor, if he 
 was not consulted beforehand, expressed his admiration of 
 the measure immediately after it was passed. Nor should 
 it be forgotten that experience soon testified to the value 
 of the system. Over a hundred settlements took place \ 
 nnder it, with content to the people and advantage to the I 
 Church. 
 
 But there were two classes of persons who could not 
 acquiesce cheerfully in the new order of things. There 
 were, first, the "stickit pi'eachers,' as they were called, '' \, 
 who had no hope of getting a living except through the 
 interposition of all-powerful patrons ; and second, there 
 was the Moderate party, who were constitutionally and ) 
 conscientiously opposed to giving the people any influential 
 place within the domain of the Church. 
 
 To do the latter justice, it was not they who set the 
 heather on fire : they heaped on fuel and fanned the 
 flames when the spark was kindled, and they are chiefly to 
 blame for the present ecclesiastical condition of Scotland ; 
 but the person who applied the torch was a "probationer," 
 who would probably never have got into a manse at all 
 if he had not stirred up the civil powers to help him. 
 This probationer was presented to Auchterarder, a parish 
 with a population of three thousand souls. When his call 
 Avas submitted for signature, only two persons were per- 
 suaded to put their names to it, and the Presbytery came 
 to the conclusion that they could proceed no further in that 
 matter. But this was not the view of the case taken by 
 
126 FIGHT FOR A FREE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. 
 
 the presentee. He intimated his opinion that the law 
 under which the Presbytery acted was not good law — that, 
 in fact, the Church in passing the Veto Act had exceeded 
 its powers; and he appealed to the Court of Session to 
 declare as much, and to take the necessary steps to secure 
 his receiving justice. It is not needful to go fully into 
 the story. Enough to say that the Church followed the 
 prosecutor into the civil courts for obvious reasons. With - 
 out prejudicing the question of its own inherent right to 
 make any regulation which might seem to it indispensable in 
 the interests of true religion, it recognized the title of the 
 State to decide, for its own guidance, whether the terms of 
 its concordat or agreement with the Church had been in- 
 fringed, and it was anxious, for a very good reason, to show 
 that it really had not been so infringed in the present case. 
 For it admitted that if the State was not satisfied, it would 
 have a perfect right to withdraw the temporalities. 
 
 The Court of Session, in 1838, by a majority of eight to 
 five, decided against the Assembly, and the House of 
 Lords a year later confirmed the judgment. So far, then, 
 as the State was concerned, the course was clear. It was 
 advised by its acknowledged legal counsellors that the 
 terms of the concordat had been broken, and that the Veto 
 Act did involve an infringement of its rights. 
 
 The conclusion was perfectly intelligible, and it was one 
 which, though much to be regretted, might have awakened 
 no bitterness. When two parties make a bargain about 
 anything, the right must be reserved to each of judging 
 whether the terms of the bargain have been kept. But 
 the Church was startled by the announcement, in speeches 
 from the bar and bench, of principles which cut far deeper 
 than the question of the legality of the Veto. She learned 
 that the State claimed the right to decide on disputed 
 
FIGHT FOR A FREE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. 127 
 
 points of frontier, not for herself alone, but for the Church 
 also; and she then wakened up to realize that a conflict was 
 before her involving an interest higher than that of non- 
 intrusion — the interest, namely, of spiritual independence. 
 
 What the Court of Session held upon the inter-relations 
 of Church and State in Scotland may be gathered from 
 one single deliverance of its Lord President. 
 
 " Tliat our Saviour," said he, " is the Head of the Kirk 
 of Scotland in any temporal, or legislative, or judicial 
 sense, is a position which I can dignify by no other name 
 than absurdity. The Parliament is the temporal head of 
 the Church, from whose acts, and from whose acts alone, 
 it exists as the National Church, and from whom it 
 derives all its powers." 
 
 For a time it was not known how far those principles would 
 be carried, and in two successive years, 1838 and 1839, 
 the General Assembly contented itself with the adoption 
 of comparatively general resolutions. In the former year, 
 after the judgment of the court below had been given, but 
 when there yet remained an appeal to the House of Lords, 
 the Chui'ch felt it needful to do no more than meet the 
 Erastian utterances of the judges by a counterblast in 
 favour of spiritual independence; while in 1839, when 
 the highest court had spoken, the Assembly seemed still 
 to hope that things might mend if it bowed, so far as it 
 was able to do so, to the decision arrived at, and agreed 
 " to ofier no further resistance to the claims of Mr. Young 
 or of the patron to the emoluments of the benefice of Auch- 
 terarder." In other words, the expectation was cherished 
 that, if the State did continue to insist that where the 
 Veto Act was enforced the law was broken, it would be 
 satisfied to punish the disobedience in its own way, — that 
 is, ^vith the withdrawal of its endowment. 
 
128 FIGHT FOR A FREE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. 
 
 But a spirit of infatuation seemed at this time to take 
 possession of the judicial courts of Scotland, and they pro- 
 ceeded to pursue a course which produced results the very 
 reverse of what tliey wanted, and by which their reputa- 
 tion was seriously tarnished. 
 
 It is a maxim of "common law" that if a man steals from 
 another, that other has no right to resort to reprisals and 
 steal in his turn from the thief. But this maxim was 
 conspicuously disregarded forty years ago by our Court of 
 Session. It accused the Church of crossing the Civil fron- 
 tier and infringing on strictly civil rights, and, with more 
 vigour than either justice or dignity, it avenged itself by 
 following the intruder into her domain and insisting on 
 exercising spiritual functions ! 
 
 A brief reference to two cases will illustrate this course 
 of action. The ministry of Scotland was, as has often 
 been stated, divided at this time into two marked classes, 
 the Evangelicals and the Moderates ; and these were 
 distributed in such a way that certain presbyteries were 
 preponderatingly Moderate, and certain others were pre- 
 ponderatingly Evangelical. A majority of the Presbytery 
 of Dunkeld was Evangelical, and they acted according 
 to their light in the case of Lethendy. There the first 
 man presented was vetoed, and the Crown, which had the 
 patronage, immediately nominated another who was more 
 acceptable to the people. But the rejected presentee was 
 not so easily got rid of. After all the steps had been 
 taken with a view to the settlement of the second presentee, 
 and nothing remained but the single act of his ordination, 
 an interdict was issued by the Court of Session forbidding 
 the performance of that purely spiritual service. The 
 Presbytery, in its perplexity, sought counsel from the 
 General Assembly ; and its Commission, with only two dis- 
 
FIGHT FOU A FREE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. 129 
 
 sentient voices, ordered it to proceed. The right of the 
 State to do what it liked with the benefice was fully recog- 
 nized, but even members of the Moderate party were indig- 
 nant that the Civil Court should come in and say to any 
 ecclesiastical court that its will behoved to be regarded , 
 even in such a matter as ordination. But the event showed V . 
 that the Court of Session was in earnest in its determina- [ 
 tion to coerce the Church within its own province ; for J 
 when the Presbytery proceeded to do as the Assembly 
 directed, it Avas summoned to Edinburgh to answer for itself, 
 and, if it was not consigned to a jail for the offence it had 
 committed, it escaped that ignominy only through the 
 clemency of a majority of the judges. 
 
 It was plainly intimated, however, that a continuance of 
 such clemency was not to be calculated on. "I suppose," 
 said the Dean of Faculty Hope significantly, " by this 
 time the Church perceives that the violation of another in- 
 terdict is a matter which they had better not embark in." 
 
 " To me," replied Chalmers, in reference to this threat, 
 "there is something most coarsely and revoltingly untasteful 
 in this bravado. It is like the act of an executioner making 
 demonstration with his rope in the eyes of his victim before 
 he fastens it on. My only reply is, that should he dare to 
 put it in execution, he will find that he has completely 
 mistaken the strength of principle which exists in the 
 bosoms of Scottish churchmen." 
 
 Chalmers did not take too much for granted when he ^ 
 said this, as was illustrated in another quarter of the country, 
 where the Court of Session found a Presbytery of a very 
 different type from that of Dunkeld. The Presbytery in 
 question was that of Strathbogie, and in it a decidedly 
 Moderate element prevailed. 
 
 Here, too, there was a disputed settlement. A vacancy 
 
 (636) 9 
 
130 FIGHT FOR A FREE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. 
 
 having occurred in Marnocli, a preacher was nominated to 
 the charge who was intensely objectionable to the people, 
 and only one man, the keeper of a public-house, could be 
 got to s ign his call. ) Nevertheless, the Presbytery, being 
 Moderates, would have at once proceeded to his settlement 
 if an appeal had not been taken to the superior courts, and 
 if the General Assembly had not interposed in the interest 
 of the parish and directed that the presentee should be 
 rejected. But the disappointed man was not to be sup- 
 pressed. He applied for help to the Court of Session, and 
 got it What followed it would take too long to tell 
 particularly ; but enough may be said to show what hap- 
 pened when the Court encountered, not an opposing Pres- 
 bytery whom it had to threaten with imprisonment, but a 
 subservient one that was eager to do its bidding. A new 
 generation can now judge as to which of the two was 
 most injured in the end. 
 
 Receiving the orders of the Civil Court to proceed to the 
 settlement, the Presbytery addressed itself to the congenial 
 task, regardless of the warnings and prohibitions of its 
 ecclesiastical superiors. Tlie Church, through its supreme 
 court, in giving sjiecific directions as to how it should act, 
 had become virtually bound to bear the burden of any un- 
 pleasant consequences which might follow from obedience 
 to its commands; but this was nothing to the Moderate 
 ministers of Strathbogie. To intrude a man into a cure of 
 souls on the call of one individual, in the face of earnest 
 remonstrances from the whole remainder of the population, 
 and in opposition to the authoritatively expressed mind of 
 the Church, seemed to them a high duty when it was done 
 by the direction of the civil magistrate. Hence they held 
 resolutely on their way, and step after step was taken with 
 a view to the ordination of the presentee. 
 
FIGHT FOR A FREE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. 131 
 
 This, of course, was rebellion, — as much so as that of 
 the commander of an outpost who, in the crisis of a battle, 
 fights for his own hand, or takes his orders, not from his 
 superior officers, but from the enemy. In this light the 
 matter was viewed by the General Assembly. Finding 
 that the men were not to be arrested by ordinary means, 
 it susjDended them from their ministerial functions. But 
 even this was of no avail. Backed by the Court of Session, 
 which in effect said, " Never mind what the General 
 Assembly does ; take your orders from us : you are just 
 as much qualified as ever to perform spiritual acts," they 
 daringly went on to take the presentee on trial, and, in the 
 presence of a rabble who had gathered from a distance to 
 witness the extraordinary spectacle, they solemnly set 
 apart Mr. Edwards to the office of the holy ministry. Such 
 readiness to serve the civil as against the ecclesiastical 
 authorities merited and received a reward from the Court 
 of Session. A regular cordon was drawn around the dis- 
 trict within which these " loyal " men laboured, and civil 
 pains and penalties were threatened against all who pre- 
 sumed to preach in any of their parishes without their per- 
 mission. And it was now that Dr. Chalmers's warning 
 words to the Dean of Faculty came to be most conspicu- 
 ously fulfilled. The leading men of the Church boldly and 
 openly violated the prohibition issued by the Civil Court 
 against preaching in Strathbogie. They held that no court, 
 however high, had any right to issue such a prohibition ; 
 and, instead of its coming true that the Church drew back 
 in fear from doing what it considered to be its duty on 
 account of the terrible aspect assumed by the State, it may 
 be said that something quite the contrary took place. The 
 State became alarmed at the dangerous commotion it had 
 excited, and was afraid to enforce its own menaces. 
 
132 FIGHT FOR A FREE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. 
 
 Tlie Assembly proceeded to depose the men who had 
 chosen to defy its authority to the uttermost. The Court 
 of Session did not venture to call to account a single 
 offender for breach of its repeated interdicts. 
 f The truth is, that that court did not come with much 
 
 I credit out of the whole business. It is a perilous thing for 
 -i a court of justice to lose its temper, — as Lord Cockburn, 
 who was behind the scenes, tells us it did, — and to enter 
 the lists of a controversy as a partisan. It has powerful 
 Aveapons to use in a fight — the weapons of fine and im- 
 prisonment — but it has no chance in the long run of suc- 
 ceeding in a conflict in which the heart and conscience of 
 a multitude of men are profoundly engaged. 
 
 As for the Strath bogie ministers, they continued in the 
 anomalous condition into which they were brought by 
 the cruel kindness of the Court of Session. The sen- 
 tence of deposition passed on them was never removed, and 
 in the eyes of all who believe in Church order they were 
 to the last simply laymen, administering the sacraments, 
 Jiot by ecclesiastical, but simply by secular authority. 
 
 These internal conflicts, however, could not continue 
 without ruinous consequences ; and when the law was 
 finally laid down that a Presbytery was bound to intrude 
 a man into a parish whether he was acceptable to the 
 people or not, if his life and doctrine were unobjectionable, 
 and that in all cases of disputed jurisdiction between 
 Church and State it belonged to the Civil Courts to deter- 
 mine for both which should give way, — when these two 
 jDoints vf ere judicially settled, it became clear as day that 
 the Evangelicals could not go on unless some alteration 
 was made on the constitution of the Establishment. Come 
 Avhat might, they could not assent to the possibility of out- 
 rages such as had taken place at Mai'noch being repeated, 
 
FIGHT FOR A FREE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. 133 
 
 nor could they agree to work under a system which recog- 
 nized the right of the Civil Court to interdict the free 
 preaching of the gospel in any district of the country. 
 
 One hope remained, that the legislature would interfere, 
 and a succession of appeals was made with that end in view. 
 They were all, however, made in vain. Our statesmen were 
 as blind to the real character of the crisis as were the Scot- 
 tish Moderates. Indeed the former were materially influ- 
 enced by the opinions of the latter. Again and again they 
 were assured that the agitation was no more than a breeze 
 on the surface, and that with a little^r«^wess the commotion 
 would be quelled. It does not say much for human 
 nature, and especially for such Christian human nature as 
 they had, that men like Dr. Cook and others should have be- 
 lieved in the possibility of their Evangelical brethren quietly 
 acquiescing in the want of what they professed to regard as 
 vital when they saw that the thing was not to be given. 
 
 But such a delusion was cherished. A disruption was 
 rendered inevitable. And time has brought its Nemesis. 
 It was in the interest of political and religious conserva- 
 tism that the moderate and reasonable demands of the 
 Church were resisted. There was seen at the back of 
 the Evangelical movement a dreaded spectre, — the spectre 
 of the democi'acy ! And what has happened 1 If Sir 
 Robert Peel and Dr. Cook were to revisit Scotland at this 
 hour they would lift up their hands in amazement. In 
 order to conserve a few privileges of no great value, the 
 Establishment was broken up ; the Scotch have become by 
 far the most radical section of her Majesty's subjects ; and 
 the very Church for which all the sacrifices were made has 
 lost its patrons, and " sunk," as the old-fashioned Moderates 
 would have expressed it, into being the most democrati- 
 cally constituted sect north of the Border. 
 
134 FIGHT FOR A FREE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. 
 
 Chalmers's connection with the whole conflict, of which 
 we have given this brief account, was most intimate. 
 
 From the outset he warned the aristocracy against 
 taking up a prejudice with reference to the reform move- 
 ments of the Church, under the impression that these 
 movements were of a disorderly and revolutionary char- 
 acter. ''There is no affinity," said he, "whatever between 
 the demand, the honest demand, of the common people 
 for a pure gospel, and those demands which are lifted up 
 in the loud accents of turbulence and menace for the ex- 
 tension of their rights as citizens. There is a total distinc- 
 tion and dissimilarity between these two things. Even 
 an anti-patronage clergyman — let alone a vetoist — is just 
 as unlike a Chartist or a Radical as William Wilberforce 
 is unlike to "William Cobbett." 
 
 Speaking at a later period, when the interdict had been 
 issued prohibiting preaching in the district of Strathbogie, 
 and when it was thus made patent to all that the question 
 then raised was not merely how far the people ought to 
 be allowed a voice in the election of their ministers, but 
 what amount of spiritual liberty the Church was to enjoy 
 under the Establishment, he said :— 
 
 " There is but one way of disposing of the question of 
 spiritual independence. It is a question on which all com- 
 promise is impossible ; we have no choice. It is not a ques- 
 tion of degree, it is a question of principle ; and when 
 called to recede by a single inch from that line of demar- 
 cation between the ecclesiastical and the civil on which 
 we have planted our footsteps we have only one reply — 
 that we cannot, we dare not. We saw the mischief at its 
 commencement ; we saw it in what may be termed its 
 seminal principle from the very first deliverance of the 
 Civil Courts in the case of Auchterarder. The public did 
 
FIGHT FOR A FREE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. 135 
 
 not comprehend, and, at the time, did not sympathize with 
 us. The celebrated interdict against preaching has at 
 length opened their eyes; it has been a great astonish- 
 ment to them, but it was no astonishment to us. The 
 Court of Session have all along been most consistent with 
 themselves. We were not at all surprised by their last 
 inroad on the hallowed ground of the Church ; nor should 
 we be in the least surprised though, assuming a farther 
 mastery over the gospel's most sacred ordinances, they were 
 to give forth their prohibitions and their mandates on the 
 matter of sacraments, as they have already done on the 
 matter of sermons, and compel, at their bidding, the pros- 
 trate Church to administer Baptism and the Lord's Supper 
 to all or any whom they shall judge in a civil action to 
 
 have made good their right to it Be it known unto all 
 
 men that we shall not retract one single footstep, we shall 
 make no submission to the Court of Session, They may 
 force the ejection of us from our places, — they shall never, 
 never force us to the surrender of our principles; and if that 
 honourable Court shall again so far mistake their functions 
 as to repeat or renew the inroads they have already made, 
 we trust they will ever meet with the same reception they 
 have already gotten — to whom we shall give place by 
 subjection, no, not for an hour, — no, not by an hair- 
 breadth." 
 
 That it might not be said that he fulminated at a distance, 
 but was afraid to placce himself within reach of danger, he 
 went in person to Strathbogie and preached in violation 
 of the interdict. Perhaps that act helped to protect others. 
 Certainly the minds of some of the prelates who had not 
 so long before listened to his eloquent defence of National 
 Chui'ches would have been opened to the suspicion that 
 something was seriously amiss if the news had reached 
 
136 FIGHT FOR A FREE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. 
 
 them tliat Chalmers was in prison. Unfortunately, as we 
 may almost say, — for the incident would have had a 
 dramatic interest, — the word seems to have gone forth from 
 the higher powers that the Court of Session was "going 
 too far." At any rate, the preachers were suffered to 
 return to their homes in peace ; and the only substantial 
 result of the episode was that a good many places in the 
 North which had been accustomed only to Moderate doc- 
 trine were privileged to hear the truth of the gospel from 
 the li^DS of the most eloquent men in Scotland. 
 
 One of the statesmen, who manifested up to his light 
 a sincere interest in the welfare of the Church of Scotland, 
 was the Earl of Aberdeen. He was not able to grasp the 
 core of the matter until it was too late, and he showed 
 rather a pettish spirit when his panacea was not accepted. 
 But he did his best to heal the divisions which had taken 
 place ; and if the measure which he jJi'oposed had com- 
 manded the support of the General Assembly, it might 
 also have been accepted by the Houses of Parliament. 
 The measure, however, found no favour with the Evan- 
 gelicals. It provided for a veto xoith reasons, which ex- 
 perience has since proved to be utterly unworkable, and 
 it made no provision for securing the liberties of the 
 Church. On this last ground, Chalmers offered to it a 
 determined o})position. 
 
 "Sir," said he, addressing the Assembly, "it is a leading 
 principle of our Presbyterian constitution that there is a 
 distinct government in the Church, which the State of 
 i course must approve ere it confers upon us its temporal- 
 ities ; or, in other words, that we have as uncontrolled a 
 management of our own proper affairs as if we received 
 not one farthing out of the national treasury; that when in 
 the act of becoming an Establishment, Ave, in the brief and 
 
FIGHT FOR A FBEE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. 137 
 
 emphatic deliverance of my friend Mr. Gray, ' gave tliem 
 our services but not our liberties,' getting at their hands 
 a maintenance for our clergy, and engaging in return for 
 the Christian education of the people — a conjunction, wo 
 think, fruitful of innumerable blessings both to the 
 Church and to Society, but in which the value given is 
 many hundred times greater than the value received. 
 Still, if the State be not satisfied with the bargain, they 
 can at any time give us up. If, over and above our 
 services in things spiritual, they must also have our sub- 
 mission in things spiritual, in these we have another 
 Master, to whom, and to whom alone, we are responsible ; 
 and we utterly repudiate, as we should an accursed thing, 
 the sacrilegious bribe that would tempt us from an alle- 
 giance to him : for that in these things he has the sole 
 and undivided mastery, is a principle which lies at the 
 very foundation of the Church of Scotland ; and on her 
 giving up this, as by the loosening of a corner or a key 
 stone, the whole fabric will tumble into ruins. The estab- 
 lishment of this as the principle of our Church is the 
 peculiar glory of Scotland, the fruit of a hard-won victory 
 after the struggles and the persecutions of more than a 
 hundred years. A principle which has cost us so much 
 we are not now willing to let go ; and if the State will 
 insist on our surrender of it, or the forfeiture of our 
 endowments, we are willing to try the experiment and to 
 brave the same cost over again. It is a principle, sir, 
 that we have not forgotten, though it has been renounced 
 by a few declarationists among ourselves, and though it 
 has faded away from the recollections and the feelings of 
 general society, like an old charter which might slumber 
 in its repositories for generations, while its articles remain 
 unbroken, but which the rude hand of violence will recall 
 
138 FIGUT FOR A FREE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. 
 
 from its oblivion, and quickening it anew into vigour and 
 vitality, "wdll bring back, as if by resurrection, on the face 
 and to the observation of the world. It is even so with 
 the grand, the fundamental principle of our Church — its 
 own inherent liberty in things ecclesiastical — familiar as 
 household words. Bishop Burnet tells us, even to the 
 humblest of our peasantry, but which, suffered to lie quiet 
 for a centuiy and a half, because let alone, had ceased at 
 one time to be spoken of, and so fallen away from the 
 memory, even from the understandings, of men. From 
 1688 to 1838 — from the time of the Revolution settlement 
 to the time when the Court of Session gave forth its in- 
 terdict against the Presbytery of Dunkeld in the case of 
 liethendy — no ci\'il power ever attempted to interfere 
 with, the steps of our ecclesiastical procedure, or to meddle 
 vnih our Establishment in aught but the temporalities 
 which belong to her. It was the disturbance given then 
 which has aroused the Church, and will at length arouse 
 the nation, from its dormancy. It threw us back on the 
 first elements of a question which, from the days of our 
 great-gTand fathers, had been settled and set by. When 
 conjured up again, it sounded like an antique paradox on 
 many an ear; but minds are gradually opening to the 
 truth and sacredness of our great principle, and we doubt 
 not that the very agitations of this controversial period 
 have flashed it more vividly and convincingly on the under- 
 standings of men than heretofore. Our ark is now in the 
 midst of conflicting billows, but so that its flag is all the 
 more unfurled by the storm which has raised them ; and 
 the inscription there, now spread forth and expanded in 
 the gale, is making the motto of our Establishment patent 
 to all eyes, that 'the Lord Jesus Christ is the only Head 
 of the Church of Scotland.' Sir, we have nailed this 
 
FIGHT FOR A FREE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. 139 
 
 colour to the mast, and will keep by it in all its fortunes, 
 whether of tempest or of sunshine, through which the winds 
 of heaven may carry it. The Lord Jesus Christ is the 
 only Head of the Church of Scotland ; that is the watch- 
 word of the party with whom I act; and is there none 
 on the other side of the House to reiterate the cry 1 
 Yes, many, very many, perhaps all. And does not this 
 justify the distinction of treatment that we. are now 
 making between the two questions of sj^iritual independ- 
 ence and of the Veto Law 1 And the only other distinc- 
 tion I would press in the opposite quarter, from which we 
 have now heard a response so cheering, is that which 
 obtains between a declaratory and an effective ; will you 
 join us in making it effective 1 I have the proud confi- 
 dence that a goodly number of you will ; and, furthermore, 
 that you will assert by deeds as well as words, the great 
 princi])le on which we stand. We may break into a thou- 
 sand differences on the Veto Law, — of the sacred liberties 
 of our Church there will be no surrender," 
 
 The motion in the Assembly of 1841, for the deposition 
 of the Strathbogie ministers, was made by Chalmers in a 
 speech which breathed the same resolute spirit to main- 
 tain at all hazards the freedom of the Church. Referring 
 to the plea which had been put forward on behalf of these 
 men, that they had acted under the constraint of con- 
 science, he said, — " Sir, I know not what the inward 
 principle of the ministers of Strathbogie may have been, 
 nor will I attempt any conjecture on the subject ; but I do 
 know that when forbidden by their ecclesiastical superiors 
 to proceed any further with Mr. Edwards, they took him 
 upon trial, and when suspended from the functions of the 
 sacred ministry by a commission of the General Assembly, 
 they continued to preach and to disjtense the sacraments ; 
 
140 FIGHT FOR A FREE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. 
 
 that they called in the aid of the civil power to back 
 them in the exclusion from their respective parishes of 
 clergymen appointed by the only competent court to fulfil 
 the office which they were no longer competent to dis- 
 charge; and, lastly, as if to place the top stone on the 
 Babel of their proud and rebellious defiance, I know that, 
 to the scandal and astonishment of all Scotland, and with 
 a daring which I believe themselves would have shrunk 
 from at the outset of their headlong career, they put forth 
 their unlicensed hands on the dread work of ordination, 
 and, as if in solemn mockery of the Church's most vener- 
 able forms, asked of the unhappy man who knelt before 
 them if he promised to submit himself humblj'^ and will- 
 ingly, in the spirit of meekness, unto the admonitions of 
 the brethren of the Presbytery, and to be subject to them 
 and all other presbyteries and superior judicatories of this 
 Church, and got back from him an affirmative response, 
 along with the declaration that zeal for the honour of God, 
 love to Jesus Christ, and desire of saving souls, were his 
 great motives and chief inducements to enter into the 
 functions of the holy ministry, and not worldly designs 
 and interests. Sir, I repeat I am not able to go into the 
 depth and the mysteries of men's consciences ; but this I 
 am able to perceive, that if in heresy this plea were sus- 
 tained, the Church would be left without a creed, and that 
 if in contumacy this plea were sustained, the Church 
 would be left without a government, both doctrine and 
 discipline would be given to the winds, and our National 
 Church were bereft of all her virtue to uphold the Chris- 
 tianity of the nation, when, thus helpless and degraded, 
 she was alike unable to correct the errors, however deadly, 
 or to control the waywardness, however pernicious and 
 perverse, of her own children." 
 
FIGHT FOR A FREE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. 141 
 
 As the catastrophe approached, and the Government of 
 the day grew more emphatic in its announcements that it 
 meant to " stand by the law of tlie land as laid down by 
 the civil tribunals of the country," — in other words, that 
 it would do nothing to make it possible for the men who 
 had done most for the religious well-being of Scotland to 
 remain within the National Establishment, — it became in- 
 creasingly necessary that no doubt should be left on the 
 public mind as to what would happen if the representatives 
 of the State continued obstinate. In a long letter to Dr. 
 John Bruce, dated April 1842, Dr. Chalmers urged the 
 putting forth of a formal and final Claim of Rights, which 
 would let the legislature clearly understand how mattei's 
 stood, and leave the responsibility of what might follow 
 upon it if the Claini were rejected. 
 
 In this letter he urged that all the prominence should 
 be given to the point of spiritual independence. He was 
 himself an earnest non-intrusionist, of course, and he 
 Avould have been the last to agree to surrender again to 
 the patrons those mischievous powers which they had been 
 allowed by the Moderates to exercise; but he believed 
 that that matter would, without much difficulty, be 
 adjusted if the other interest were secured. And on this 
 ground, and also because of its supreme individual im- 
 portance, he argued that it would be wise not even to 
 name non-intrusion in the declaration, but coiicentrate the 
 attention of all concerned upon the one consideration, that 
 if the Church was to do its proper work in the country, it 
 must be left free from secular control. 
 
 "It is not for Parliament," said he, "to take up the 
 ecclesiastical merits of the principle of non-intrusion, nor 
 would I ask from them any opinion on a question which 
 is ours, not theirs. It is an internal question wherewith 
 
142 FIGHT FOR A FREE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. 
 
 we alone have to do ; the other is a boundary question — tlie 
 only proper one between the two parties — the line of 
 demarcation between the civil and the ecclesiastical." 
 
 "I feel it," he said again, "a sort of injustice to the 
 cause of our spiritual independence, or, which is tantamount 
 to this, to the sacred cause of the Headship of Christ, to 
 be condescending on the specific question of non-intrusion, 
 when so high a matter is at issue as the great generic and 
 comprehensive privilege which is inherent in every true 
 Church of deciding this and all other purely ecclesiastical 
 questions for themselves." 
 
 And, he went on to say at the end, the kind of declara- 
 tion he desired to see adopted was one in which those 
 who agreed with him would proclaim " That, rather than 
 give up the final jurisdiction of the Church in things 
 ecclesiastical, they are willing, if the hand of power shall 
 offer to inflict such a violence, to be stripped of all the 
 rights and advantages which belong to them as the 
 ministers of a National and Established Church." 
 
 It strikingly illustrates the insight and shrewdness of 
 Chalmers that at so early a date he put his finger so dis- 
 tinctly on the one point which has always proved since an 
 insuperable difficulty in the way of adjusting satisfactorily 
 the relations of Church and State in Scotland. Parlia- 
 ment has continued its vain and mistaken policy of trying 
 to settle for the Church the internal question of how best 
 to arrange the pastoral relation, while it has steadily re- 
 fused to look at the " boundary question," of where its 
 province ends and that of the Church begins. It has not 
 been at all successful in its efforts in the first connection ; and 
 as for the second, while it remained unattended to, it would 
 have seemed to such a man as Chalmers preposterous to ask 
 if th*e Establishment were one such as he could re-enter. 
 
FIGHT FOR A FREE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. 143 
 
 It was natural that Chalmers should be accused of in- 
 consistency in speaking so strongly as he did in 1838 of 
 the great importance of a religious Establishment to a 
 country, and in proposing four years later to take his 
 Church out into the wilderness. 
 
 One of those who seem to have so remarked upon his 
 conduct was Sir George Sinclair ; and in a letter written 
 at the close of 1841, he thus replies to his charges : — 
 
 " You speak of my former avowed preference for a 
 National Establishment, reminding me of what you call 
 my own theory. Now, in my London lectures, in my 
 Church extension addresses, in all my controversies with 
 the Voluntaries, in my numerous writings for thirty years 
 back, the spiritual independence of the Church has been 
 ever brought prominently forward as an indispensable 
 part of that theory, and I have uniformly stated that the 
 least violation of that indejiendence in return for a State 
 endowment was enough to convert a Church Establish- 
 ment into a moral nuisance. It is a little too much, 
 that after the Conservatives had accepted with thankful- 
 ness my defence of National Establishments, they should 
 now propose to take away from me the benefit of their 
 main vindication, or think that an advocacy given to a 
 National Church, solely for the sake of its religious and 
 moral benefits to the population, should still be continued, 
 after they shall have converted it from an engine of 
 Christian usefulness into a mere congeries of offices, by 
 which to uphold the influence of patrons and subserve the 
 politics or the views of a worthless partisanship. 
 
 " But you tell me of my views on the impotency of 
 Voluntaryism. May I beg your perusal of my third 
 London lecture on the distinction between Voluntaryism 
 ah intra and Voluntaryism ah extra. There is a perfect 
 
144 FIGHT FOR A FREE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. 
 
 identity of principle between the latter and a National 
 Establishment. I shall ever regret the necessity of a 
 separation from the State ; but if driven to it by principle, 
 it is a sacrifice which must and ought to be made. I say 
 so not in the spirit of menace, or for the purpose of terri- 
 fying bull-headed Toryism out of any of its inveteracies, 
 but simply to let you know that I for one shall feel it my 
 duty to draw both on the middle and lower ranks, inde- 
 finitely, in order to repair, and I confidently hope to over- 
 pass, the mischief which I fear that our enemies, in the 
 obstinacy of their miserable blindness, are preparing for 
 our land." 
 
 In short, now as formerly, he was acting in character. 
 What he was solicitous about above all things was the 
 cause of Christ, and the question forced upon him was not 
 the abstract one of whether the Church might not with 
 advantage unite with the State, but the practical one of 
 whether the only Establishment that was to be tolerated 
 in Scotland could reasonably be expected to serve the 
 highest ends of religion. He came deliberately to the 
 conclusion that as a spiritual instrument it could not be 
 made effective; and with a courage and an elasticity of mind 
 which awaken our intense admiration, he addressed himself, 
 two years before the crisis came, to the consideration of 
 what steps could be taken to carry on evangelical work 
 without any help from the State whatever. 
 
 "I have retired," he wrote in September 1841, "from 
 all further public or practical management of the question. 
 The truth is, that I reserve myself for an emergency. 
 Should there be a disruption of the Church, I shall feel it 
 my duty to help forward the operations of a great home 
 mission, which I have no doubt could take full possession 
 cf the country in a very few months. And looking to the 
 
FIGHT FOR A FREE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. 145 
 
 Christian interests of Scotland, I believe that more good 
 could be done by such an instrumentality than by an 
 Established Church exposed to such interferences as those 
 
 of the Court of Session for the last few years I do not 
 
 give up my views on the mighty good of a religious 
 Establishment ; but it is a good more than neutralized 
 should the Establishment be so hampered and restricted as 
 many would wish it to be who have really never studied 
 the question of what the best method is for spreading 
 abroad that education of principle which will prove the 
 only counteractive, not to irreligion only, but to vice and 
 anarchy and socialism, and the whole tribe of those 
 moral and political disorders which are now in busy 
 fermentation all over the land." 
 
 His fight for a free Established Church had ended in 
 failure, and he was now to try another and veiy different 
 experiment. 
 
 (636) 10 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 ORGAXIZATIOX OF A FREE DISESTABLISHED CHURCH. 
 
 EARLY forty years have now elapsed since the 
 18th of May 1843, but no one who was in 
 Edinburgh that day is likely to have forgotten 
 it. The present writer, then an under-gradu- 
 ate in the University, had been fortunate enough to secure 
 a ticket of achnission to St. Andrew's Church ; and he was 
 among the crowd gathered in George Street at five o'clock 
 in the morning, when the doors were opened to the public 
 into the meeting-place of the General Assembly. Many 
 long hours were before us ere the business was likely to 
 begin, but it was a great thing to have secured a place 
 in the front seat of the gallery ; and so intense was the 
 excitement which was then abroad, that in looking back 
 upon that time afterwards it never seemed to us as if there 
 had been experienced during it anything like a sensation of 
 weariness. 
 
 At last three o'clock arrived, and with it the Moderator, 
 Dr. Welsh, who had been preaching the customary sermon 
 in St. Giles's. I do not know that we who were spectators 
 had any expectation that what followed would be trans- 
 acted so rapidly. I rather think that we looked for some 
 prolonged proceedings. It was all over, however, very 
 soon. Dr. Welsh offered up a very solemn prayer, and 
 
ORGANIZATION OF A FREE DISESTABLISHED CHURCH. 147 
 
 then, amid a silence wliicli was almost })ainful in its inten- 
 sity, lie read a protest to the effect that, in respect that 
 there had been an infringement on the liberties of the 
 Church's constitution, so that the Assembly could not now 
 be constituted without a violation of the terms of union 
 between Church and State in this land, he could not con- 
 sent to the business proceeding further. Laying this pro- 
 test on the table, he left the chair and made his way 
 toward the door of the church. 
 
 " Dr. Chalmers had been standing immediately on his 
 left. He looked vacant and abstracted while the protest 
 was being read, but Dr. "Welsh's movement awakened him 
 from his reverie. Seizing eagerly upon his hat, he hurried 
 after him with all the air of one impatient to be gone." 
 
 And then slowly but steadily the depletion proceeded. As 
 in the House of Commons, the two parties in the Assembly 
 had been accustomed to occupy different sides of the chair. 
 It so hajipened that the Evangelical benches were oj^posite 
 the gallery in which I sat, and I saw accordingly row after 
 row of the men with whose names we were all most 
 familiar file deliberately out of the church and out of the 
 National Establishment. The spectacle was so extraor- 
 dinary, that for some time we looked on as if stunned. 
 At last cries began to be heard — cries of admiration, of 
 anger, of grief — and the crowded galleries became stirred 
 like trees in a storm. As the exodus continued every part 
 of the house grew emptier ; great blanks appeared espe- 
 cially in the section of the house allotted to students of 
 divinity, for the flower of the young men naturally followed 
 their master. In a wonderfully short time, however, the 
 process was completed ; and the door having been finally 
 shut on those whose struggles for freedom for so many 
 long years back had been keeping the Church in commo- 
 
148 ORGANIZATION OF A FREE DISESTABLISHED CHURCH. 
 
 tion, the victors settled down with a sigh of satisfaction to 
 put the old house again in order. 
 
 The Veto Act — "our old friend," as Dr. Cook facetiously 
 called it — was summarily repealed. The Strathbogie 
 ministers were declared to be not a whit the worse of their 
 deposition by the General Assembly. And all the extra 
 parochial ministers who had been admitted to seats in 
 presbyteries were sent back once more into the outer court 
 of the sanctuary. 
 
 " If Government is fii-m," so wrote Dr. Gumming of 
 London shortly before the Disruption, " I venture, from 
 pretty accurate information, to assert that less than one 
 hundred will cover the whole secession. The few manses 
 and pulpits likely to be vacated will be filled up with good 
 and holy ministers. The missionary schemes of the Church 
 will not he overthroiim ; they will prosper more than they do 
 now hy being released from party domination and incessant 
 -. quarrels ami squabblinys." 
 
 Thus the crisis was looked forward to with a light heart, 
 as promising a return of internal peace with an increase of 
 prosperity. There were miscalculations indeed as to the 
 numbers who would go out. Not one hundred, but nearly 
 five hundred ministers signed the Deed of Demission. But 
 the sweep made of those likely to be troublesome was in 
 consequence all the gi'eater, and the chances of peace, at 
 least, were, one might say, overwhelming. From the 
 strictly Moderate point of view, then, the Disrujition was 
 a blessing. Certainly there could have been no hope of 
 quietness in an unchanged Establishment, Avith men in it 
 holding the views of Dr. Chakners. 
 
 It does not appear, however, that the statesmen whose 
 obstinacy in refusing all concession had rendered the 
 catastrophe inevitable, continued to the end entirely sati.s- 
 
ORGANIZATION OF A FREE DISESTABLISHED CHURCH. 149 
 
 fied with their -work. Just ten years after 1843 Dr. 
 Buchanan had occasion to wait upon Sir James Graham, 
 and this is what he says about the interview :— 
 
 " Sir James Graham was at pains to tell us how deeply 
 1)6 regretted his share in bringing about the Disruption. 
 He said ' he would never cease to regard it with the deep- 
 est regret and sorrow as the saddest event in his life, that 
 he should have had any hand in that most fatal act.' He 
 assured me that Lord Aberdeen's sentiments on that sub- 
 ject were exactly the same as his own. He came over the 
 subject again and again." 
 
 These, at the time they were spoken, were vain regrets. 
 The mischief was done, and it is very much easier to make 
 breaches than to heal them. Besides, God has his own 
 ways of working, and higher ends were perhaps served by 
 the breaking up of the Church than could have been 
 achieved by the conservation of its integrity. At the same 
 time, it is important in connection with an event with 
 which Chalmers had so great a concern that it should be 
 made perfectly clear who wei'e to blame in connection with 
 it. The acts of the first Assembly held after the Disrup- 
 tion show unmistakably what party had triumphed. It 
 was the party of Dr. Cook — that party which was in haste 
 to j)roclaim that it approved of the principle of intrusion, 
 and was prepared to submit in all things to the dictation 
 of the Civil Courts-. Where that party is now it would 
 be difficult to say. It has been " rewarded '' for its faith- 
 fulness by getting what it fought to the death against — 
 namely, the abolition of patronage and popular election — - 
 and we are often assured that it now possesses what it 
 did not in the least care for either, " spiritual indepen- 
 dence.'' But however all that may be, this is true, that if 
 it had shown before 1843 half the anxiety to keep men in 
 
150 ORGANIZATION OF A FREE DISESTABLISUED CHURCH. 
 
 the Establishment which it has manifested of late to win 
 them back, there would not now be the ominously swell- 
 ing cry for a separation of Church and State altogether. 
 We must say again that nothing is more irrational than 
 to speak of the Moderates as the calm, sober, wise, trust- 
 worthy men of their generation — the men who were not 
 carried away by extremes, and to whom it would have been 
 better for the country if it had oftener listened. The plain 
 truth is, that their standpoint was always so low that they 
 could not possibly take a correct \'iew of their time and 
 its tendencies. They obstinately clung to all, and they 
 consequently risked all. When Dr. Cook jocularly pro- 
 posed in 1843 to lay the Veto Act in its grave, he drove a 
 nail in the coflSn of the Establishment. 
 
 But to return to our story. While the remanent 
 Assembly was in the way described making haste, tat the 
 bidding of the Civil Courts, to get back upon the old lines, 
 an enterprise of a different sort was being launched else- 
 where. The Disruptionists — a clear majority of all the 
 members returned that year to the supreme court of the 
 Church of Scotland — having formed into a column in the 
 street, marched do\vn to Canonmills, where an immense 
 low-roofed hall, capable of containing three thousand people, 
 had been prepared to receive them. 
 
 "I am proud of my country !" exclaimed Lord Jeffrey 
 when he heard that more than four hundred had gone out. 
 " Tliere is not another country upon earth where such a 
 deed could have been done !" 
 
 " A friend of mine," wrote Mr. Gladstone to Dr. E,obert 
 Buchanan, " a conscientious and earnest-minded Roman 
 Catholic, well acquainted with our country and language, 
 once told me that, amidst his discouragements in witnessing 
 the progress of unbelief in so many quarters, he had 
 
ORGANIZATION OF A FREE DISESTABLISHED CHURCH. 151 
 
 found a singular comfoi't in the testimony borne by the 
 ministers and members of the Free Church of Scotland 
 to the authority of conscience and of positive religious 
 belief." 
 
 The principle for which these men were prepared to 
 suffer was an intelligible enough one. They counted it a 
 matter of supreme importance that in a " free " State there 
 should be a "free" Church — a Church protected against 
 secular coercion and control in the execution of its functions ; 
 and they gave evidence of their determination to be satisfied 
 with nothing less than that by sacrificing all their interest 
 in the National Establishment. There were some that 
 said, of course, that they were martyrs by mistake ; but 
 events have not confirmed that view, and at any rate they 
 enjoyed for the time the substantial rewards which follow 
 the keeping of a good conscience. 
 
 "Never," wrote Chalmers to his sister — "never was 
 there a happier Assembly, with a happier collection of 
 faces, than in our Free Church, — with consciences disbur- 
 dened, and casting themselves without care and with all 
 the confidence of cliildi-en on the providence of that God 
 who never forsakes the families of the faithful." 
 
 When the commotion attendant on taking possession of 
 the new house had subsided, Dr. Welsh proceeded with the 
 business which belonged to his ofiice, and which had been 
 interrupted by the incident of the Disruption. It has been 
 long the custom in the Scottish Church for the retiring 
 Moderator to name his successor, and, after prayer, this 
 was what Dr. Welsh went on to do. 
 
 "I feel assured," said he, "that the eyes of every in- 
 dividual in this Assembly, the eyes of the whole Church 
 and country are directed to one individual, whom to name 
 is to pronounce his panegyric. In the exhausted state in 
 
152 ORGANIZATION OF A FREE DISESTABLISHED CHURCH. 
 
 which my duties have left me, it is scarcely in my power to 
 say more ; but indeed I feel that more would be superfluous. 
 The extent of his labours in connection with our present 
 position would justly entitle Dr. Chalmers [the mention of 
 Dr. Chalmers's name here was received with extraordinary 
 enthusiasm, the whole of the vast audience rising, cheering 
 for some minutes with the utmost enthusiasm, and the 
 house presenting a perfect forest of hats and handker- 
 chiefs] — would justly entitle that great man to hold the 
 first place in this our meeting. But surely it is a good 
 omen, or, I should say, a token for good from the great 
 Disposer of all events and the alone Head of the Church, 
 that I can propose, to hold this office, an individual who, by 
 the efforts of his genius and his virtues, is destined to hold 
 so conspicuous a place in the eyes of all posterity." 
 
 On taking the chair, Chalmers proposed that the pro- 
 ceedings should be resumed with another service of praise 
 and prayer; and as the great congregation of three thou- 
 ■^ sand souls, all thrilling with suppressed enthusiasm, sang 
 the words, — 
 
 " send thy light forth and thy truth; 
 Let them be guides to nie," 
 
 a sudden burst of sunlight filled the building, and recalled 
 to many present the text from which the Moderator had 
 preached six months before : " Unto the upright light 
 shall arise in the darkness." 
 
 Dr. Welsh, it will be noticed, referred in his speech to 
 something which Chalmers had already done for the 
 Church in its new position. It was well understood that 
 he had in his mind, among other things, the wise arrange- 
 ments which had been made by him with a view to the 
 maintenance of a disestablished ministry. 
 
 There was nothing fanatical in the proceedings of the 
 
ORGANIZATION OF A FREE DISESTABLISUED CHURCH. 153 
 
 men who told the Government and the country that if the 
 principles of Intrusion and Erastianism were to be forced 
 upon them, as conditions of continuing in the Establish- 
 ment, they would be obliged to resign their interest in its 
 endowments. Wlien the catastrophe seemed inevitable, 
 they deliberately addressed themselves to prepare for it. 
 Like Noah, they not only professed to believe in the 
 coming of a flood, but gave proof to all men that they 
 really did so by setting about the building of an ark for 
 the saving of the house. And so, when the lirst Assembly 
 settled to its work, it did not find that it required to look 
 with a blank face into the futui'e, and to consider ah initio 
 what it were best for it to begin with. Thanks to the 
 inventive genius and splendid administrative talent of 
 Chalmers, there was a financial report ready to be submitted 
 to it. Six hundred and eighty-seven associations for the 
 collection of funds for the support of the ministry had (this 
 report said) been already organized. Two hundred and 
 thii'ty-nine of these had actually sent money to the extent 
 of ,£17,000 to the general treasury ; and it was announced 
 that, if even the rate of giving that had commenced were 
 no more than maintained, an annual income was promised 
 of £74,000. 
 
 " Had the goodly results," said Chalmers, who of course 
 was convener of the financial committee, "which I have to- 
 day presented to you been a few months ago spoken of as 
 either possible or probable, the anticipation would liave been 
 regarded, as, in fact, my expressed conviction at that time 
 generally was regarded, as a vision of Utopia. We know not 
 what the feelings of such are when, instead of presenting the 
 matter to the eyes of their understanding, we now place it 
 before the eyes of their senses. Sure we are it is far easier 
 practically to do the thing than to convince the people 
 
154 ORGANIZATION OF A FREE DISESTABLISHED CHURCH. 
 
 ■ithat the thing was practicable. The difficulty lay not in 
 
 the doing of the work when begun, but wholly in getting 
 
 it begun ; not in the execution of the process after its 
 
 / commencement, but in overcoming the incredulity which 
 
 stood as a barrier in the way of its commencement I 
 
 doubt not there are a good many here who heard me 
 predict such a result as that which I have to-day laid 
 before you ; and I trust you Avill forgive me for stating, 
 though I am not a professor of physiognomy, that when I 
 chanced to lift my eyes off the paper to the countenances 
 of those who were before me, I observed in them a good- 
 natured leer of incredulity, mixed up, no doubt, with a 
 benignant complacency, which they cast on the statements 
 and high-coloured representations of a very sanguine 
 Utopia. In order to overcome this incredulity in my own 
 little sphere, and in a parish where eight-ninths of the 
 aristocracy of the soil are against us, I did begin a little 
 association, — I mean the parish of Morningside. But we 
 remained for six whole weeks in a state of single blessed- 
 ness ; we had not a single companion, but stood as a 
 spectacle to be gazed at with a sort of gaping wonder, till 
 we actually felt our situation painful, felt as if we stood 
 on a pillory. But now that we have been followed by no 
 less than six hundred and eighty-seven associations, our 
 singularity, we begin to feel, sits rather gracefully upon us. 
 " At the hazard of being regarded as a Utopian this 
 second time, and at this new stage of our advance, I will 
 make as confident an avowal now as I made then, that if 
 we only make a proper use of the summer that is before 
 us in stirring up, I do not say the people of Scotland, but 
 that portion of them who are the friends of our Protesting 
 Church, — if Ave do what we might, and what we ought, 
 we will not only be able to repair the whole Disruption, 
 
ORGANIZATIOX OF A FREE DISESTABLISHED CHURCH. 155 
 
 but will get landed in the great and glorious work of 
 Church extension. For you will recollect, that though 
 the ap|)lication of the first portion of the funds goes 
 towards, I will not say the support of the ejected ministers, 
 but towards the upholding of the continuance of their 
 services, yet after that is secured, and after the maximum 
 has been attained, the over and above sums contributed 
 r will go, not to the augmentation of ministerial income, but 
 \ to the augmentation of ministerial services ; not to the 
 (increase of the salaries of the ministers, but to the increase 
 of their numbers ; and we shall not stop short, I trust, in 
 our great and glorious enterprise, till, in the language you 
 have already heard, ' the light of the gospel be carried to 
 every cottage-door within the limits of the Scottish terri- 
 tory.' This will open a boundless field for the liberality of 
 our Christian brethren ; a bright and beautiful ulterior, to 
 which every eye should be directed, that each may have in 
 full view the great and gloi'ious achievement of a Church 
 commensurate with the land in which we dwell, and every 
 heart be elevated by the magnificent aim to cover with 
 the requisite number of churches, and, with God's blessing 
 on the means, Christianity to educate, and, in return for 
 our performance and prayers, to Christianize the whole of 
 Scotland." 
 
 It is very plain, from all this, what were Chalmers's/ 
 most earnest hopes in connection with the Disruption. 
 What he thought of was not the triumph of a sect. Be- 
 lieving, as he did, that it was the great stream of Evan^ 
 gelical life that had been flowing through the Establish!- 
 ment which was now diverted into a new channel, he 
 followed in thought and faith its future course, and his 
 argument, in effect, was this, that there was nothing in the 
 circumstance of its having lost the support of the State to 
 
156 ORGANIZATION OF A FREE DISESTABLISHED CHURCH. 
 
 hinder its going on and sweeping over the whole land. 
 And so far his prognostications have been fulfilled. 
 There is no district of the country so poor or remote that 
 the Free Church has been unable to sup^ ly ordinances to 
 The ministry of that Church has grown from four 
 hundred and seventy to over one thousand, and the 
 Sustentation Fund, which began with £74,0*00 a year, now 
 
 / yields £176,000. 
 
 \ In the speech from which a quotation has just been 
 
 given, Chalmers refers to an occasion on which he had 
 observed an incredulous smile pass over the faces of his 
 auditors. He alludes to the " Convocation," a remark- 
 able assembly of ministers who gathered together in 
 November 1842, to consult together confidentially about 
 the affairs of the Church. In the hearing of these ministers 
 he unfolded at great length his views of a Sustentation 
 Fund, and of the principles on which he looked forward 
 with confidence to the organization of a Free Disestablished 
 Church. Here all those resources became available which 
 he had been accumulating from the time when he began 
 his study of mathematics and of political economy. 
 
 One of his great points was this, — the power of littles. 
 He did not undervalue the large contributions of the rich, 
 but he knew that these must necessarily be few and pre- 
 carious. What he relied upon was the steady giving of 
 the many. "Men," he said, " in their hurried and whole- 
 sale contemplation of things, are apt to be carried away 
 by generalities, and under an overwhelming sense of an 
 extreme and universal helplessness among the common 
 people, think that nothing is to be had from them. The 
 only way of dislodging and dissipating that impression is 
 by going piecemeal to work, and making the actual trial 
 in one parish or vicinity after another." 
 
ORGANIZATIOX OF A FREE DISESTABLISHED CHURCH. 157 
 
 He then went on to tell of a clerical friend from Skye, 
 who said tliat it was vain to hope that anything could be 
 got from his quarter, but who, when asked if a penny a 
 week might not be expected from each household, answered, 
 that "if I came down to such a nothing, such a bagatelle 
 as that, it could be easily aflforded." 
 
 "Now," Chalmers went on to say, "it is just by a put- 
 ting together of such * bagatelles ' that I arrive at my con- 
 clusions ; and I therefore repeat that, as far as the means 
 are concerned, we could obtain — and it is the very least 
 and lowest computation we should think of making — we 
 could obtain, after the loss of all our endowments, the sum 
 of ^100,000 in the year for the sup2:)ort of a Christian 
 ministry in Scotland, without sensible encroachment on the 
 comfort of any, without so much as the feeling of a sacrifice." 
 
 It was when he spoke of a hundred thousand a year that . 
 the glint of incredulity passed over his audience. The 
 good man, they all felt, was indeed in Utopia. But it is 
 a grand testimony to the far-seeing sagacity of the econo- 
 mist that all that he predicted has come more than true. 
 The end was not accomjjlished at once. Tlie machine, 
 before it got into thorough working order, had to contend 
 with many difficulties ; and the heart of its first director 
 was sometimes fretted with the friction which these diffi- 
 culties produced. But it is impossible to deny that his 
 scheme has proved a magnificent success ; and, more than 
 that, that the whole Protestant world has benefited by it ! 
 There is hardly one English speaking Church which has 
 not appropriated the very name he suggested for his 
 fund. A new word came into use in consequence of that 
 famous speech of his in the Convocation ; and in an age 
 when disestablished Churches have become, and are likely 
 to become, more common, it is important that so many 
 
1 58 ORGAXIZATIOJT OF A FREE DISESTABLISHED CHURCH. 
 
 valuable Lints exist as to the way in wliicli such Churches 
 can be most efficiently organized. 
 
 Of course the sustentation of the ministry was but one 
 among the many things which required to be attended to 
 
 Iat this time. Six hundred congregations were suddenly 
 placed in circumstances requiring church accommodation, 
 and places of worship of any description could not be pro- 
 vided for these all at once. Happily the summer of 1843 
 was an unusually beautiful one, and to meet in the open 
 air was, as a rule, not at all an intolerable hardship. / The 
 ^ery change in the aspect of things proved beneficial. 
 Ministers who had sacrificed their all for conscience' sake 
 were naturally in a more fervid state of mind, and the 
 people heard better. So that, without any question, the 
 time came to be one of great religious revival. The event 
 
 L which broke up the Church of Scotland brought a new life 
 to many souls. 
 I Chalmers was then living in Morningside, and for a 
 time he turned his own house into a church ; " and per- 
 I haps he never occupied a more picturesque position than 
 when, planted midway up the staircase, he preached to a 
 disjointed congregation scattered into different rooms, all 
 of whom could hear, but not half of whom could see, the 
 /• clergyman." 
 
 He also made an extensive tour in the autumn in the 
 interest of the Sustentation Fund. On that occasion his 
 object was to gather around him the actual workers for 
 the scheme in each locality, and to talk to them in a 
 familiar way about how best to perform the service they 
 had undertaken. But when the Sabbaths came round he 
 was of course required to preach, and wherever he went 
 crowds came to hear him. On one of those days he was 
 in the neighbourhood of Aberdeen, and the good people of 
 
ORGANIZATION OF A FREE DISESTABLISHED CHURCH. 159 
 
 that city would gladly have had him conduct worship in 
 their largest hall ; but he preferred " a rural Sabbath," and 
 accepted the invitation to preach instead in a tent at 
 Banchory. 
 
 " But little thought I," said he himself, in afterwards 
 recounting his experiences, " that, notwithstanding the 
 day and the hour, and even the rain of this day, there 
 were to assemble six or seven thousand, some say ten thou- 
 sand people ; and so the pulpit had to be carried half a 
 mile from the Free Church tent to the front door of Ban 
 chory House, where I could preach under cover, with a 
 loliby full of grandees behind me, and such a multitude 
 before me as presented what the Opium-eater calls an ocean 
 of human faces. The people occupied all the gi-avel before 
 the house, and all the grassy lawn, wet as it was, to the 
 trees, whose foliage gave back the sound, so that the echo 
 came back upon our ears and prolonged each line so as to 
 compel a pause from the precentor in a way that was 
 somewhat ludicrous. Nevertheless, I was completely heard , 
 and, having Mr. Archibald, a probationer, to conduct all 
 but the sermon, I got over the whole with marvellously 
 little fatigue. The open air in front, and freedom from 
 all heat and stifling, made it far easier for me than if I 
 had been in the tent." 
 
 Dr, Chalmers's text upon this occasion was his favourite 
 one from Isaiah xxvii. 4, 5: "Fury is not in me: who 
 would set the briers and thorns against me in battle? J 
 would go through them, I would burn them together. Or 
 let him take hold of my strength, that he may make peace 
 \vith me ; and he shall make peace with me. " "The breath- 
 less interest," says Mr. Tliomson, " with which the people 
 listened was very striking ; and the blessed fruits of that 
 discourse will all be known only at the great day." 
 
160 ORGANIZATION OF A FREE DISESTABLISHED CHURCH. 
 
 The remarkable combination of qualities in Chalmers's 
 character never came out more strikingly than in the time 
 of which we are now speaking. His enthusiasm stirred 
 all who came into contact with it, and yet his practical 
 sagacity never forsook him for a moment. His faith in 
 God was entire, so that he believed, in the most unaffected 
 way, that He would provide for all who conscientiously 
 tried to serve him ; but this confidence never tempted him 
 to expect miracles. All the more that he trusted in the 
 certainty of a providential government did he make it his 
 aim to use such means for gaining his ends as wisdom 
 pointed out to be suitable. And with all this there 
 mingled the genial humour which saw the gi'otesque side 
 of things and threw his audiences at times into convulsions 
 of laughter. 
 
 Toward the close of each session, after the Disruption, 
 he was accustomed to give to his students a lecture on 
 *' Economics." On one of these occasions he told the story 
 of a visit he had paid to a congregation in the north, which 
 he was anxious to stir up to greater liberality. This story 
 he began to tell with the utmost gravity, and not one of 
 his auditors had, to begin with, the slightest suspicion that 
 anything ludicrous was to come out of it. He had, he 
 went on to say, a meeting with the ofhce-bearers, and 
 explained to them with great fulness and explicitness his 
 famous jjrinciple of " the power of littles." By the help of 
 arithmetic he showed that if a penny a week were con- 
 tributed by so many people, so much money would be 
 raised at the end of the year ; and if that arrangement 
 were only carried out throughout the entire country, the 
 income of the Church would amount to quite a fabulous 
 sum. Dealing, as he believed he Avas, with minds some- 
 what slow to take in a new idea, he dwelt upon his scheme 
 
ORGANIZATION OF A FREE DISESTABLISHED CHURCH. 161 
 
 at considerable length, iterating and reiterating the prin- 
 cipal points in it ; and at the close he came away with the 
 comfortable conviction that he had made a distinct and 
 lasting impression. What was his chagi'in, however, to 
 hear how all his labour had been viewed. [Here, as the 
 crisis of the story approached, the venerable professor 
 drew himself up, as if he were going to utter words of 
 strong indignation, while his eyes twinkled and his lips 
 twitched.] One of the office-bearers who had been present 
 was asked next day how he had liked the meeting. 
 " Pretty well," was his reply. " Doctor Chalmers is nae 
 doubt a clever man ; but, oh ! he is unco worldly ! " It 
 may be imagined that for some minutes after this the dis- 
 cipline of the class was nowhere. The loving-hearted old 
 man, whose life had been one long act of unselfish devo- 
 tion to the cause of Christ and the good of his fellow -men, 
 could well afford to tell to his students such a tale against 
 himself; and the rehearsal of it served a purpose, for many a 
 time since has the story been employed to rebuke the pseudo- 
 spirituality of those who pretend to think it a degi-adation 
 to allude to the outward business of the house of the Lord. 
 Chalmers's own special work was at once resumed by 
 him when the winter session in November came round. 
 He retired, of course (in comj^any with Dr. Welsh) from 
 the University ; but temporary premises in George Street 
 having been secured for class-rooms, he began to lecture 
 there to those students who desired to study for the Free 
 Church. Of the New College thus instituted he was made 
 the Principal, his colleagues being Dr. Welsh, for church 
 history ; Dr. Cunningham, for apologetics ; and Dr. Black, 
 for Biblical criticism. The fire of his earlier years had in 
 some degree abated, but his lectures were most interesting, 
 stimulating, and instructive ; and now and again the old 
 
 (63G) 1 1 
 
162 ORGANIZATION OF A FREE DISESTABLISHED CHURCH. 
 
 flame blazed out afresh, as when any new subject attracted 
 him and he followed the German plan of devoting to it a 
 short special course. 
 
 Thus, as the originator of its system of finance, as an 
 active helper in the rebuilding of the broken walls, as 
 the president of its seminary for the training of its 
 future ministry, and in innumerable other ways, he con- 
 tributed effectively to the formation of a free disestablished 
 Church. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 LAST YEARS. 
 
 ]HEE-E is that scatteretli, and yet increasetli. ' 
 So there is that divideth, and it tendeth to 
 unity. So was it with the Disruption. 
 Blamed by many as a schismatic act, a great 
 prompter to and promoter of division, no public incident 
 of our times has done more to bring together into one the 
 scattered Churches of the Reformation." 
 
 Thus writes Dr. Hanna ; and there are no truer words 
 iu all his admirable biography. 
 
 Certainly this is the fact, at any rate, that Chalmers 
 was not made narrower by the Disruption. It would 
 have been difficult for him indeed to become so in view of 
 the exi^eriences he had to go through. As Moderator, it 
 fell to him to receive the expressions of sympathy which 
 were sent to the Free Church, immediately after its estab- 
 lishment, by other commurdons ; and when post after post 
 brought him addresses and resolutions from Churches, of 
 the very existence of some of which he was before 
 unaware, he was gratified beyond measure. 
 
 *' I have felt," said he, " exceedingly delighted with 
 these communications. I must say that I consider it as 
 infinitely more characteristic of the religion which we pro- 
 fess — the religion of peace and charity — that instead of 
 
16-i LAST YEARS. 
 
 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 Now is the time to 
 
 rally about the common standard of all that is pure and 
 vital in Protestantism." 
 
 In the Assembly of 1845, he had a most interesting 
 opportunity of giving expression again to similar senti- 
 ments. Merle D'Aubigne, the historian, along with 
 Frederic Monod of Paris and Mr. Kuntze of Berlin, had 
 come to represent their re.spective Churches as deputies to 
 the Free Church, and Dr. Chalmers undertook to introduce 
 the distinguished foreigners to the Assembly. The scene 
 will always be remembered by those who witnessed it. 
 The great hall at Canonmills was crowded to the ceiling 
 from end to end, and D'Aubigne, who wrote afterwards an 
 account of his reception, tells that when Chalmers appeared, 
 "the whole audience rose, shouted, clapped their hands, 
 and Wcved hats and handkerchiefs. '^ 
 
 Rising, when the time came for him to speak, with that 
 air of unobtrusive and unaffected simplicity which always 
 sat upon him so gi'acefully, he said, " Tlie high and 
 honourable office has been assigned to me of announcing 
 the presence in this Assembly of certain evangelical and 
 much esteemed ministers from various places on the Con- 
 tinent. At the present juncture of affairs, I cannot but 
 regard the appearance of such men amongst us as providen- 
 tial. If ever there was a time when the friends of a scri}!- 
 tural faith and a free gospel should draw closer together, 
 surely it is now, when the spiritual tyranny of former days 
 is raising its head again, and threatens to resume its 
 
LAST YEARS. 165 
 
 ancient lordship over the consciences of men. It is pos- 
 sible that for the maintenance of our liberty we may again 
 be called upon for the same sacrifices, for the same 
 struggles of principle with power, for the same heartfelt 
 devotion to a noble cause, for the same lofty and intrepid 
 doings on the side of Christian principle, which were put 
 forth in Germany, under the chamjiionship of one whom I 
 need not name, because for three centuries he has been 
 known and revered over all Christendom as the hero of 
 the Reformation. And, sir, I am delighted to think — it 
 makes me feel as if I were now at the most interesting 
 moment of my existence, when I can point to one of those 
 strangers whom, in this great Assembly, I need as little to 
 name — who is universally known as the historian of the 
 Reformation." 
 
 Dr. Chalmers proceeded then to speak of the works 
 of M. Merle and of the many interesting ties which 
 bound together Geneva and Scotland. But the personal 
 and the national were soon lost in a wdder topic. "I hail," 
 said he, "the footsteps of those friends from the Continent, 
 because I know that one, and I believe that all of them, 
 may be regarded as the apostles of Christian union ; and I 
 do hope that their presence among us, and their conversa- 
 tion with the ministers of various denominations, will have 
 the effect of expediting that sacred cause in this country. 
 I trust you will not charge me with over -liberality if I 
 say, as I do from my conscience, that among the great 
 majority of evangelical dissenters in this country I am not 
 aware of any topics of difference which I do not regard as 
 so many men of straw ; and I shall be exceedingly delighted 
 if these gentlemen get the heads of the various denomina- 
 tions to meet together, and consent to make a bonfire of 
 them. " 
 
166 LAST YEARS. 
 
 These aspirations did not end altogether in words. Out of 
 the feelings which they awakened, and which appeared 
 simultaneously in many minds, sprang an organization 
 which still exists — the Evangelical Alliance. It has not 
 realized all the expectations which were formed in regard 
 to it. What Chalmers dreaded has to some extent come 
 about, at least so far as its operations at home are con- 
 cerned. There have been "large periodical assemblages, 
 where first-rate speakers have made eloquent demonstra- 
 tions, while there has been on the whole a lack of the 
 materials of real business," At the same time, it has done 
 noble service in its day, and promises to do still more ; and 
 we may yet see it fulfilling Chalmers's ideal — that, first, of a 
 great anti-Popish association, and, second, of a great home 
 mission. 
 
 About the last point he was particularly solicitous, 
 believing, as he did, that " to walk together in the field of 
 Christian philanthropy is a likely preparation for thinking 
 together on the questions of the Christian faith." This 
 was but one side of perhaps his favourite maxim, that 
 unto the upright light arises in the darkness. Holding, as 
 he did emphatically with Vinet, that " the axioms of men 
 innocent have become the problems of men fallen," he often 
 taught that the surest road to right thinking was right 
 doing ; and hence, in urging active co-operation among 
 professing Christians about all good things, he had no 
 doubt that he was recommending the method by which 
 unity could soonest be reached. 
 
 " Let us," he pled, " be one in well-doing ; and this, 
 wherever there is real sincerity and right good earnest, 
 will prove the highroad to being one in sentiment. A 
 oneness in conduct will often lead to an essential oneness 
 of creed ; for the reflex influence of the former upon the 
 
LAST YEARS. 167 
 
 latter is far greater than i:)erhaps logicians and controver- 
 sialists in theology are willing to allow. And so we may 
 speed onward the accomplishment of our blessed Saviour's 
 prayer — even that palpable unity among Christians which 
 he has announced as an indispensable stepping-stone to the 
 world's regeneration." 
 
 His hopes in this connection were not fulfilled. The 
 Alliance became without any difficulty an Anti-Popish 
 Association ; but when it began to face the question of the 
 reclamation of the waste places at home from heathenism, 
 it was met by difficulties arising from the presence of 
 organizations already in the field. 
 
 But Chalmers's mind, having secured rest from contro- 
 versy, was now turning intently again toward old interests. 
 The spiritual destitution of the country was what most 
 oppressed him, and he could not assent to give over plan- 
 ning for the relief of that merely because he was dis- 
 appointed of help in one particular quarter. If Christian 
 men of all denominations could not see their way to join 
 in home missionary effort, he must, if necessary, throw 
 himself into the breach single-handed. And this was prac- 
 tically what he did. 
 
 Singling out what was at the time one of the worst 
 districts of Edinburgh — that of the West Port — he resolved 
 to devote his remaining strength to its evangelization. In 
 doing this, he had more in view than the good of that one 
 locality. He wished to " work off one model or normal 
 specimen of the process by which a single locality may be 
 reclaimed from the wilderness," and then to press it on the 
 imitation of other philanthropists. 
 
 As a preparation for his work, he delivered four public 
 lectures in Edinburgh, in which he showed the advantages 
 of the territorial system, and in which also he proclaimed 
 
168 LAST YEARS. 
 
 in an emphatic way the catholicity of the spirit by which 
 he was animated. Because he was a Free Churchman, it 
 was of course most natural and convenient that he should 
 employ Free Church agencies ; but he said, with great 
 vehemence of expression, "Wlio cares about the Free 
 Church, compared with the Christian good of the people of 
 Scotland 1 Who cares about any Church, but as an instru- 
 ment 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." 
 
 These are the sentiments we have met with at all points 
 in his history. A Church to him was not an end but a 
 means ; and it at once lost in his eyes the very reason of 
 its existence, when, either through its own ineflBciency, or 
 through the restraints put upon it from without, it became 
 incapable of contributing as it should to the promotion of 
 evangelical religion. 
 
 When the West Port statistics were taken up, the dis- 
 trict was found to be in a deplorable state. " Out of a 
 gross population of two thousand, three-fourths of the 
 whole, or about fifteen hundred of the inhabitants, were 
 living — within sound of many a Sabbath bell, and with 
 abundance of contiguous church accommodation — lost to all 
 the habits and all the decencies of the Christian life." 
 
 Throwing himself into this region, he set agoing all the 
 machinery which, from his experience in Glasgow, he knew 
 to be indispensable ; and the success which ere long attended 
 his eflforts was most cheering. Within less than three 
 years he was able to say to Mr. Tasker, his invaluable 
 coadjutor in the work, and the first minister of the terri- 
 tory, " I have got now the desire of my heart— the church 
 is finished, the schools are flourishing, our ecclesiastical 
 machinery is about complete, and all in good working 
 
LAST YEARS. 169 
 
 order. God has indeed heard my prayer, and I coukl now 
 lay down my head in peace and die." 
 
 A day later he wrote thus to a friend in New York : " I 
 wish to communicate what to me is the most joyful event of 
 my life. I have been intent for thirty years on the com- 
 pletion of a territorial experiment, and I have now to bless 
 God for the consummation of it. Our church was opened 
 on the 19th of February, and in one month my anxieties 
 respecting an attendance have been set at rest. Five- 
 sixths of the sittings have been let ; but the best part of 
 it is, that three-fourths of these are from the West Port, a 
 locality which, two years ago, had not one in ten church- 
 goers from the whole population. I jjresided myself on 
 Sabbath last over its first sacrament. There were one 
 hundred and thirty-two communicants, and one hundred of 
 them from the West Port." 
 
 The work thus auspiciously begun did not turn out to 
 be of an evanescent character. The congregation continued 
 steadily to grow, until, in 1879, it was able to report a 
 membership of over eleven hundred. 
 
 In such quiet walks of usefulness did Chalmers proceed, 
 almost without interruption, till his death. He met with 
 trials and disappointments, as was to have been expected, 
 for the millennium had not come in his day. There were 
 obstinate men, for example, who would not listen to reason 
 on the subject of ecclesiastical economics, and he was rather 
 disheartened at times when he thought of the prospects of 
 practical Voluntaryism. But if he had lived long enough 
 he would have seen his principles accepted, and conse- 
 quences following from them which would have brightened 
 his whole horizon. And as it was, these disappointments 
 did not in any way affect injviriously the sweetness of his na- 
 ture, or disturb his relation to the great testimony of his life. 
 
170 LAST YEARS. 
 
 Once again only was he called forth to discharge a public 
 duty under the eye of the whole nation. 
 
 Just as before the Disruption there were some who 
 believed that nobody would *' go out," so after that event 
 there were some v/ho were fully jiersuaded that those 
 who went out would speedily return. Among these last 
 were certain great landholders, like the Dukes of Suther- 
 land and Buccleuch, who, concluding that all that was 
 wanted to suppress the Free Church was a little Jirmness, 
 refused to grant sites for building purposes to the outed 
 congregations on their estates. This course was followed 
 by so many, and the hardships inflicted grew so serious, 
 that at last Parliament was moved to agree to the appoint- 
 ment of a Committee of Inquiry. 
 
 Among other witnesses, Chalmers was summoned to give 
 evidence, and, with this object in view, he went up to 
 London on the 7th of May 1847. 
 
 What he said on this occasion is important on this 
 account, that a singular persuasion exists in certain quarters 
 that he altered his views of things at the last, and became 
 convinced that even a bound and restricted established 
 Church is better than one which is disestablished but free. 
 Rumours of a like sort have always been rife about great 
 men who have broken away from the established order of 
 things. How often, for instance, has the world been told 
 of the "recantation" of Dr. Dollinger. It is natural to 
 wish to break down the testimony of such men, but it 
 ought perhaps to be more frequently remembered that the 
 interests of morality suffer more than the cause of a party 
 gains when a man is, without any substantial excuse, 
 represented as having turned his back in old age upon the 
 most earnest teachings of his previous life. 
 
 The same month which saw Chalmers in the presence of 
 
LAST YEARS. 171 
 
 the Sites Committee saw him also called away to answer for 
 himself at a higher tribunal ; and the following sentences, 
 therefore, may well be taken as expressing his final judg- 
 ment upon the great question which rent the Church of 
 Scotland asunder : — 
 
 " It has been stated in this Committee that the points 
 upon which the Free Church differ from the Established 
 Church are mere points of technicality, and that they have 
 no real substance in them ; will you state what you con- 
 sider to be the distinctive principle between the Free Church 
 and the Established Church ? — The distinctive principle some 
 people call 'spiritual independence.' I think that there is 
 a difference of nomenclature between the English and 
 Scotch, and that our cause is a good deal misunderstood 
 in virtue of that. 1 would say that the final jurisdiction 
 of ecclesiastical courts in things sacred is the great prin- 
 ciple upon which we have gone out, that that final juris- 
 diction has been violated, and that it is not a capricious 
 or unheard-of novelty. It has been held in Scotland for 
 more than two centuries. It was the great question be- 
 tween the Jameses and Charleses on the one hand, and the 
 Scottish people on the other, who called it the Headship 
 of Christ — the term given to the principle when looked 
 to in a religious light. But when looked to constitu- 
 tionally, it is termed the final jurisdiction of the ecclesias- 
 tical courts or Church courts in things sacred, as distinct 
 from things civil. Now, it is sometimes expressed in this 
 way by a Scotchman. He speaks of it as the supremacy 
 of the Church over all things ecclesiastical, which is very 
 apt to mislead the understanding of Englishmen, because 
 I presume that any question connected with the minis- 
 terial ofiice, and which related to the * civilia ' of that office, 
 would in England be called an ecclesiastical cause, and is 
 
172 LAST YEARS. 
 
 decided by the civil courts. Now, there is a distinction in 
 the very constitution of our courts to every understanding 
 which makes this matter clear with us. There are eccle- 
 siastical courts that are constituted of the kirk-session, 
 the Presbytery, the Synod, and General Assembly ; and 
 there are civil courts. We call matters decided by those 
 courts ecclesiastical matters, because our habit has been 
 all along to refer things sacred to the ecclesiastical courts, 
 and which never passed from the ecclesiastical courts to 
 the civil courts. Those are things sacred, but our call- 
 ing them things ecclesiastical is very apt to mislead Eng- 
 lish people, under the idea that we claim the supremacy 
 over the 'civilia' as well as the 'sacra' of the minis- 
 terial office. Now, there is nothing more distinct in a 
 Scotch mind than the proper function of the ecclesias- 
 tical court, which is to take up things sacred, and the 
 proper function of the civil court, which is to take up 
 things secular connected with the ministerial office, such 
 as glebe, stipend, church or place of worship, and the 
 manse or parsonage house, and other matters of the same 
 kind which might be very easily enumerated. 
 
 " Do you think that the Church of Scotland, as at 
 present established by law, have recognized on the part of 
 the State a jurisdiction in matters spiritual and sacred, 
 and against which the people of Scotland have strongly 
 contended in times past? — Yes, I think they have com- 
 pletely obliterated that line of demarcation which we always 
 thought divided the civil from the ecclesiastical courts. 
 
 " In so crossing that line of demarcation they have 
 adopted the principles which are generally known in Scot- 
 land by the name of Erastian principles? — Yes." 
 
 During this his last visit to London, Chalmers seems to 
 
LAST YEARS. 173 
 
 have enjoyed himself thoroughly. He made several new 
 acquaintances, such as the Bishop of Gloucester and Sir 
 Charles Lyell. He took a great delight in visiting the 
 Athenaeum, of which he had been admitted a member. 
 He preached twice — once in London in a Presbyterian 
 church, and again in Gloucestershire in an Independent 
 chapel ; and in his letters home, giving an account of in- 
 tercourse with relatives and friends, he manifested a light- 
 someness which seemed to promise the prol)ability of years 
 of active service. Among the calls he made in London 
 was one on Thomas Carlyle. "I had," he says, "lost all 
 recollection of him, though he told me of three interviews, 
 and having breakfasted with me in Glasgow. 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 manly conversation of good ordinai-y common 
 sense, with a deal of hearty laughing on both sides. The 
 points on which I was most interested were his approval 
 of my territorial system, and his eulogy on direct think- 
 ing, to the utter disparagement of those subjective philo- 
 sophers who are constantly thinking upon thinking." 
 
 This was written on May 14. On the 30th of the same 
 month he retired to his room in his own house at Morning- 
 side, after bidding his family a genial good-night. " I 
 never saw him happier," writes one who happened to be 
 his guest that evening. " Christian benevolence beamed 
 from his countenance, sparkled in his eye, and played upon 
 his lips." Next morning he did not appear as usual, and 
 hearing no sign of movement within the apartment, a 
 member of his household entered, opened the shutters, 
 drew aside the curtain, and saw that he was dead ! 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 A BAC^OOK. 
 
 F any one really wants to know what manner 
 of man Chalmers was, he must study his 
 ' Daily Scriptui'e Readings' and his ' Horse 
 Sabbaticse.' " 
 
 So said lately one of the men who sat at his feet in St. 
 Andrews and Edinburgh, and who, like a good many 
 others still surviving, cherish affectionately the recollection 
 not of their great master's eloquence merely, or even chiefly, 
 but of his fervid and unaffected piety. When a contro- 
 versy is proceeding involving even fundamental matters, 
 the question of its practical effects upon those who engage 
 in it will always be determined by the extent to which 
 they maintain a personal intercourse with God. All con- 
 flicts tend to grow more or less bitter, and during their 
 continuanjgje things are apt to be said which in calmer 
 moments are regretted. How Chalmers was enabled to 
 fight the battle which issued in the blighting of so many 
 of his hopes, in such a way as to leave little that was pain- 
 ful behind, is explained in the private diary which he kept 
 contemporaneously. There we see what was his resource 
 in all trouble, and what were the deepest motives which 
 influenced him throughout his public life. Men of the 
 world might accuse him of having crooked purposes to 
 
A BACKLOOK. 175 
 
 serve, but he could conceal nothing from God; and in 
 these most unmistakably genuine confessions we see the 
 undisguised workings of an honest and spiritually enlight- 
 ened soul. 
 
 Suppose Chalmers had not been arrested, like Saul, to 
 be used in the interest of the gospel, but had been left to 
 pursue the course which he first took up, what would 
 have been the character of his life ? It is, perhaps, vain 
 to speculate ; but we may so far entertain the question 
 for a moment, in order that we may the better realize, in 
 connection with his history, our indebtedness to divine 
 grace. 
 
 That he was a man of the highest order of mind — in 
 other words, that he possessed the quality of genius — can- 
 not be doubted by any one who has made his biography a 
 study. He beheld all things with an open face — that is, 
 he saw all around him with his own eyes, not with the 
 eyes of others. Supporting this faculty of observation 
 was one of insight. He noticed with i-apidity similarities, 
 contrasts, analogies ; and hence he seldom wrote or spoke 
 about anything without suggesting some new thought about 
 it, or putting it in a new light. Originality was a feature 
 in all his writings, whether he discoursed on the stars, or 
 economics, or religion. He had in him, therefore, a natural 
 force which could never have been content to lie quiescent, 
 or to move inconspicuously in commonplace channels. 
 
 "We may assume, then, that the world would have heard 
 of him, even if he had never become a preacher. But 
 what sort of reputation would he have achieved in that 
 easel He would have become, probably, a great mathe- 
 matician or scientist ; and as it was not in his nature to do 
 things by halves, we should have seen him taking the lead 
 at congresses, discussing the origin of matter, or fighting, 
 
176 A BACKLOOK. 
 
 as if the welfare of the world depended on it, for some 
 knotty point connected with the obliquity of the ecliptic. 
 Perhaps — who knows? — something more serious might 
 have happened. The relation of a mind like his to Chris- 
 tianity could not be always that of indifference or neu- 
 trality. If he had not been moved to come over to its side, 
 he might have been led to lift up his hand against it, and 
 so to the hostile forces of the present day might have been 
 added the element of a soul which, whether for good or 
 for evil, would be always influential. 
 
 The great lesson of Chalmers's life, then, is the same as 
 that which is suggested by the story of the conversion of 
 Saul of Tarsus. God needed a man to roll back the tide 
 of irreligion, and to make his Church in Scotland better 
 serve its ends ; and the man was found among that very 
 class of ministers (the Moderates) who were most unfriendly 
 to the supernatui'al in religion. Hence his call was a great 
 act of grace. 
 
 What he would have done had not God found him, we 
 can only guess. What he did accomplish, in consequence 
 of his being found of God, is matter of history. That 
 divine touch, which altered the direction of his life, made 
 him a lasting blessing to his country ; and as we glance 
 back upon his career, and see what grace enabled him to 
 do, we are led anew to think what a bright new century 
 there would be for Scotland if the Spirit were to exercise 
 His sovereign power and divert some of the energy now 
 given to the world into the channel of the gospel. 
 
 » THE END. 
 
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